Gods and Myths of Northern Europe

Bald?g is found in some of the early genealogies of the kings of Anglo-Saxon England. In this form it could mean literally ‘bright day’, and a theory was constructed to establish Balder as a deity of the sky on the grounds of this, and in accordance with Snorri’s description of Balder as a god of radiance and beauty. All this however is mere surmise. There is no real evidence for myths about Balder as a god surviving in heathen England or among the continental Germans.

The early skaldic poets use Balder’s name frequently as a kenning for warrior. In Saxo, it is as a warrior that he appears, although he is said to have ‘sprung secretly from celestial seed’. Saxo’s account, as a piece of literature, is far inferior to that of Snorri; it has received far less attention, and yet can scarcely be set aside, as has been done in a recent account of the religion of the Vikings,¹ as ‘of no great interest’. In Snorri’s tale (pp. 35–7), Balder was the fair young son of Odin, beloved of all in Asgard. Invulnerable to weapons, because all things had given a promise to Frigg not to hurt him, he was finally slain by a shaft of mistletoe, a tiny plant which had gone unnoticed by the goddess. It was Loki who guided the hand of the blind god Hoder and prompted the shot, and Loki again who kept Balder in Hel’s kingdom, since he, disguised as an old woman, refused to weep for the dead god, and accordingly Balder could not be freed from Hel.

In Saxo’s tale,¹ the supernatural world is present, but the form is different. Balder the warrior was aided by a group of supernatural women, who appear to have been Valkyries, since they claimed to have the power to grant victory in battle. These women kept for Balder a special food which rendered him invincible, over which snakes had dropped poison. Balder had a human rival in the hero Hoder, since both wished to wed the maiden Nanna, and Hoder too met the women, who were willing to give him counsel, and even a special belt which could give him victory. Hoder learned that to slay Balder he would have to gain possession of a special weapon, a sword which was guarded by Mimingus, a satyr of the woods. To come by this, he had to go a long and perilous journey through cold and darkness to a mysterious land which seems to be the underworld. He took Mimingus by surprise, overcame him, and took away the sword.

Several battles were fought between Hoder and Balder, and in this part of the story Saxo has almost certainly repeated the same incident more than once. In one battle Balder, supported as he was by all the gods, was defeated, and his ships put to flight. On another occasion he won the victory, and uncovered a spring of clear water to quench the thirst of his soldiers. Saxo claimed that this spring still existed and was known as Baldersbrynd, ‘Balder’s spring’. In spite of this victory, Hoder married Nanna, and Balder began to pine away with grief and was carried round in a wagon. Finally Hoder met Balder after he had obtained the magic sword, and wounded him. Next day the final battle was fought, and the wounded Balder carried in a litter on to the field. Proserpine appeared in a dream and foretold his death, and after three days Balder indeed died from the wound which Hoder had given him. He was given a royal funeral and buried in a great barrow. A certain Harald broke into his burial mound in the twelfth century, but he and his party were overtaken and nearly drowned by a stream which flooded out of the hill as they were digging, and after that the mound was left undisturbed. Odin was so determined to avenge the death of Balder his son that he wooed a princess called Rind, and, after some dubious adventures, had a son by her, called Boe; when Boe grew up, he killed Hoder in battle.

On the surface there are wide divergences between these two accounts of Balder’s death. Apparently we have on the one hand the traditions preserved in Iceland and recorded by Snorri, opposed to those of Denmark, collected by Saxo; possibly one (or both) of the compilers has misunderstood or twisted the available sources. Much ingenuity has been expended in attempts to decide what these sources were, and whether they were in the form of poetry or prose saga. A saga of Hoder seems to have been known to Saxo, who tells the story of Balder throughout from Hoder’s viewpoint. His account of the journey to the Other World, however, strongly suggests that it came from a poem, not known or ignored by Snorri, of the same type as Svipdagsmal and Skirnismal, two poems in the Edda which deal with supernatural journeys and magic weapons. Snorri on the other hand seems to have known poems not used by Saxo, including one describing the ride of Hermod across the bridge of the dead and down the road to Hel’s abode. Other Norse poems which have survived give us comparatively little help. Only Lokasenna supports Snorri in inferring that Loki was responsible for Balder’s death, since there Loki declares to Frigg that it is because of him that she will never again see Balder ride back to the hall. Lokasenna however is not thought to be an early poem. In Voluspa there is an allusion to Balder as the ‘bleeding offering’, struck down by the weapon of Hoder. In Baldrs Draumar Odin rides down to the land of the dead to consult a dead seeress as to why Balder has had ominous dreams, causing distress to all the gods. Her reply foretells Balder’s entry into the realm of the dead:

Here stands brewed the mead for Balder,

shining cups, with shields for cover,

but the Sons of the Gods must suffer anguish….

She then goes on to predict the death of Balder by the hands of Hoder, and how Hoder in turn shall be slain by a son of Odin yet unborn, whose mother will be Rind. Again in Eiriksmal, a poem to commemorate the death of a tenth-century Norse king, and therefore one of our earliest sources, the noise of the dead kings coming to feast in Valhalla is said to sound ‘as if Balder were returning to the hall’.

Apart from Lokasenna, there is nothing in the poems to conflict with Saxo’s picture of Balder slain by Hoder, and of his death after a great battle. We may remember in this connexion that in Snorri’s story the guardian of the bridge to the land of the dead told Hermod that the day before, when Balder had come that way, the bridge had resounded to the marching feet of many slain men, five troops of warriors passing down to Hel. This implies that Balder had not travelled alone, but had come with a host of men who had died on the battlefield.

When we compare the two stories, it is interesting to find that there is after all agreement between them and with the poems on a number of points, even though the presentation is so different that the initial impression is one of contradiction and confusion. It is worth noticing how far this agreement goes: Balder has a prophetic dream or dreams foretelling his death; Balder is warmly supported by Odin and the gods; supernatural powers both help and oppose him; he is slain by Hoder; the slaying is done by a special weapon, because in general Balder is invulnerable to weapons; Odin receives a terrible set-back from Balder’s death; another of Odin’s sons, born after Balder dies, is destined to avenge him; a journey to the land of the dead forms part of the tale. This last point is one of the most interesting features of the Balder story, since it implies that the struggle for Balder’s survival took place partly on earth and partly in the Other World. There is not complete agreement as to when and why this journey was made. In the Edda poem, Odin rode down to the world of the dead to find out what threatened Balder; in Snorri, it was Hermod who rode down to Hel to fetch Balder back; in Saxo, it was Hoder who went down to the land of darkness and cold to obtain a special sword to kill Balder. Another interesting point is that in Saxo’s tale three days elapsed between Balder’s wounding and his death; it is possible that this was the period when the struggle for his spirit took place and the powers fought for Balder’s life. In all sources also there is mention of Balder’s magnificent funeral. Snorri describes how he was burned on his ship (and part of his account at least comes from an early poem). Saxo mentions the funeral and his burial in a mound; he also has a reference to ship-funeral, and to the corpses of those dying in battle being burned on ships, at another point in the story. Finally it is interesting to note that Snorri alludes to a folk-belief that all things weep for Balder when the dampness of a thaw sets in after frost, while Saxo, on the other hand, claims to know local traditions concerning Balder’s battle with Hoder and his place of burial.

The special weapon with which Balder was killed was said by Snorri to have been mistletoe, and this has received great prominence in view of the importance of the ‘golden bough’ and the sacredness of mistletoe among the Druids, brought out by Frazer in his monumental work on early religion. Saxo however thought of this fatal weapon as a sword, and a famous sword Mistletoe was known in Norse heroic tradition, and is mentioned several times in the legendary sagas. It seems likely in any case that the motif in the Balder story was one which is found in other traditions of Odin, that of a seemingly harmless rod or stick becoming a real and deadly weapon through the magic of the god (see page 52). The plant mistletoe moreover is not native to Iceland, and some have thought that it is unlikely to have been an original feature of the myth.

On the whole it seems that both Saxo and Snorri, when they came to tell the tale of Balder’s death, were dealing with obscure and puzzling sources, of the kind which cause us considerable bewilderment when we meet them in the Edda collection, poems full of esoteric allusions to magic and the Other World. Both writers have no doubt tried to clarify and to some extent rationalize their material, as we know them to have done elsewhere. Snorri was a great storyteller and Saxo was not, and consequently Snorri has come out by far