Baldur’s Death and the Mistletoe

At a Glance

• Central figures: Baldr, the beloved son of Odin and Frigg; Loki, who engineered Baldr’s death; Höðr, Baldr’s blind brother, who threw the fatal dart; and Hermod, who rode to Helheim to bargain for Baldr’s return.
• Setting: Asgard and the nine worlds of Norse cosmology, including Helheim; drawn from Norse myth as preserved in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda.
• The turn: Loki learned from Frigg that mistletoe was the one thing that had not sworn an oath to spare Baldr, fashioned a dart from it, and guided Höðr’s hand to throw it.
• The outcome: Baldr died and descended to Helheim; the giantess Thokk - Loki in disguise - refused to weep, breaking the one condition under which Hel would release him.
• The legacy: Baldr remains in Helheim until after Ragnarok, when he is fated to return; Loki was bound underground with serpent venom dripping on his face, and his struggles there shake the earth.

Baldr had bad dreams. Frigg, his mother, took oaths from every thing in the nine worlds - fire and water, iron and stone, sickness, beasts, every tree and creeping plant - that none would harm her son. Everything swore. After this the gods made a game of it: they threw spears at Baldr and laughed when the spears turned aside, hurled stones and watched them break against him. The halls of Asgard rang with it.

Loki found out about the mistletoe.

Frigg’s Oath and the One Exception

Disguised as an old woman, Loki came to Frigg and asked, with feigned surprise, whether it was truly the case that nothing in the world could harm her son.

Frigg answered yes. All things had sworn. All things but one - a small plant, growing west of Valhalla, too young and weak to be worth asking.

That was all Loki needed. He left, and he did not laugh, because what he had was not a joke. He gathered mistletoe and cut it into a dart, sharp enough to do what needed doing. Then he went back to the hall where the gods were still at their game.

Höðr’s Throw

In the shadows stood Höðr, Baldr’s blind brother, unable to join in. Loki came to him quietly.

“Would you not honor your brother as the others do? Let me guide your hand.”

Höðr did not know what was in his hand. He did not know what Loki was. He threw.

The hall went silent.

The dart struck Baldr in the chest. He staggered. Then he fell, and the light went out of him, and Asgard had no idea yet what it had lost.

Ringhorn and the Pyre

They put Baldr on his funeral ship, Ringhorn - the largest ship in the world. The gods covered him with gifts and treasure. His wife Nanna looked at her husband’s body laid out on the deck and fell dead beside him, so they put her there too. Odin placed his ring Draupnir on Baldr’s arm. Thor hallowed the pyre with Mjolnir.

Ringhorn was pushed out to sea. The flames rose and the ship moved away from shore, and that was the end of Asgard’s golden age, though most of them did not say it in those words.

Odin knew. He had known since the seeress spoke in Helheim. His face was not grief exactly - it was the look of a man who has been told something he believed but hoped was wrong.

Hermod in Helheim

Odin’s son Hermod volunteered to ride to Helheim and plead for Baldr’s return. He took Sleipnir, Odin’s eight-legged horse, and rode nine nights through dark valleys so deep that he saw nothing. He crossed the river Gjoll and came at last to Hel’s hall.

Baldr was sitting in the seat of honor. Hermod could see him.

Hel listened to the plea without expression. She said: if every thing in the nine worlds - every creature, every stone, every tree - wept for Baldr, she would let him go. If even one thing refused, he stayed.

Hermod rode back. The gods sent messengers everywhere, and everything wept. Mountains wept. Iron wept. Even the trees shed something.

Thokk in the Cave

In a cave sat an old giantess named Thokk.

The messengers asked her to weep for Baldr.

“Let Hel keep what she has,” she said. “He was no use to me.”

She was Loki. There was no giantess. He had come ahead of the messengers and put on a shape and waited, and when they arrived he said no, and the bargain was broken, and Baldr stayed where he was.

The Binding of Loki

The gods hunted Loki through the mountains. He fled and hid and changed his shape. They found him anyway.

They bound him in a cave with the entrails of his own son Narfi. A serpent was fixed above him so that its venom dripped down onto his face. His wife Sigyn holds a bowl to catch the drops. When she has to empty it, the venom strikes him, and his convulsions shake the ground.

He will stay there until Ragnarok, when the bindings break and he leads what comes next. Baldr will return after Ragnarok too - one of the few who does. But that is after everything burns and the world is made again. For now, the gods grieve, and Loki writhes underground, and Sigyn stands over him with the bowl, and the earth shakes when she turns away.