Baldr’s Dreams and Frigg’s Precautions

At a Glance

• Central figures: Baldr, the beloved son of Odin and Frigg; Frigg, queen of Asgard; Loki, who engineered Baldr’s death; and Hodr, Baldr’s blind brother, who threw the killing shot.
• Setting: Asgard and the Nine Realms, including Helheim, the hall of the dead ruled by the goddess Hel; drawn from Norse mythological tradition.
• The turn: Frigg, having sworn oaths from all things in existence, neglected the mistletoe - Loki discovered this and guided Hodr’s hand.
• The outcome: Baldr was killed and descended to Helheim; when all the world wept for him, Loki disguised himself as the giantess Thokk and refused, leaving Baldr among the dead.
• The legacy: Baldr’s death marked the first sign of Ragnarok - the beginning of the end for the gods of Asgard.

Baldr had bad dreams. Night after night they came: himself lying still, his brightness gone, the other gods gathered over him and weeping. He woke shaken. The gods knew what Norse dreams meant - they were not phantoms but windows, and what he saw there was fate wearing a mask. They gathered and spoke of it, and Frigg, his mother, made her decision.

She would go to every thing in existence. She would extract an oath.

Frigg’s Oath from Every Thing

She traveled across the Nine Realms and spoke to all of them. Fire. Water. Iron. Stone. Every sickness by name. Every tree with roots in the earth. Every beast, every bird, every poison. Each one swore it. None would harm Baldr. By the time she returned to Asgard she had covered everything she could think of - everything that had weight or edge or venom or force.

She believed it was enough.

The gods, relieved, turned their fear into sport.

The Game in Asgard’s Halls

They discovered a pleasure in it. They would hurl weapons at Baldr and watch them fall away - spears that shattered, swords that dulled, rocks that broke against his chest without leaving a mark. He stood in the middle of the hall and the gods threw things at him and laughed. It was proof that the world had kept its word.

All the gods laughed. All but one.

Loki watched.

What Loki Found Out

He could not leave it alone. There was a flaw somewhere - he felt it the way a man feels a draft through a sealed room - and he went looking.

He dressed himself as an old woman and went to Frigg’s hall.

“Is it true,” he asked her, “that all things have sworn to spare Baldr?”

Frigg did not suspect him. She answered plainly.

“Yes. All things. Save one - the mistletoe. It was too young and too small, and I thought it no danger. I did not bother asking it.”

Loki left.

He went and found the mistletoe. He shaped it into something that could be thrown - small, hardened at the tip - and tucked it beneath his cloak. Then he returned to Asgard, where the game was still going, where the gods were still hurling things at Baldr and laughing.

The Killing of Baldr

Hodr stood apart. He was Baldr’s brother, and he was blind, and he could not throw anything in the right direction. Loki found him there.

“I’ll guide your hand,” Loki said. “Here - take this. You should be allowed to honor him too.”

He pressed the mistletoe into Hodr’s hand and stood behind him and pointed him toward Baldr.

Hodr threw it.

The gods were still laughing when Baldr fell.

The hall went quiet. Every god understood what had happened before anyone said a word. Baldr lay on the ground - the brightest of them, the one nothing could touch - with the mistletoe through his heart. Dead. The first time anything had ever struck him, and it had killed him.

The grief that came down on Asgard then was the kind that makes no sound at first.

Hermod’s Ride to Helheim

Frigg stood over her son and wept, and then she turned to Hermod, the swiftest of Odin’s sons.

“Ride to Helheim,” she said. “Beg Hel to return him.”

Hermod took Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse, and rode. Down through the roots of Yggdrasil, down past Niflheim, across the river Gjoll and over the bridge into the realm of the dead. He rode nine nights in darkness. When he arrived he found Baldr seated at Hel’s table, pale as winter, still noble, still bright.

He asked Hel for him.

Hel listened. Her terms were simple.

“If all things in existence weep for him, he may go. Every thing - living and dead. If one refuses, he stays.”

Hermod rode back with the news.

Thokk’s Refusal

Messengers went out across the Nine Realms. Weep for Baldr.

Everything wept. The gods wept, and the elves and dwarves wept, and the stones wept, and the trees wept, and the water wept, and the animals in the fields and the fish under ice wept for him. All things kept the word that Hel had set.

Almost all.

In a cave, set back from any road, sat an old giantess called Thokk. The messengers came to her and put the request to her plainly. Weep for Baldr, and he returns to the living.

She looked at them.

“Let Hel keep what she has,” she said. “He was nothing to me.”

Thokk was Loki. No one could prove it then, but the gods knew. The voice was wrong; the coldness was too precise. Loki had blocked the only road back and left Baldr among the dead.

Baldr remained in Helheim. The messengers returned to Asgard with empty hands.

Frigg had spoken to fire and water and iron and sickness and stone. She had covered everything she could reach, every force she knew to name. She had left out one small plant growing low to the ground, too weak-looking to bother with. And Loki - who always found the one thing you left out - had found it.

Baldr stayed below, and the gods of Asgard looked at one another across the great hall where the game had been played, and they all knew the same thing: the golden age had cracked, and the crack would not close.