It is the moment when laughter vanishes from Asgard. The death of the shining Balder is the most moving legend of the North – and the turning point from which the doom of the gods becomes unstoppable. Here we tell it as one connected story.
Balder, son of Odin and Frigg, is tormented by dark dreams of his own death. The gods take counsel in worry. Frigg sets out and extracts an oath from all things in the world not to harm Balder – fire and water, iron and ore, stones, sicknesses, animals and serpents. Only the young mistletoe does she pass over: too young, too insignificant to swear an oath.
Now Balder is seemingly invulnerable, and the gods make a merry game of it: they throw everything at him, and it all bounces off. An image of radiant security – until Loki discovers the one gap.
Loki fashions a missile from the mistletoe and guides the hand of the blind god Höðr, Balder’s brother. Unsuspecting, Höðr throws – and the mistletoe pierces Balder. The shining god falls dead to the ground. It is, Snorri says, the greatest misfortune that ever came upon gods and men. Nanna, Balder’s wife, collapses with grief and dies.
„Then Balder fell, the bleeding god –
and a silence settled over the world.“
— after the Poetic Edda / Gylfaginning (sense after Karl Simrock, 1851, public domain)
The gods lay Balder and Nanna on his ship Hringhorni, the greatest of all ships. But no one can push it into the water – only the giantess Hyrrokkin, riding a wolf, shoves it with a single grip so that sparks fly. Odin lays the ring Draupnir on the pyre beside his dead son; Thor hallows the flames with Mjöllnir. The whole world of the gods mourns at the shore.
Frigg does not give up. The messenger Hermod rides down to Hel for nine nights on Odin’s steed Sleipnir. The goddess of the dead sets one condition: if everything in the world weeps for Balder, he may return. And almost everything weeps – people, animals, stones, even the trees drip. Only a giantess named Þökk (Loki in disguise) stays hard: „Þökk will weep with dry tears – let Hel keep what she has.“ So Balder remains in the realm of the dead.
Balder – the Shining God · Loki’s Punishment · Hel · Frigg · What comes after Ragnarök?.
Poetic Edda: Völuspá, Baldrs draumar. Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda (Gylfaginning: Balder’s death, the burial, Hermod’s ride), c. 1220. Saxo Grammaticus, Gesta Danorum (heroic version). English public domain: Henry Adams Bellows (1923). Research: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Murder and Vengeance among the Gods (1997).