Baldr

Light shone from him.

Snorri writes in Gylfaginning (ch. 22): "He is the best, and all praise him. He is so fair of feature, and so bright, that light shines from him." His hair is the whitest of all things. He is the wisest, most eloquent, most gracious of the Æsir.

But there is a condition the sources note: none of his judgments can be fulfilled. Beauty without authority. Grace without permanence. He is the god who has everything and can hold none of it.

His mother Frigg extracted oaths from every substance in the world — fire, water, iron, stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts, birds, poison, serpents — that none would harm Baldur. She missed mistletoe. It seemed too young. Too small. Too insignificant.

The smallest thing brought him down.

Loki found the mistletoe. He guided blind Höðr's hand. The dart struck. Baldur fell. The most beloved god in all nine worlds, killed by the one thing nobody thought could matter.

His funeral was the grandest in Norse mythology. His ship Hringhorni, the greatest of all ships, was set ablaze. His wife Nanna died of grief on the pyre. Odin placed his ring Draupnir on the fire. Even the frost giants came to mourn.

Hel offered to release Baldur if every living thing wept for him. Everything did — except one giantess. Likely Loki in disguise. Baldur stayed dead.

After Ragnarök, he comes back.

Völuspá (stanza 62) tells us: after the world burns and is reborn, Baldur returns from Hel. He and Höðr — the blind brother who threw the dart — are reconciled. They sit together in the new world.

The god whose beauty was his fragility. The god who had to die so the world could end so the world could begin again. The most beautiful story in Norse mythology is not about power. It's about the cost of being loved by everyone and protected by nothing.

Continue in the grove.