Hell, Nord-Trøndelag

This tiny village in Norway has a population of about 1500, and gets pretty darn cold.  Like, -4 Degrees Fahrenheit cold.  Gives new meaning to the phrase “Hell freezes over.”  The town’s name comes from the Old Norse term for “cliff cave,” but tourists who speak English like to stop by and have their pictures taken next to the sign above or at the train station, which boasts a sign that says “Gods-expedition.”  It’s a play on words with the Norwegian term godsekspedisjon, which means “cargo handling.”  Fun.

Hell, California

In 1954, Charles Carr decided to be clever.  Either that, or he was a really quirky guy.  He founded Hell, California and he and his family were the tiny town’s only inhabitants.  They got bored with it, and the town was defunct and empty by the early 1960′s.  The California State Division of Highways started building US 60 and US 70, and eventually Hell’s service station, bar, and water tower were burned and torn down by the Division of Highways to make room for Interstate 10.  Depressing, huh?

Hell, Grand Cayman

On an island as heavenly as Grand Cayman, it is appropriate that a black, bleak, limestone field would be called “Hell.”  The residents of the town of West Bay – where Hell is located – have learned how to capitalize on that quirky half-soccer field full of ugly rocks.

Hell, Michigan

Hell, Michigan is the most well-covered town called Hell on the internet.   Meaning, there is more information out there about Hell, Michigan, than there is about any other hell besides the one that you go to if you are mean to puppies.  Michigan’s Hell is located in the Putnam Township close to Ann Arbor.  It’s an unincorporated community with an unofficial population of 266 people.  It also has an ice cream parlor (seen above) called Screams Ice Cream, a general store called Hell in a Handbasket, and a fictional college that offers “signed sealed and singed” degrees.

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That, in a nutshell, describes Dagobah, for sure.  But isn’t there so much more to the planet where young Luke Skywalker meets Master Yoda for the first time?  Lucky for us, there are scads of websites out there devoted to giving us the Star Wars information we seek.  I’m not kidding, Folks.  There is a LOT out there.  So I’m going to tell you about it.  Dagobah, that is.  It would be an awfully long blog post to describe the whole Star Wars universe.  So we’ll do it one blog post at a time.
**Note:  rewrite theme song to “The Beverly Hillbillies” so that the lyrics are about Yoda and you will win a small prize.

So, Dagobah.  Unless you’re Yoda, you don’t live there.  And in fact, even if you ARE Yoda, you’re dead.  So nobody lives there.  But would anybody want to?  And since that’s impossible because the planet is fictional, where could you go on Earth that would replicate the feeling of being on Dagobah?

Dagobah, not Earth

Dagobah, as you know, is where Yoda lived out his self-imposed exile after his failure to defeat Darth Sidious.  The planet contained the essence of a Dark Jedi who had been killed there many years before the Clone Wars.  It was that dark essence that shielded Yoda’s light side presence from any detection, and also that dark essence that Luke battled in the cave.

Now you know about that, so it is time to answer the earlier question about where you would go here on Planet Earth to replicate the feeling of being on Dagobah?

While we won’t find a place on earth with Bogwings or Giant Swamp Slugs, we have some (though less and less every year) boggy, swampy, jungle-y land here on Planet Earth.  In fact, the Atchafalaya Basin is probably the closest thing we’ve got in North America, though it’s not as dark and dismal as Dagobah.

Do you have a swampy, boggy marsh you like to call home?  Send in pictures and we’ll post them here.

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