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Hence, in the systematising of the Viking religion, the responsibility for Baldr's death also was transferred to him. Like his son the Wolf, he is chained by the Gods; the episode is related in a prose-piece affixed to Lokasenna: "After that Loki hid himself in Franangr's Foss in the form of a salmon. There the Aesir caught him.
His antiquity is supported by the fact that he plays the part of avenger in the poems; while in Snorri, where he is mentioned as a God, his absence from the account of Baldr's death is only a part of that literary development by which real responsibility for the murder was transferred from Höd to Loki.
Still less is known of Vidar and Vali, two sons of Odin, one of whom is to avenge Baldr's death, the other to slay the wolf after it has swallowed up the chief God at Ragnarök. Frigg, Odin's wife and the chief Goddess, daughter of Earth, is not very distinctly characterised, and is often confused with Freyja.
The old religion of the North was a bright and lively faith; it lived in the light of joy and gladness; its gods were the 'blithe powers'; opposed to them were the dark powers of mist and gloom, who could not bear the glorious face of the Sun, of Baldr's beaming visage, or the bright flash of Thor's levin bolt.
The incident of the oath extracted from everything on earth to protect Baldr, which occurs in Snorri and in a paper MS. of Baldr's Dreams, was probably invented to explain the choice of weapon, which would certainly need explanation to an Icelandic audience. If Dr. Frazer's theory be right, Vali, who slew the slayer, must also have been an original figure in the legend.
Several of these poems are found in another thirteenth-century vellum fragment, with an additional one, variously styled Vegtamskvida or Baldr's Dreams; the great fourteenth-century codex Flateybook contains Hyndluljod, partly genealogical, partly an imitation of Völuspa; and one of the MSS. of Snorri's Edda gives us Rigsthula.
This last theory is too ingenious to be credible; and with regard to the third, there is nothing essentially Christian in the chief features of the legend, while the solar idea leaves too much unexplained. Odin questions the Sibyl as to the meaning of Baldr's dreams: Odin. Sibyl. "Here the mead, clear drink, stands brewed for Baldr; the shields are spread. The sons of the Aesir are too merry."
The very bareness of the outline is sufficient proof that the material is not new. The framework is apparently imitated from that of the poem known as Baldr's Dreams, some lines from which are inserted in Völuspa. This older poem describes Odin's visit to the Sibyl in hell-gates to inquire into the future.
He must have grown out of an epithet of Baldr's, of whom Snorri says that "no one can resist his sentence"; the sacred tree would naturally be the seat of judgment. The Wanes. Three of the Norse divinities, Njörd and his son and daughter, are not Aesir by descent.
Odin. "Who will be Baldr's slayer and rob Odin's son of life?" Sibyl. "Höd bears thither the high branch of fame: he will be Baldr's slayer and rob Odin's son of life." Odin. "Who will avenge the deed on Höd and bring Baldr's slayer to the funeral pyre?" Sibyl. "Rind bears a son, Vali, in the halls of the west. He shall not wash his hands nor comb his hair till he bears Baldr's foe to the pyre."
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