BALDER (lord)

ORIGIN Icelandic (Nordic). The dying god.

KNOWN PERIOD OF WORSHIP AD 700 (possibly earlier) through to Christianization (circa AD 1100).

SYNONYMS Baldr; Baldaeg (Anglo-Saxon).

CENTER(S) OF CULT unknown.

ART REFERENCES stone carvings.

LITERARY SOURCES Icelandic codices; Prose Edda (Snorri); Historia Danica (Saxo), runic inscriptions.

Balder is the spotless “good” god, the “shining one,” OTHIN’s favored second son. He lives in a hall named Breidablik. He is the father of the god FORSETI. According to Snorri’s account, Balder was made invulnerable to injury or death by his mother FRIGG who had extracted a promise from “all things” not to harm him. She had omitted the mistletoe as being too small and insignificant and so, using the blind god HODER as his instrument, LOKI caused Balder’s death by guiding Hoder’s hand and turning a sprig of mistletoe into a lethal dart.

Saxo, in contrast, defines Balder as a warrior slain by a magic sword in a battle of jealous rivalry between him and Hoder for the hand of the goddess NANNA. There are separate suggestions that Balder traveled the road to the underworld ruled by HEL in company with many other slain warriors, implying that he met his death in a wider combat.

There is no evidence of a Germanic precedent for Balder and he is probably of purely Norse extraction. Attempts have been made to cast him as a copy of Christ but these seem wholly unfounded. It is also impossible to relate Balder to the dying and rising gods found in other religions (DUMUZI, TELEPINU, OSIRIS, etc.), since there is no suggestion of his return from Hel’s kingdom of the dead, though there is an implication that he will be released by Hel at Ragnarok.