I answered a very similar question a while back. Here you go, it's the same story regardless of whether or not the cause of death was a fever or old age.

Might as well summarize it while I'm at it.

This question pops up from time to time, usually because people have a hard time accepting that a brave and good person would end up in what they percieve to be "Hell" instead of Valhalla which they think of as "Heaven". While the basic analogy here is tempting, it's a false friend. Equating Hel to Hell and Valhalla to Heaven promotes an understanding of the Viking concept of an afterlife that is at worst false and at best unsubstantiated.

The earliest sources we have that mention Hel place no real significance to it. It is refered to either as a place below the roots of Yggdrasil or as the end of life, basically synonymous to "the grave". The sources that paint the most vivid and horrifying picture of Hel are all very late sources, particularly from the Prose Edda. These were written hundreds of years after the end of the high Viking age and often heavily influenced by Christianity. The Icelandic sagas, which are also of a later making, don't paint quite the same picture.

In reality we have no sources from the 7th to 11th century that mentions Hel in any detail. The ones that do mention Hel do so without making much of a fuss about it. It is quite possible, perhaps even likely given the lack of references to it, that the people during the high viking age thought nothing special of Hel at all and that the vivid and frightening depictions of the 13th century are misrepresentations coloured by the Christian beliefs of the writers.

It is also worth noting with Asatru that it is non-canonical in the extreme. The regional and historical variations are numerous and complex. There is some indication that local worship may even have been heavily centered around single gods rather than the entire pantheon (or at least that one god "dominated" in certain areas). Depending on where and when you look you're going to get very different answers.

...

But what about Valhalla? Yes, what about Valhalla? Surely it was the desired end to life. Life eternal surrounded by food, drink and brothers in arms. And in some way it was, at least it became that. The further back you go, the less detailed the descriptions become until it is mostly spoken of as a reward by the gods for courage in battle. This may well have been how it began, a way to deal with your fear of imminent death, not at all dissimilar to the greek Elysian Fields.