Love and the Threat
From Hliðskjálf you could see all nine worlds, and Freyr should not have been sitting there, it was Odin's throne, and thrones are not chairs you simply sit in, but he sat. He looked toward Jötunheimr. There, at the giant Gymir's farm, a woman walked out through a door. She lifted her arms to open the door's latch, and when she did the light that shone from her arms was so bright that the sky and sea reflected it, and the whole world grew brighter from that single movement, as if someone had lit a second sun.
Freyr climbed down from the throne and was destroyed. It was that simple. A single glance and everything else ceased to matter. It was not love as in the poems, with flowers and vows. It was love like a disease, love like an axe in the chest, and it could not be pulled out.
He went to his hall, sat down by a fire that had gone out without him noticing, and he ate nothing and drank nothing and spoke to no one. The days passed and he grew thinner, paler, like a candle flame slowly fading. The sweetness went out of the harvests. The animals grew leaner. Fertility followed its god's grief, and the fields suffered.
His father Njörðr noticed, and Skaði, and they sent for Skírnir, Freyr's servant and closest friend since childhood. Skírnir found him by the dead fire, thinner than he had ever seen him, with eyes that had lost their light. "What is it?" asked Skírnir. "You are sitting here dying and saying nothing." Freyr told him. He had seen Gerðr, daughter of the giant Gymir and the giantess Aurboða, and he knew that if he could not have her he would die. He said it without exaggeration. It was no poetic flourish. He meant it.
Skírnir said he could ride to Jötunheimr and propose on his behalf, but the price was high. He wanted Freyr's sword. The sword that fought by itself. The sword that cut and thrust without a hand touching it. The only weapon in all the worlds that could stand against Surtr at Ragnarök. Without that sword Freyr was unarmed for the rest of his existence, and that existence had a known end date.
Freyr gave it away without hesitation. It takes about a second to give away a sword, and that second cost him his life, but he did not know it yet, or knew and did not care. Love had turned him into the most dangerous kind of person: one with nothing to lose.
Skírnir rode to Jötunheimr on Freyr's horse Blóðughófi, which could ride through fire without being burned, and he carried the sword at his side and eleven golden apples in a pouch and Draupnir, the ring that dripped eight new gold rings every ninth night. He found Gerðr's farm surrounded by wild dogs that snarled with bared teeth, and around the farm burned a wall of flame, and beyond the fire the mountains rose like black teeth against the sky. He rode through all of it.
Gerðr stood in the doorway and asked who was mad enough to come here. Not a human, not an elf, not a Van. Who rides through fire and dogs to a giantess's door?
Skírnir offered her eleven golden apples, eternal youth, eternal beauty. She said no. "I cannot be bought with apples. Freyr and I shall never be joined." He offered Draupnir, the ring that never stopped giving gold. She said no. "I have gold enough. My father's farm lacks nothing."
Skírnir drew the sword and threatened to cut off her head. She did not flinch. "My father Gymir is ready to kill you," she said. "He is waiting, and he is not the sort of man who waits long. Try. We will see who still has a head."
Skírnir changed tactics. He took out a rune-staff and began to read. It was not a threat. It was not a plea either. It was a curse of the kind that cannot be taken back. He said Gerðr would be driven to madness. That she would live alone the rest of her life. That no man, no giant, no living creature would ever want her. That she would sit at the gates of the frost-giants at the edge of the world, disfigured and forgotten, and drink goat-piss like the lowest thralls, and never again feel another creature's touch. That her body would wither and her mind crumble and she would live long enough to watch herself become the creature she feared most.
The words filled the room the way frost fills a grave. The air turned heavy and cold and damp, and the fire in the hearth sank, and the dogs outside stopped snarling and lay flat with their ears back. Gerðr's face changed. It was not fear. It was the realisation that the one speaking these words had the power to follow through.
She said yes. She would meet Freyr at the grove of Barri in nine nights. Not from love. From necessity. From the realisation that the alternatives were worse.
Nine nights. Freyr waited. He had given away his sword, he had sent his friend through fire and dogs with threats and curses, and now he had to wait nine nights, and every night was like an eternity with open eyes. It is said he spoke: "Long is one night. Long are two. How shall I endure three? Often a month has felt shorter than this half-night of waiting."
They met at Barri. More than that the sagas do not tell, and they do not need to. But Freyr had given away his sword, and that sword he would need. At Ragnarök, when Surtr came with fire from the south, Freyr would stand weaponless against the one thing that could kill him. And that was the price for Gerðr. A single glance from Hliðskjálf cost him a sword and a life. Whether it was worth it, well, that is for Freyr to answer, but the sagas never let him regret it.
The gods feasted and said love was worth the price. But during the feasts Baldr had grown quieter. He still laughed, he still glowed, but sometimes his gaze froze in the middle of a conversation, and his hands gripped the edge of the table as if the floor were swaying. No one noticed. No one except Frigg.