Balder
;)
or sometimes Baldr or Baldur, was the son of Odin and Frigg and the 'Bleeding god' of Germanic mythology. His wife was Nanna and their son, Forseti, was the god of justice.
As a young man, Balder was tormented by nightmares, all of which indicated that he was about to die. A sense of foreboding, therefore, settled over Asgard, the home of the gods, as the divine inhabitants tried to understand the meaning of Balder's dreams. They were deeply puzzled because the gentle god least deserved to suffer such torments. So Odin rode his eight-legged steed Sleipnir to the land of the dead and by means of magic learned from a seeress there that Balder was to be killed by the blind god Hodr, his own brother, with a branch. Although depressed by this news, Odin returned to Asgard and found that his wife Frigg had a plan to save Balder. The goddess travelled through the nine worlds and got each and every thing to swear an oath that it would do her son no harm. To Odin's relief this plan seemed to work. When the gods decided to test Balder's new invulnerability by throwing stones and spears at him with great force, he remained unharmed. All in Asgard were delighted except Loki, the god of fire. He was so annoyed by Balder's escape from danger that he transformed himself into an old woman and visited Frigg's hall. In conversation with the goddess, Loki learned that she had received a promise of harmlessness from all things except the mistletoe, which was a plant too small and too feeble to bother about.
Armed with this information, Loki went off to cut some mistletoe. In his normal shape the fire god returned to the assembly of the gods and found everyone throwing things at Balder, except blind Hodr. Pretending to help Hodr enjoy the sport, Loki gave him the branch of mistletoe and directed his throw, with the result that the branch passed right through Balder, who immediately fell down dead. At Frigg's entreaty Hermod, Balder's brother, was sent to Hel in order to offer a ransom for Balder. He used the eight-legged Sleipnir for the journey. While Hermod was away, the bodies of Balder and Nanna, who had died of grief, were placed on a pyre in a longship which was allowed to drift burning out to sea.
In the netherworld the brave Hermod found his brother Balder seated in a high position. When he asked for his release, Hel said Balder could leave only on condition that 'everything in the nine worlds, dead and alive, wept for him'. Messengers were sent out and soon even the stones were weeping. But Thokk, an old frost giantess, refused, saying, 'Let Hel hold what she has.' So upset were the gods at this refusal to mourn that it took some time for them to realize that Thokk was none other than Loki in disguise. Nevertheless, Balder remainded with Hel.
Balder's good looks and early death recall the myths of the Egyptian Osiris and the Sumerian Tammuz, as well as that of Adonis, who was the dying-and-rising god the ancient Greeks adopted from the Phoenicians. For the Germanic peoples believed that the return of the wounded, dying Balder would occur in a new world, a green land risen from the sea, after Ragnarok, the doom of the gods. Like the undead Celtic King Arthur, Balder was expected to return and rule over a world cleansed by catastrophe. It would seem that some of the initial appeal of Christianity in northern Europe was connected with the triumphant return of the risen Christ on Judgement Day.