Balder, or BALDUR, the hero of one of the most beautiful and interesting myths in the Edda, was, according to northern mythology, son of Odin and Frigga, and the husband of Nanna. Having dreamed evil dreams which threatened his life, he related them to the gods, whereupon they held a council, and endeavoured to secure his safety. Frigga took an oath from everything in nature, animate and inanimate alike, that it would not harm Balder, but she forgot the mistletoe. The gods, thinking Balder safe, in their mirth wrestled with him, and cast darts and stones at him. The malicious Loki alone took no part in the play, but changing himself into the form of an old woman, found out from Frigga that the reason for Balder's invulnerability was that everything but the little mistletoe had sworn not to harm him. Loki went in haste to fetch a bough, and repaired with it to the assembly of the gods, where he placed it in the hands of the blind Höder, the god of war, and directed his aim against Balder, who fell pierced to the heart. The sorrow of the gods was unutterable. Hermoder (the nimble) at once started on his journey to ask Hel, the goddess of Hades or the grave, to release Balder. She at once consented, on condition that all things should weep for Balder. All things wept, save the witch or giantess Thöck (the step-daughter of Loki), and so Balder must remain in the kingdom of Hel until the end of the world. At his funeral the pyre was placed on board his ship in presence of the frost-giants.
Balder is the best and wisest of the Æsir. His death is the great turning-point of the drama, as it proves the mortal nature of the gods. The powers of evil could not prevail as long as he lived, but his death is the doom of all the Æsir. Loki and his brood of wicked monsters are at first subdued, but at last they burst their bonds, and the great catastrophe of Ragnarök ensues. After long winter and war between the gods and the collected frost-giants, the forces of cold, fire, and darkness, in which both adversaries perish, comes the complete renovation of the world, in which the chief of the Æsir are hallowed and purified, and Balder returns from the under-world to inaugurate a reign of happiness and peace. It is probable that in the story of Balder there is an admixture of physical and moral allegory. Originally a nature-myth, it underwent a transformation through the addition of ethical conceptions, but the same early form continued to express the later religious ideas. See SCANDINAVIAN MYTHOLOGY; Grimm's Deutsche Mythologie; and Schwartz, Indogermanischer Volksglaube (Berl. 1885).