Baldr
Baldr is the shining son of Odin and Frigg in Norse myth, killed by a dart of mistletoe that Loki put into the hand of his blind brother Hodr. His signs are the mistletoe, the gold ring Draupnir laid on his pyre and his ship Hringhorni.
Meaning
Baldr (Balder in Danish and in most English books, said BAWL-der; Baldur is the Icelandic form) is the best of the gods in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda: “he is so fair of feature, and so bright, that light shines from him”. He lives in Breidablik, where nothing unclean may be. Store norske leksikon gives his name the meaning “lord”; Lex calls its origin uncertain, perhaps the adjective baldr, “brave”, the same word as English bold, or else bál, “fire”, making him “the shining one”. The stories about him, Lex says, centre on his death, and the Baldr myth is probably the most often interpreted text in Norse mythology. It is told in the Poetic Edda and Snorri’s Prose Edda, written by Christian writers in the Middle Ages (National Museum of Denmark), and differently by the Danish historian Saxo. Heathens honour Baldr today: The Troth, the American Heathen organisation, lists him among the gods most commonly worshipped.
Origin and history
Baldr may appear on objects older than the Eddas by seven centuries. The National Museum of Denmark says certain Iron Age gold bracteates show “the noble god Baldr, who was killed by an arrow”. Lex describes one found at Fakse in 1844, made about AD 500 and 27 mm across: Baldr stands in the middle with the mistletoe in his breast, Odin behind him with his spear and Loki to the left. The picture is a deliberate Norse reworking of Roman medallions of the 300s, where the emperor stands in the middle, greeted by the winged goddess Victory. The Troth reports that the scholar Karl Hauck read these “three god bracteates” as Balder’s death, with the ring in Balder’s hand as Odin’s ring Draupnir. Place names are few and uncertain: The Troth gives Bollesager in Jutland, “Balder’s grain field”, and Ballsnes and Basberg in Norway. A flower keeps his name. Snorri says an herb is “so white that it is likened to Baldr’s brow”, and the mayweeds are still baldursbrá in Iceland and baldersbrå in Denmark (The Troth).
The mistletoe
In the Prose Edda the gods make a game of Baldr’s safety, shooting and hewing at him, until Loki learns from Frigg that she took no oath from the mistletoe. He gives a shoot of it to the blind god Hodr: “Hodr took Mistletoe and shot at Baldr, being guided by Loki: the shaft flew through Baldr, and he fell dead to the earth.” In the Eddic poem Voluspo the seeress sees it coming: “Famous and fair in the lofty fields, / Full grown in strength the mistletoe stood.” Store norske leksikon notes that the plant is no accident in the myth, since Voluspo has the mistletoe grow at the top of Yggdrasil. The Troth adds that the poem describes the mistletoe as a tree, and that the legendary sword Mistilteinn of two sagas has led to the suggestion that the weapon was first a sword.
The ship, the ring and the road to Hel
Snorri tells the funeral in detail. The gods burn Baldr on his ship Hringhorni, “greatest of all ships”. His wife Nanna dies of grief and is laid on the pyre with him, and Thor hallows the pyre with Mjölnir. Odin lays on it the gold ring Draupnir, from which “every ninth night there dropped from it eight gold rings of equal weight”. His son Hermodr rides Sleipnir to Hel, who will free Baldr “if all things in the world, quick and dead, weep for him”. Everything weeps but a giantess in a cave: “Thokk will weep waterless tears”, and men take her to be Loki. Baldr sends Draupnir back to Odin from the dead. Lex reads the ring as the eternal return of spring after winter and life after death, and its return as the hard fact that Baldr himself will not come back to life. Yet after Ragnarök, Store norske leksikon says, Baldr rises from the world of the dead and lives with Hodr in the new world.
Saxo’s Balder
The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus tells another story. In his Gesta Danorum, Store norske leksikon says, Balder is a warrior, he and Hodr are rivals for the king’s daughter Nanna, and Hodr kills him in single combat; Loki plays no part. The Troth takes the two versions as a sign that “stories varied over time and place”, and that “this must not have been a religion that valued orthodoxy”.
How the myth has been read
Store norske leksikon names the readings. The linguist Sophus Bugge thought the myth a reworking of the invulnerable Achilles under Christian influence; the philologist Magnus Olsen took the bright Baldr for Christ; James George Frazer made him a tree spirit whose life lay in the mistletoe; and the Danish historian of religion Jens Peter Schjødt has argued that Baldr stands for fate. The Troth answers Frazer that in the surviving myths Balder has little to do with vegetation or fertility, and that he does not return every year.
Balder honoured today
The Troth calls Balder “the model of the young warrior, struck down before his time”, and writes that “all Heathens today do well to remember Balder and hail him for the promise of what he shall be.” It suggests 2 May, kept in the Rhineland as Pfultag, “Phol’s Day”, as a fitting day to honour him, if the god Phol of the Merseburg Charm is Balder.
Read next
- Next in Norse gods and their symbolsTyrTyr was the Norse god of battle and, Lex suggests, of law and oaths, best known for laying his right hand in the wolf Fenrir’s jaws so that the gods could bind it. The lost hand is his mark in the myths; Lex names the sword as his attribute.
- The same shape in Greek gods and their symbolsArtemisArtemis’s symbols are the bow and arrows of the huntress and the deer she hunted, which also drew her chariot. The crescent moon came later, when Greek writers made Apollo’s sister a goddess of the moon.
See also
Odin, Frigg, Hel, Loki, Thor, Heimdall.
Sources
- Balder (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
- Balder (Lex), Finn Stefánsson and Claus Jensen, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- Draupner (Lex), Jens Peter Schjødt and Finn Stefánsson, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapters XXII and XLIX
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Voluspo, stanzas 32–33
- Balder (The Troth), The Troth
- Beliefs (The Troth), The Troth
- The Gods (The Troth), The Troth, table
- Balder (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from arrows or curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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