I was reading a question in another group asking if xtians took the word 'Hell' from the Norse 'Hel' or the other way round? The poster also asked about the similarities between the history of the Goddess Idunn and her apples of youth and the garden of Eden in xtian fiction.
Magic apples that give eternal youth are a very old Proto Indo European legend. (Perhaps 1000's of years old) Examples of it can be found in Irish Celtic mythology. Greek, Slavic and Germanic traditions and they all predate xtianity by a long way. Survive the jive does a good video on this subject as does Carolyn Emeric, both found on youtube. Apples were not in the original garden of Eden story which also predates xtianity by many aeons and wasn't originally called 'Eden'. This suggests xtians added these European themes to help acclimatise us to the new xtian ideas.
The Goddess Idunn pronounced 'Eedunn' is of Elven race and married to the God Bragi. The Goddesses that are of elven descent are very old from the time when Nerthus / Ing were worshipped. Elves were essentially spirits of our ancestors. (later Ingvi Freyr was known as the ruler of Alfheim by the Norse) This suggests Idunn predates xtianity as well, especially as she is spoken of in regards to such an old myth. In addition to this, The Goddess Idunn's name is a cognate of 2 very old Germanic words derived from ið "again" and unna "to love". All of this evidence together suggests that the stories The Goddess Idunn predates xtianity and the Garden of 'Eden' in Europe.
The word 'Hell' is definitely European. It means to hide or to cover and was our ancient word for the underworld/afterlife. There are versions of that word in all of the European languages so it must be very old! One of the huge stumbling blocks when forcing people to convert to xtianity was that they didnt want to go to heaven because all of their ancestors were in hel. To combat this resistance to the new xtian ideas, xtians made Hell out to be a place of demons and fire. They even made it the home of the devil, the face of evil.
