Frigg, Odin’s wife, adored her two sons. Hod, known for being blind, was always willing to help. Balder, known for being handsome, was peaceful. Both were sweet-tempered, perhaps because they were loved so much.
Frigg, Odin’s wife, adored her two sons. Hod, known for being blind, was always willing to help. Balder, known for being handsome, was peaceful. Both were sweet-tempered, perhaps because they were loved so much.
Frigg was Odin’s wife, and she took her role as head goddess seriously. As she saw it, it wasn’t a husband that a wife needed to attend to. Her own husband was headstrong and bullish and, well, she couldn’t really influence him much even if she tried. Odin was convinced that women were fickle creatures, and simpleminded, as well. The fairer his words were to Frigg, the more she knew his thoughts were false. He trusted no one, which made him untrustworthy himself. So Frigg didn’t waste energy and time on Odin. Instead, she focused on what a woman could do that a man couldn’t—childbearing. Frigg helped all women in childbirth. She bid laboring women to lie on a bed of grasses that had yellow flowers whose pungent scent quickly killed the fleas that ran up and down their bodies. The women relaxed into a half swoon; birth was far more palatable this way, especially because of Frigg’s voice: She spoke to them of motherly love. She became goddess of love, but not the romantic stimulation that Freyja evoked, rather the all-encompassing devotion that one has for another throughout life. Frigg knew everything there was to know about that kind of love, for that’s how she loved her children, the gods Balder and Hod. She adored them. She raised them in her hall, Fensalir, and showered them with kisses.
Perhaps that’s why these gods were so unique. Hod was completely blind and tremendously strong. He held back from the others, always listening, ready to oblige. He became god of the darkness that settled in winter, and that was fine with him. Winter was long and powerful, and quiet, like him. And winter always came back—in the end, winter prevailed. Like motherly love.
Frigg’s Grass
Galium verum, commonly known as yellow bedstraw, grows throughout Europe and Asia. In medieval times it was used to stuff mattresses, since its odor kills fleas. Its yellow flowers were used to coagulate milk in making cheese. Its roots made red dye; its flowers, yellow. Its leaves made a mild sedative. And in Denmark it is used even today in the alcoholic drink bjæsk. Perhaps this was Frigg’s grass that she used to help birthing mothers with—Frigg, the saddest mother ever.
Balder was almost the opposite of Hod; he was light and airy. And unlike most other Aesir gods, he didn’t shout or stomp around. He didn’t go violent at the slightest provocation. He was thoughtful, gentle. Ultimately, he was wise, but in a different way from his father, Odin. Instead of knowing all and understanding every fact with his intellect, he intuited the cosmos. He empathized with every living thing and then beyond, with every tree and rock, with every breeze and grain of sand and droplet of dew. Balder was an anomaly in that cosmos; without any inkling of the treachery of others, he was doomed—a bird without wings.
So when Balder reported having bad dreams to his mother, when he said he woke from dreams about ghostly skulls with the stench of his own death in his mouth, Frigg wasn’t surprised. Her son was too pure for this reality, this cosmos. Besides, she’d been waiting for this moment. Like Odin she saw much of the future—imperfectly, to be sure—but definitely. She didn’t speak of it. What was the point of telling others about things they couldn’t change? The anticipation would only make them suffer and, probably, reduce them to ditherers, for helplessness undoes a soul. So, no, she didn’t blink twice at Balder’s news.
But Frigg was the head goddess. She was Queen of Asgard. She was the only one besides Odin who was allowed to climb up onto the high seat Hlidskjalf and view the entire cosmos. Frigg was not about to stand by and do nothing. Dread had sharpened her teeth and eyes and fingertips.
Balder had nightmares that he would die. So his mother, Frigg, wife of Odin, flew through the cosmos, exacting promises from everything she passed that they would do Balder no harm.
Oh, she held her tongue for a while, to allow Odin time to do his thing. Odin was Allfather, after all. He needed to assume control. Odin called an assembly to discuss the possible portents of Balder’s nightmares. Then he rode his eight-legged steed, Sleipnir, down to Niflheim and conferred there with a prophetess, a certain sibyl, who told him everything that would come to pass. It was all for nothing, of course, because Odin already knew the future. But as a father, he must have hoped against hope that he was wrong for once. He must have ground his teeth down to the pulp, gnashing out that hope. He came back and shook his shaggy head sadly at Frigg.
So Frigg was now free to go into action. She flew through the cosmos, for she had a flying cloak just as Freyja did, and extracted a promise from fire, water, metals, stones, trees, diseases, beasts, birds, poisons, and serpents that they would do Balder no harm. No one, nothing refused her request. And thus Balder seemed invulnerable.
But to test that, someone threw a pebble at him. Balder didn’t feel it. Someone else threw a stick. No reaction. Ha! The gods found this turn of events delightful. It soon became good sport to stab Balder or, at the very least, cast stones at him, only to see the handsome god stand there unhurt and smiling.
Loki hated this. Balder was getting all the attention. So he disguised himself as an old woman and visited Frigg. He complained about the poor man who was being stoned, as though he didn’t know the whole story of Balder’s invulnerability. When Frigg explained that man was her son and this was no stoning, this was just sport that could come to no bad end because of the cosmos’ promise, the disguised Loki asked if by chance there was any element that had not sworn to do Balder no harm. Frigg should have been on the alert. She should have suspected an ulterior motive, even from this unimposing and doddering woman. But somehow, she didn’t. She answered forthrightly: One little mistletoe was too young for Frigg to ask a favor of.
Loki pulled up that mistletoe and made darts from it.
Then the trickster pulled the worst trick of his life, the worst trick of the cosmos. He got Hod to join in the game of throwing things at Balder—something Hod had never done before; it made no sense for a blind one to throw things. But Loki guided Hod’s hand. And, of course, in that hand he put the mistletoe darts. Hod threw; alas, he unwittingly killed his own dear brother. The whole of Asgard was bereft. Frigg asked who would dare go down to Hel and offer her a ransom to let Balder come back. Another of Odin’s sons, Hermod, volunteered. He mounted Odin’s steed Sleipnir and traveled nine nights down into the realm of Hel to beg Balder’s release, for the whole cosmos loved him.
Hod was the blind brother of Balder. Loki tricked him into throwing a mistletoe dart at Balder—and Loki guided blind Hod’s hand. The dart killed poor Balder.
Hel said that so long as the whole cosmos wept for Balder, she would let him free. But if anyone refused to weep, Balder would belong to Hel till the final battle.
So now the Aesir sent messengers throughout the cosmos asking everyone to weep Balder out of Hel. And everyone did. Everyone except the giantess Thokk, who some say was Loki in disguise. That was enough to seal Balder’s fate.
Odin looked around for revenge. Frigg couldn’t meet his eyes—Hod was her son, too, after all. She stayed hidden behind her curtain of tears. So Odin took the giantess Rindr as his wife and that very day she gave birth to the god Vali, who grew to adulthood before the night fell and slew the hapless Hod. Now there were 12 major gods, but, alas, two of them were doomed to Hel.
And so Balder stayed in Hel, awaiting the battle Ragnarok, when he’d be set free, alongside his brother Hod, whose head lay heavy in his own hands. And Odin dreamed of Balder, his gleaming boy; every time the benches in Odin’s hall creaked, he hoped it was the sound of Balder returning. And Frigg, wretched Frigg, she cried for Balder, she cried for Hod, she cried for everyone.
Nothing would ever be right with this cosmos again.
Hel agreed that if everyone in the cosmos cried for Balder, she would set him free. And everyone did—they wailed in misery—everyone except the giantess Thokk. That was enough to ruin it; Balder could not escape Hel.
