The Light Goes Out
Baldr dreamed. Every night, the same dreams: darkness, falling, silence. He fell through a nothingness with no bottom and woke with cold sheets and a stone in his chest and told Frigg, and Frigg told Odin, and Odin said nothing, because Odin already knew what the dreams meant. He had hung on his tree and sacrificed his eye and seen the future, and the future had Baldr in it, and it was black.
Odin saddled Sleipnir and rode down to Hel. Through nine dark worlds, down along roads where no light fell, down to the dead völva's grave at the gates of Niflheim. He woke her with runes and charms, and she rose, reluctantly, as all the dead do, because the dead do not want to speak and they seldom have good news. "Who wakes me?" she said. "Snow has lain on me. Rain has lashed me. I have been dead a long time." Odin asked who it was that Hel's benches stood prepared for, who it was that her mead was brewed for. The völva answered: Baldr. It is Baldr who is expected. And then she would speak no more, and Odin rode home with an answer he already knew and a grief he never showed.
The gods assembled and decided Baldr must be protected. Frigg took the task upon herself, as a mother does, with the sort of determination that does not take no for an answer. She went out into the world and demanded an oath from everything that exists. Fire and water swore never to harm Baldr. Iron and all metals swore. Stones, soils, trees. Diseases swore. Animals swore. Birds swore. Serpents swore. Poisons swore. Everything that breathed and everything that did not breathe, everything that moved and everything that stood still. Frigg was thorough, because she was a mother, and mothers are thorough when it comes to their children.
When the oath was done the gods discovered that Baldr was invulnerable, and then they did what gods do with everything they do not understand: they played with it. They threw stones at him in Gladsheim, in the middle of the hall, in the middle of feasts. They shot arrows. They hacked with swords. Nothing harmed him, everything bounced off, and the gods laughed and Baldr laughed, and it became a game, the most popular entertainment in Asgard. Weapons and stones flew through the air and fell to the ground and Baldr stood in the centre, shining and unharmed, and it was beautiful and it was magic and it was joy. None of them noticed that a figure stood in the shadows, watching.
Loki always watched.
He disguised himself as an old woman, crooked and grey, and went to Frigg in Fensalir. He asked in a creaking voice what was going on outside, all that striking and laughter. Frigg told her proudly about the oath. Everything had sworn not to harm Baldr. Everything? asked the old woman. Frigg smiled. Everything, she said, except the mistletoe that grows west of Valhöll. It was too young and too small to need an oath. A little green sprig that did not even have proper roots. What can a mistletoe do?
One sentence. A single sentence in passing, said by a mother who trusted too much in the goodness of the world, and all of creation turned.
Loki went to the mistletoe and broke off a twig. He shaped it into a dart, long and straight and sharp at the tip, and it should not have been able to be a weapon, but things that have not sworn oaths are not bound by the oaths' protection. He went back to the game and sought out Höðr, Baldr's blind brother, who stood apart with his arms hanging and did not take part.
"Why do you not throw?" asked Loki. Höðr turned his face toward him without seeing. "I cannot see," he said. "And I have nothing to throw." Loki smiled the smile that no one saw. "I will guide your hand," he said. "Show your brother the same honour as the rest." He placed the dart in Höðr's hand, and he stood behind him and aimed his arm at Baldr, and Höðr felt Loki's fingers on his wrist, steady, and he did not feel them trembling with anticipation.
Höðr threw. The mistletoe flew through the air, silent as a thought. It struck Baldr in the middle of the chest. And Baldr fell, slowly, like a tree losing its root, and he hit the ground without a sound, and his eyes were open and empty, and the light that had always been in him went out like a torch in the rain.
No one moved. No one breathed. The gods stood like stones around their fallen brother, and the silence that followed was the worst silence Asgard had ever heard. It was a silence heavier than sound, the presence of something cold and irrevocable. Frigg was the first to scream, and her scream was the kind that does not stop.
Nanna, Baldr's wife, saw his body and her heart broke. That is what the sagas say. Not that she died of grief. Her heart broke. It stopped beating from the sort of pain the body cannot hold. She died beside him, and they were laid together on Baldr's ship Hringhorni, the greatest ship ever built, and the ship was so heavy with grief and timber and everything that was laid beside them that it could not be launched. The gods tried. They pushed and shoved and it did not move.
The giantess Hyrrokkin came riding on a wolf with vipers for reins, and she set her shoulder against the prow and shoved the ship into the water with a single push, and the force was so great the roller-logs caught fire and all of Asgard shook. Thor hallowed the pyre with Mjolnir. Odin placed the ring Draupnir on Baldr's pyre and bent down and whispered something into his dead ear, and no one has ever learned what it was. Odin's wolves Geri and Freki lay down by the ship. His ravens flew circles above. All of Asgard stood on the shore and watched the ship burn, and the light of the flames was reflected in all their eyes, and none of them were the same afterward.
Hermóðr, Odin's son, the bravest of the messengers, saddled Sleipnir and rode down toward Hel's realm. Nine nights he rode through darkness, down along roads no living being should walk, down to the bridge Gjallarbrú that stretched across the river Gjöll. The bridge was paved with shining gold and it was guarded by Móðguðr, the bridge-keeper, who asked who he was and why he rode the road of the dead. "Five troops of dead men rode across this bridge yesterday," she said. "But you alone make more noise. You do not have a dead man's colour. Why do you ride Hel's road, living man?" Hermóðr said he was seeking Baldr. She pointed downward. Baldr had ridden past. Downward and in.
Hermóðr rode on to Hel's gates, and Sleipnir leapt over them in a single bound, and inside sat Baldr in the place of honour in Hel's hall, pale and silent, with Nanna beside him. Hermóðr wept when he saw his brother, and Baldr wept back, but his tears were cold. Hermóðr begged Hel to release Baldr. Hel, she of the half-rotting face, set a condition in that voice that sounds like earth falling on a coffin: if everything in the world wept for Baldr, living and dead alike, he could return. If a single creature refused, he stayed.
The gods sent messengers to every corner of the world. Everything wept. People wept. Animals wept. Stones wept. Trees wept. Metals wept. Everything mourned Baldr the way frost weeps when it thaws, the way ice weeps in the sun. There was not a single thing in all of creation that did not shed a tear.
But in a cave, alone, sat a giantess who called herself Þökk. The messengers found her in the dark, and they asked her to weep. She said: "Þökk shall weep with dry tears at Baldr's pyre. Neither living nor dead did I gain from Karl's son. Let Hel keep what she has." And her eyes were dry as sand, and her mouth was hard as stone, and she looked at them without blinking.
That was enough. A single creature with dry eyes, and Baldr stayed in death. Everyone knew who Þökk was. Everyone knew it was Loki in disguise, the same Loki who had shaped the mistletoe and guided Höðr's hand and now sat in a cave refusing to weep. He had killed Baldr with Höðr's blind hand, and now he prevented his return with one giantess's dry tears.
But Odin was not the sort of god who leaves debts unpaid. He sought out the giantess Rindr and with her had a son: Váli. The child was one night old, unwashed and uncombed, when he took up arms. Before his first day was over he had killed Höðr. Höðr, the blind brother, who had not known what he threw, who had stood with Loki's fingers around his wrist believing he was showing his brother an honour. It was not justice. It was the law of the gods: blood demands blood, and guilt does not care about intent. Höðr went down to Hel, to his brother, and they waited there together in the darkness.
The rage of the gods was quiet and cold and absolute, and it was a rage that never disappears, like embers under ash.