Baldr (Old Norse Baldr, also spelled Balder or Baldur) was the most beloved of the Norse gods. He was the son of Odin and Frigg, so beautiful and bright that light shone from him, and so good that all of creation wept when he died. Yet Baldr is remembered almost entirely for his death. He is a god whose story is really about loss — how it came, how it might have been undone, and how it could not be.
The death of Baldr, contrived by Loki and carried out by the blind god Höðr with a dart of mistletoe, is the turning point of Norse mythology. From that moment, the gods are on the road to Ragnarök. And after Ragnarök, when a new world rises from the sea, it is Baldr who returns from the dead to rule it.
The Fairest of the Gods
Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda describes Baldr in glowing terms:
He is the best, and everyone praises him. He is so fair of face and so bright that light shines from him… He is the wisest of the Aesir and the most beautifully spoken and the most merciful. But it is one of his characteristics that none of his judgements can be fulfilled.
That last line is haunting. Baldr is wise and merciful, but his decisions have no effect in the world. He is goodness without power — perhaps the very reason he cannot survive in the harsh cosmos of the Norse myths.
Snorri adds that a white flower, the sea mayweed or chamomile, was called “Baldr’s brow” (Baldrsbrá) because it was so white. Baldr’s hall in Asgard was Breiðablik, “broad-shining,” a place where nothing impure could exist.
Family
Baldr was the son of Odin and his queen Frigg. His wife was Nanna, daughter of Nep, and their son was Forseti, god of justice and reconciliation, who sat in the hall of Glitnir and settled all disputes. His brother Höðr was blind — and would become the unwitting instrument of his death. Another half-brother, Váli, was born solely to avenge him.
Baldr’s Dreams
The myth begins with nightmares. Baldr began to have terrible dreams foretelling his death. The Eddic poem Baldrs draumar (“Baldr’s Dreams”) tells how Odin, alarmed, saddled his eight-legged horse Sleipnir and rode down to the underworld. There, at the eastern gate of Hel, he raised a dead seeress from her grave with a necromantic spell and questioned her.
The seeress told him that the mead was already brewed in Hel’s hall for Baldr, and the benches strewn with gold, awaiting his arrival. She revealed that Höðr would kill him, and that a son of Odin by the giantess Rindr — a son only one night old — would avenge him. Then Odin asked a question that revealed who he was, and the seeress, angry, told him to ride home. No one would visit her again, she said, until Loki was free and Ragnarök had come.
Frigg’s Oath
Frigg, determined to protect her son, travelled throughout the world and made everything swear an oath not to harm Baldr: fire and water, iron and all metals, stones, the earth, trees, diseases, animals, birds, poisons, and serpents. All things swore gladly, because all things loved Baldr.
Afterwards, the gods made a game of it. They would stand Baldr in their midst and throw spears and stones at him, strike him with swords, and shoot arrows — and nothing harmed him. They thought it a fine honour.
But Frigg had overlooked one thing: a small shoot of mistletoe growing west of Valhalla. It seemed too young and weak to be dangerous, so she had not asked it to swear.
The Death
Loki, disguised as an old woman, visited Frigg and learned the secret of the mistletoe. He plucked it, went to the assembly of the gods, and found Höðr standing at the edge of the circle, unable to join in because he was blind and had no weapon. Loki offered to guide his hand. Höðr threw the mistletoe — shaped into a dart or spear — and it struck Baldr and pierced him through. Baldr fell dead.
Snorri calls it “the greatest misfortune ever to befall gods and men.” The complete story — the gods’ grief, the funeral, the ride to Hel, and the single tear that was not shed — is told in The Death of Baldr: The Murder That Doomed the Gods.
The Attempt to Bring Him Back
The gods sent Hermóðr, another son of Odin, to ride Sleipnir down to Hel and ask its ruler to release Baldr. Hel agreed on one condition: if everything in the world, living and dead, wept for Baldr, he could return. Everything wept — the gods, the people, the animals, the earth, the stones, the trees, and all metals, as they do “when they come out of the frost and into the heat.” Only one giantess named Þökk (Thökk), sitting in a cave, refused: “Let Hel keep what she has.” The giantess was believed to be Loki in disguise.
The Punishment of Loki and Höðr
The death of Baldr was avenged twice. Váli, son of Odin and Rindr, grew to full strength in a single day and, without washing his hands or combing his hair, killed Höðr. Loki fled and hid, but the gods caught him and bound him in a cave with the entrails of his own son, while a serpent dripped venom onto his face (see The Binding of Loki).
Baldr in Saxo Grammaticus
The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, writing around 1200, tells a very different version in his Gesta Danorum. Here Balderus is a demigod warrior and Hotherus (Höðr) a human hero, and the two are rivals for the love of Nanna. Hotherus defeats Balderus in battle and later kills him with a magical sword. There is no mistletoe, no Loki, and no universal weeping. Saxo’s version is euhemerized — it treats the gods as historical kings and warriors — but it may preserve an older layer of the tradition.
Baldr’s Return
After Ragnarök, when the old world has burned and sunk into the sea, the earth rises again, green and fair. The Völuspá says that fields will grow unsown, all ills will be healed, and Baldr will come back. He and Höðr, reconciled, will live together in Odin’s old halls. The murdered god and his unwitting killer return together to a renewed world (see What Happens After Ragnarök?).
Interpretations
Baldr has invited more speculation than almost any other Norse god.
- A dying-and-rising god. The anthropologist James George Frazer, in The Golden Bough (1890), made Baldr a central example of the dying vegetation god, like Adonis or Osiris, and connected the mistletoe with European midsummer fire festivals. Frazer’s sweeping theory is now largely rejected, but it made Baldr famous.
- Christian influence. The image of an innocent, shining god who is killed, mourned by all creation, and returns to rule a new world has obvious parallels with Christ. The Eddas were written down by Christians, and some scholars believe the story was shaped by Christian ideas; others argue it is fundamentally pagan.
- The mistletoe. Why mistletoe? It is a plant that grows neither on the earth nor in it but on trees, which may have made it seem outside the categories of Frigg’s oath. Some scholars note that in Iceland, where there is no mistletoe, the writers may not have known it was a small, soft plant and imagined it as a tree large enough to make a spear.
Baldr in Culture
Baldr’s story has inspired poets and artists for centuries. Matthew Arnold wrote the long poem Balder Dead (1855). The death of Baldr has been painted by Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg and other Danish Golden Age artists. In modern popular culture, Baldur appears as a principal character in the video game God of War (2018), and the name has been given to one of the most popular role-playing video game series, Baldur’s Gate — though that is named after a fictional city.
The custom of kissing beneath the mistletoe is often linked to Baldr, with the claim that Frigg declared the plant a symbol of love after her son’s return. This story appears to be a modern invention; the custom is first recorded in England in the eighteenth century.
Last reviewed: September 2026.