Baldr

Baldr is son of Odin and of Frigg, and the sources describe him as the most beautiful and the most beloved of the Æsir: so luminous that of him it was said that he radiated clarity, and so just that his sentences were unappealable. He lived in Breiðablik, the dwelling where nothing impure can enter. When he began to have dreams that announced his own death, the gods were alarmed, and Frigg traveled the entire world taking oath to all things that they would not harm her son: the fire and the water, the iron and the stones, the trees, the diseases, the animals and the serpents. All swore. From then on the Æsir amused themselves in the assemblies throwing weapons at him and hurling stones at him, because nothing harmed him.

Loki found out the only thing that Frigg had overlooked: a mistletoe sprout to the west of Valhalla, so tender that she did not ask it for an oath. He made a dart with it and approached Höðr, brother of Baldr, who was apart from the game because he was blind. He offered to guide his hand so that he too would honor his brother. The mistletoe pierced Baldr, who fell dead without saying a word. His body was placed on his ship Hringhorni, and his wife Nanna died of grief and burned with him. Hermóðr rode nine nights on Sleipnir to the kingdom of Hel, who accepted to return him with a condition: that everything that exists would cry for him. Everything cried, except a giantess named Þökk, who refused. It was Loki.

The death of Baldr is the turning point of Norse mythology: until it the world functions, and from it everything precipitates. The gods punish Loki by chaining him under a serpent that distills venom in his face, and that punishment is precisely what guarantees his hatred and his role in the end of the world. The episode contains moreover a lesson that the myths themselves underline: one can armor someone against all imaginable dangers and what was overlooked for insignificant will suffice. The Völuspá, however, does not end in disaster. After Ragnarök the earth emerges again from the sea, and Baldr returns from among the dead together with Höðr, his involuntary killer, to inhabit the new world together.