Balder

Balder's death is portrayed in this illustration from an 18th century Icelandic manuscript.

In Norse mythology, Balder (Old Norse: Baldr; Modern Icelandic and Faroese: Baldur; Modern Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, and anglicized Old Norse: Balder) is the god of innocence, beauty, joy, purity, and peace, and is Odin's second son. His wife is called Nanna and his son Forseti. Balder had a ship, the largest ever built, named Hringhorni ("The Ring Horn"), and a hall, called Breidablik ("Broad Gleam"), where nothing impure was allowed entrance.

Balder represents the spirit of hope and renewal in the world, and his death (at the hands of Loki) is one of the major precursors to the apocalypse (Ragnarök).

Balder in a Norse Context

As a Norse deity, Balder belonged to a complex religious, mythological and cosmological belief system shared by the Scandinavian and Germanic peoples. This mythological tradition, of which the Scandinavian (and particularly Icelandic) sub-groups are best preserved, developed in the period from the first manifestations of religious and material culture in approximately 1000 B.C.E. until the Christianization of the area, a process that occurred primarily from 900-1200 C.E.^[1] The tales recorded within this mythological corpus tend to exemplify a unified cultural focus on physical prowess and military might.

Within this framework, Norse cosmology postulates three separate "clans" of deities: the Aesir, the Vanir, and the Jotun. The distinction between Aesir and Vanir is relative, for the two are said to have made peace, exchanged hostages, intermarried and reigned together after a prolonged war, which the Aesir had finally won. In fact, the most major divergence between the two groups is in their respective areas of influence, with the Aesir representing war and conquest, and the Vanir representing exploration, fertility and wealth.^[2] The Jotun, on the other hand, are seen as a generally malefic (though wise) race of giants who represented the primary adversaries of the Aesir and Vanir.

Balder, the second son of Odin and a member of the Aesir, is the god of spring, innocence and joy.

Characteristics

As mentioned above, Balder was best known as the Norse god of spring and renewal - an Adonis-like youth whose goodness, purity and overall pleasant disposition made him near-impossible to dislike. Snorri Sturluson's description in the Prose Edda gives a clear indication of this characterization:

Annarr sonr Óðins er Baldr, ok er frá honum gott at segja. Hann er svá fagr álitum ok bjartr svá at lýsir af honum, ok eitt gras er svá hvítt at jafnat er til Baldrs brár. Þat er allra grasa hvítast, ok þar eptir máttu marka fegrð hans bæði á hár ok á líki. Hann er vitrastr ása ok fegrst talaðr ok líknsamastr. En sú náttúra fylgir honum at engi má haldask dómr hans. Hann býr þar sem heita Breiðablik, þat er á himni. Í þeim stað má ekki vera óhreint[.] - Text of T

The second son of Odin is Baldr, and good things are to be said of him. He is best, and all praise him; he is so fair of feature, and so bright, that light shines from him. A certain herb is so white that it is likened to Baldr's brow; of all grasses it is whitest, and by it thou mayest judge his fairness, both in hair and in body. He is the wisest of the Æsir, and the fairest-spoken and most gracious; and that quality attends him, that none may gainsay his judgments. He dwells in the place called Breidablik, which is in heaven; in that place may nothing unclean be[.] ^[3]

However, much like Persephone in the Greek tradition, Balder's primary import in the Norse tradition results from the mythic circumstances surrounding his untimely death (and his prophesied return after the fires of Ragnarök have burned out).

Mythic Representations

The Death and Return of Balder

Due to perceived similarities, Balder is sometimes associated with Christ in art, as is clearly emphasized in this illustration of Baldrs draumar (1893).

As mentioned above, Balder is most renowned for the mythic accounts of his murder, which was seen in the Nordic cosmology as a precursor to the eschaton (Ragnarök).

The accounts often begin by describing a plague upon the sleep of the Aesir, with Frigg and Balder tormented by dreams that the young god was going to die.^[4] Since dreams were often understood to be prophetic, this motivated the boy's father (Odin) to set out to the depths of the underworld, to consult with the sprit of a deceased sibyl. Concerned by the prophetess's dire warnings, Balder's mother Frigg made every object on earth vow never to hurt Balder. All but one, an insignificant weed called the mistletoe, made this vow, as Frigg had thought it too unimportant and nonthreatening to bother with. When Loki, the mischief-maker, heard of this, he made a magical spear from this plant (in some later versions, an arrow). He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Balder, which would bounce off without harming him (in keeping with their vows of non-violence). Loki gave the spear to Balder's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it. For this act, Odin and Rind had a child named Váli, who was born solely to punish Höðr, who was eventually hunted down and slain for his part in the tragedy.^[5]

Balder was ceremonially burnt upon his ship, Hringhorni, the largest of all ships. In the confusion surrounding the funeral, the dwarf Litr was kicked into the funeral fire by Thor and burnt alive. Nanna, Balder's wife, also threw herself on the funeral fire to await the end of Ragnarok when she would be reunited with her husband (though in alternate traditions, she simply died of grief). Balder's horse with all its trappings was also burned on the pyre. The ship was set to sea by Hyrrokin, a giantess, who came riding on a wolf and gave the ship such a push that fire flashed from the rollers and all the earth shook.

Upon Frigg's entreaties, delivered through the messenger Hermod, Hel promised to release Balder from the underworld if all objects alive and dead would weep for him. And all did, except a giantess, Thokk, who refused to mourn the slain god. And thus Balder had to remain in the underworld, not to emerge until after Ragnarok, when he and his brother Höðr would be reconciled and rule the new earth together with Thor's sons.^[6]

Loki tricks Höðr into shooting Balder.

Finally, when the gods discovered that the giantess had been Loki in disguise, they hunted him down, bound him to three rocks, and insured his continued torment until his fated release at Ragnarök. For more information on Loki's punishment, see the article on Loki.

Balder's Return

The eschatological themes introduced above were also especially prominent in the Völuspá, an unattributed poetic work from no later than the thirteenth century CE, which goes into significant detail concerning the new heaven and a new earth that will emerge following the epic, world-negating battle between the Aesir and Jotun. In this time, the seeress (who is the narrator of the text) describes how this promised land, where the fields unsown shall yield their increase and all sorrows shall be healed, will be ruled by the newly reborn Balder. In this realm, he will return to dwell in mansions of bliss, in a hall brighter than the sun, shingled with gold, where the righteous shall live in joy for ever more.

61. In wondrous beauty | once again

Shall the golden tables | stand mid the grass,

Which the gods had owned | in the days of old,

62. Then fields unsowed | bear ripened fruit,

All ills grow better, | and Baldr comes back;

Baldr and Hoth dwell | in Hropt's battle-hall,

And the mighty gods: | would you know yet more?

...

64. More fair than the sun, | a hall I see,

Roofed with gold, | on Gimle it stands;

There shall the righteous | rulers dwell,

And happiness ever | there shall they have.

65. There comes on high, | all power to hold,

A mighty lord, | all lands he rules.^[7]

Gesta Danorum

A variant (which casts the characters into semi-historical roles) can be found in the late 12th century version of the tale told by the old Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus. According to him, Balder and Høther were rival suitors for the hand of Nanna, daughter of Gewar, King of Norway. Now, Balderus was a demigod and common steel could not wound his sacred body. The two rivals encountered each other in a terrific battle, which eventually led to Balder being bested and forced into exile.

However, Balder, half-frenzied by his dreams of Nanna, in turn drove him into exile (winning the lady); finally Hother, befriended hy luck and the Wood Maidens, to whom he owed his early successes and his magic coat, belt, and girdle (there is obvious confusion here in the text), at last met Balder and stabbed him in the side. Of this wound Balder died in three days, as was foretold by the awful dream in which Proserpina (Hela) appeared to him. Balder's grand burial, his barrow, and the magic flood which burst from it when one Harald tried to break into it, and terrified the robbers, are described.^[8]

In this account, the divine character of the tale (and much of its mythic resonance) is stripped away in favor of an attempt at historical accuracy (or an attempt to discredit "pagan" practices).

Inter-Cultural Parallels

The legendary death of Balder resembles the legendary death of the Persian hero Esfandyar in the epic Shahnameh. In Finnish mythology, Lemminkäinen shares just the same kind of fate as Balder: to be killed by a blind one at the feast of gods. Balder has also been likened to Jesus, as C. S. Lewis did when he said he "loved Balder before Christ." Balder, a god of light, shares some of Jesus' traits as a youthful "dying and rising" god, who returns after Ragnarok, the end of the world (comparable to the Christian Apocalypse) to usher in a new era of peace.

In a literary context, the figure of Balder also appears in the epic poem Beowulf, where he is known as the Geatish prince, Herebeald. As above (most particularly in the version of the tale told by Saxo Grammaticus), the prince is also killed by his brother Hæþcyn (Hod) and the king Hreðel replaces Odin as the grieving father.

Toponyms (and Other Linguistic Traces) of Balder

There are few place names in Scandinavia that contains the name Balder. The most certain and notable one is the (former) parishname Baldishol in Hedmark county, Norway: "a Balldrshole" 1356 (where the last element is hóll m "mound; small hill"). Others may be (in Norse forms) Baldrsberg in Vestfold county, Baldrsheimr in Hordaland county Baldrsnes in Sør-Trøndelag county and the fjord and municipality Balsfjord in Troms county.

In Scandinavian, the Scentless Mayweed (Matricaria perforata) is named Balder's brows because of its whiteness.

Notes

↑ Lindow, 6-8. Though some scholars have argued against the homogenizing effect of grouping these various traditions together under the rubric of “Norse Mythology,” the profoundly exploratory/nomadic nature of Viking society tends to overrule such objections. As Thomas DuBois cogently argues, “[w]hatever else we may say about the various peoples of the North during the Viking Age, then, we cannot claim that they were isolated from or ignorant of their neighbors…. As religion expresses the concerns and experiences of its human adherents, so it changes continually in response to cultural, economic, and environmental factors. Ideas and ideals passed between communities with frequency and regularity, leading to and interdependent and intercultural region with broad commonalities of religion and worldview.” (27-28).
↑ More specifically, Georges Dumézil, one of the foremost authorities on the Norse tradition and a noted comparitivist, argues quite persuasively that the Aesir / Vanir distinction is a component of a larger triadic division (between ruler gods, warrior gods, and gods of agriculture and commerce) that is echoed among the Indo-European cosmologies (from Vedic India, through Rome and into the Germanic North). Further, he notes that this distinction conforms to patterns of social organization found in all of these societies. See Georges Dumézil's Gods of the Ancient Northmen (especially pgs. xi-xiii, 3-25) for more details.
↑ Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning (XXII), (Brodeur, 36).
↑ This aspect of the tale is well told in the Eddic poem Baldrs Draumar ("The Dreams of Balder"), described and summarized in Turville-Petrie, 109-111.
↑ See Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaggining (XLIX-L), (Brodeur, 70-77) for a single, primary-source account of these events. See also Munch, 80-94, for an accessible retelling; and Turville-Petre, 106-125, and Lindow, 65-69, for a more involved, scholarly perspective (addressing various versions of the tale).
↑ Ibid.
↑ Völuspá (61,62, 64, 65). Translated by Henry Adams Bellows (25-26) and accessed online at sacred-texts.com. See also Lindow, 317-319 for a concise summary of this text.
↑ Saxo Grammaticus, The Danish History (Introduction II: GODS AND GODDESSES), translated by Oliver Elton (Norroena Society, New York, 1905). Accessed online at The Online Medieval & Classical Library.

Bibliography

Björnsson, Eysteinn (ed.). Snorra-Edda: Formáli & Gylfaginning : Textar fjögurra meginhandrita. 2005. http://www.hi.is/~eybjorn/gg/
DuBois, Thomas A. Nordic Religions in the Viking Age. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999. ISBN 0-8122-1714-4.
Dumézil, Georges. Gods of the Ancient Northmen. Edited by Einar Haugen; Introduction by C. Scott Littleton and Udo Strutynski. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973. ISBN 0-520-02044-8.
Grammaticus, Saxo. The Danish History (Volumes I-IX). Translated by Oliver Elton (Norroena Society, New York, 1905). Accessed online at The Online Medieval & Classical Library.
Lindow, John. Handbook of Norse mythology. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2001. ISBN 1-57607-217-7.
Munch, P. A. Norse Mythology: Legends of Gods and Heroes. In the revision of Magnus Olsen; translated from the Norwegian by Sigurd Bernhard Hustvedt. New York: The American-Scandinavian foundation; London: H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1926.
Orchard, Andy. Cassell's Dictionary of Norse Myth and Legend. London: Cassell; New York: Distributed in the United States by Sterling Pub. Co., 2002. ISBN 0-304-36385-5.
Sturlson, Snorri. The Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson: Tales from Norse Mythology. Introduced by Sigurdur Nordal; Selected and translated by Jean I. Young. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1954. ISBN 0-520-01231-3.
Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda. Translated from the Icelandic and with an introduction by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur. New York: American-Scandinavian foundation, 1916. Available online at http://www.northvegr.org/lore/prose/index.php.
Turville-Petre, Gabriel. Myth and Religion of the North: The Religion of Ancient Scandinavia. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964.
"Völuspá" in The Poetic Edda. Translated and with notes by Henry Adams Bellows. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1936. Accessed online at sacred-texts.com.

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[1] Lindow, 6-8. Though some scholars have argued against the homogenizing effect of grouping these various traditions together under the rubric of “Norse Mythology,” the profoundly exploratory/nomadic nature of Viking society tends to overrule such objections. As Thomas DuBois cogently argues, “[w]hatever else we may say about the various peoples of the North during the Viking Age, then, we cannot claim that they were isolated from or ignorant of their neighbors…. As religion expresses the concerns and experiences of its human adherents, so it changes continually in response to cultural, economic, and environmental factors. Ideas and ideals passed between communities with frequency and regularity, leading to and interdependent and intercultural region with broad commonalities of religion and worldview.” (27-28).

[2] More specifically, Georges Dumézil, one of the foremost authorities on the Norse tradition and a noted comparitivist, argues quite persuasively that the Aesir / Vanir distinction is a component of a larger triadic division (between ruler gods, warrior gods, and gods of agriculture and commerce) that is echoed among the Indo-European cosmologies (from Vedic India, through Rome and into the Germanic North). Further, he notes that this distinction conforms to patterns of social organization found in all of these societies. See Georges Dumézil's Gods of the Ancient Northmen (especially pgs. xi-xiii, 3-25) for more details.

[3] Snorri Sturluson, Gylfaginning (XXII), (Brodeur, 36).

[4] This aspect of the tale is well told in the Eddic poem Baldrs Draumar ("The Dreams of Balder"), described and summarized in Turville-Petrie, 109-111.

[5] See Snorri Sturluson's Gylfaggining (XLIX-L), (Brodeur, 70-77) for a single, primary-source account of these events. See also Munch, 80-94, for an accessible retelling; and Turville-Petre, 106-125, and Lindow, 65-69, for a more involved, scholarly perspective (addressing various versions of the tale).

[6] Ibid.

[7] Völuspá (61,62, 64, 65). Translated by Henry Adams Bellows (25-26) and accessed online at sacred-texts.com. See also Lindow, 317-319 for a concise summary of this text.

[8] Saxo Grammaticus, The Danish History (Introduction II: GODS AND GODDESSES), translated by Oliver Elton (Norroena Society, New York, 1905). Accessed online at The Online Medieval & Classical Library.

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