The Death of Baldur

Baldur, son of Odin and Frigg, was the most radiant and beloved of all the Aesir. His beauty was legendary, his judgment fair, and his hall Breidablik was the most splendid in all of Asgard, a place where nothing impure could exist. Yet darkness found even this shining god.

Baldur began to suffer terrible dreams, visions of his own death that came to him night after night. The dreams troubled all the gods, for the Aesir understood that Baldur's fate was intertwined with the fate of the world itself. Odin rode to Hel on his eight-legged horse Sleipnir to consult a dead seeress, and she confirmed the worst: Baldur was marked for death.

Frigg, Baldur's mother, refused to accept this fate. She traveled across all the Nine Worlds, extracting solemn oaths from every substance and creature in existence: fire and water, iron and all metals, stones, earth, trees, diseases, beasts, birds, serpents, and poisons all swore they would never harm Baldur. When she returned to Asgard, the gods rejoiced and made a game of it, hurling weapons and objects at Baldur and laughing as everything bounced harmlessly off him.

But there was one thing Frigg had overlooked. The mistletoe, she thought, was too young and insignificant to pose any threat. She never asked it to swear.

Loki, the trickster, watched the gods' sport with growing malice. Disguising himself as an old woman, he visited Frigg and through clever questioning discovered the one gap in Baldur's protection. Loki went to where the mistletoe grew west of Valhalla, plucked it, and fashioned it into a sharp dart.

All things in the world wept for Baldur. People and animals, earth and stones, trees and metals, all wept as you have seen them weep when they come out of frost into warmth.

Returning to where the gods played their game, Loki found the blind god Hodr standing apart, unable to participate. With poisoned kindness, Loki offered to guide Hodr's hand, placing the mistletoe dart in his grip and directing his throw. The dart struck Baldur and pierced him through. The god of light fell dead, and a silence deeper than any the world had ever known descended upon Asgard.

The gods' grief was beyond all measure. Baldur's body was placed upon his great ship Hringhorni and given a magnificent funeral, with Nanna, his wife, dying of grief beside him. But Frigg would not surrender. She asked who among the gods would ride to Hel to offer a ransom for Baldur's return.

Hermod the Bold volunteered, borrowing Sleipnir for the nine-night ride down to the realm of the dead. Hel, mistress of the underworld, set a condition: if every thing in the world, living and dead, would weep for Baldur, she would release him.

Messengers went to every corner of existence, and indeed all things wept. All except one: a giantess named Thokk, sitting alone in a cave, who refused with the words, "Let Hel hold what she has." The gods knew that Thokk was Loki in disguise, and Baldur remained in the land of the dead, awaiting the renewal that would come after Ragnarok.