In the Norse myths, the death of Baldr is the moment the world begins to end. Before it, the gods live in a golden age of games and feasting, troubled only by distant prophecies. After it, the bonds that hold the cosmos together begin to fail one by one, until the great wolf breaks free, the serpent rises from the sea, and the final battle of Ragnarök consumes gods and worlds alike.
The story is told most fully by Snorri Sturluson in the Gylfaginning section of the Prose Edda, drawing on older poems including the Völuspá, Baldrs draumar, and Húsdrápa, a tenth-century poem describing carvings of Baldr’s funeral in an Icelandic hall. Snorri calls it “the greatest misfortune ever to befall gods and men.”
The Invulnerable God
Baldr, son of Odin and Frigg, had been troubled by dreams of his own death. His mother, to protect him, took oaths from every thing in the world — fire, water, iron, stone, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts, birds, poison, and snakes — that none would harm him.
With the oaths sworn, the gods invented a sport. At the assembly, they stood Baldr up and threw things at him: some shot arrows, some struck him with swords, some threw stones. Whatever they did, he was unharmed. Everyone thought this a great honour to him.
Loki’s Discovery
Loki was displeased to see that nothing could harm Baldr. He took the form of an old woman and went to Fensalir, Frigg’s hall. Frigg asked the stranger if she knew what the gods were doing at the assembly. The “old woman” said they were all shooting at Baldr, and he was not hurt.
Frigg replied: “Neither weapons nor trees will harm Baldr. I have taken oaths from all of them.”
“Have all things sworn oaths to spare Baldr?” asked the woman.
“There grows a sprout of a tree west of Valhalla,” said Frigg. “It is called mistletoe. It seemed to me too young to demand an oath from.”
The old woman left at once.
The Blind Brother
Loki took the mistletoe, pulled it up, and went to the assembly. There he found Höðr, Baldr’s brother, standing at the edge of the ring of gods. Höðr was blind.
“Why aren’t you shooting at Baldr?” Loki asked.
“Because I can’t see where he is,” Höðr answered, “and besides, I have no weapon.”
“You should do as the others do and show Baldr honour,” said Loki. “I will direct you to where he is standing. Shoot at him with this stick.”
Höðr took the mistletoe and threw it as Loki guided him. The shaft flew through Baldr, and he fell dead to the ground.
The Silence of the Gods
Snorri’s description of the moment is one of the most powerful passages in Old Norse literature:
When Baldr fell, the gods were speechless, and their hands failed them to lift him up. Each looked at the other, and all were of one mind about who had done the deed, but no one could take vengeance; the place was a great sanctuary.
When they tried to speak, they could only weep. Odin grieved the most, “because he understood best how great a loss and injury the death of Baldr was for the Aesir.” Odin alone knew what it meant: the beginning of the end.
The Funeral
The gods carried Baldr’s body to the sea, to his great ship Hringhorni, “the greatest of all ships,” to burn him on a pyre aboard it. But when they tried to launch it, it would not move. They sent to Jötunheim for a giantess named Hyrrokkin, who arrived riding a wolf with vipers for reins. She pushed the ship so hard at the first touch that flames flew from the rollers and the lands shook. Thor, angered, gripped his hammer to smash her head, but the gods restrained him.
Baldr’s body was carried aboard. When his wife Nanna saw it, her heart burst with grief and she died, and she was laid on the pyre beside him. Thor hallowed the pyre with his hammer Mjölnir. A dwarf named Litr ran in front of his feet, and Thor kicked him into the fire and he burned too.
The funeral was attended by every kind of being. Odin came with Frigg, his Valkyries, and his ravens; Freyr in his chariot drawn by the boar Gullinbursti; Heimdall on his horse Gulltoppr; Freya with her cats. Frost giants and mountain giants came as well.
Odin placed on the pyre his gold ring Draupnir, from which eight rings of equal weight dripped every ninth night. Baldr’s horse, with all its harness, was led onto the pyre. And according to the Vafþrúðnismál, Odin bent down and whispered something into his dead son’s ear. What he said is the great unanswerable riddle of Norse myth. In that poem, Odin uses the question to defeat a giant in a contest of wisdom, because no one but Odin could know the answer.
Hermóðr’s Ride to Hel
Frigg asked who among the gods would win her love and favour by riding the road to Hel to find Baldr and offer a ransom for his return. Hermóðr the Bold, another son of Odin, volunteered. He took Odin’s eight-legged horse Sleipnir and rode for nine nights through valleys so deep and dark he could see nothing, until he came to the river Gjöll and the bridge covered with glittering gold.
The maiden Móðguðr, who guarded the bridge, told him that five troops of dead men had crossed the day before, yet the bridge echoed less under them than under him. “You do not have the colour of a dead man,” she said. Hermóðr told her he was looking for Baldr, and she said Baldr had crossed the bridge and the road to Hel lay “downward and northward.”
At the gates of Hel, Hermóðr spurred Sleipnir, and the horse leapt clean over the gate. Inside the hall, he found Baldr sitting in the seat of honour.
The Condition
Hermóðr stayed the night. In the morning he begged Hel, the ruler of the dead, to let Baldr ride home with him, describing the grief of the gods. Hel replied that she would test whether Baldr was truly as beloved as they said:
If all things in the world, living and dead, weep for him, then he shall go back to the Aesir. But he shall stay with Hel if anyone objects or will not weep.
Baldr led Hermóðr out of the hall and gave him the ring Draupnir to take back to Odin as a keepsake. Nanna sent a linen robe for Frigg and a gold ring for Frigg’s handmaid Fulla.
The Weeping of the World
The gods sent messengers throughout the world to ask everything to weep Baldr out of Hel. And everything did: people and animals, the earth and stones, trees and all metals — “as you will have seen these things weep when they come out of frost and into warmth.”
Snorri’s detail is lovely: the dew and meltwater that runs from stone and metal when it thaws is the world still weeping for Baldr.
As the messengers were returning home, their task nearly complete, they found a giantess sitting in a cave. She said her name was Þökk (“thanks”). They asked her to weep Baldr out of Hel. She replied:
Þökk will weep dry tears for Baldr’s funeral. Neither living nor dead had I joy of the old man’s son. Let Hel keep what she has.
People believed that the giantess was Loki himself.
Baldr stayed in Hel.
The Consequences
The death of Baldr brought three consequences.
- Revenge on Höðr. Odin fathered a son, Váli, on the giantess Rindr, specifically to avenge Baldr. Váli, one night old, unwashed and uncombed, killed Höðr.
- The punishment of Loki. Loki fled and hid as a salmon, but the gods caught him and bound him in a cave, where he will lie until Ragnarök (see The Binding of Loki).
- The approach of Ragnarök. The light has gone out of the world. The Völuspá, which moves directly from Baldr’s death to the binding of Loki and on to the signs of the end, makes the connection clear.
The Return
The story does not end in Hel. After Ragnarök, the Völuspá says, a new earth will rise from the sea, and “Baldr will come back.” He and Höðr will live together, reconciled, in Odin’s old hall. Of all the gods, only a few survive the end of the world, and Baldr — who did not fight at all, because he was already dead — is among those who inherit the new one.
Why the Story Matters
The death of Baldr is often compared with the deaths of Osiris in Egypt, Adonis in Syria and Greece, and Christ in Christianity. All involve a beloved, innocent god who dies and returns. But the Norse story has its own grim logic. Frigg’s oath fails because of something too small to notice. The killer is blind, innocent, and deceived. The whole world agrees to save Baldr — except one voice. In a universe governed by fate, a single exception is enough.
Last reviewed: September 2026.