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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.

I will reward thee for refusing passage, if we two meet again." Odin. "Go thy way, where all the fiends may take thee." Lokasenna also is in dialogue form. A prose introduction tells how the giant Oegi, or Gymi, gave a feast to the Aesir.

In Lokasenna Frigg says: "If I had a son like Baldr here in Oegi's halls, thou shouldst not pass out from the sons of the Aesir, but be slain here in thy anger"; to which Loki replies, "Wilt thou that I speak more ill words, Frigg? I am the cause that thou wilt never more see Baldr ride into the hall."

There is little doubt that Njörd was once a God of higher importance than he is in the Edda, where he is overshadowed by his son. Grimm's suggestion that he and the goddess Nerthus, mentioned by Tacitus, were brother and sister, is supported by the line in Lokasenna; it is an isolated reference, and the Goddess has left no other traces in Scandinavian mythology.

Loki alludes to this episode in Lokasenna: "With gold didst thou buy Gymi's daughter, and gavest thy sword for her; but when Muspell's sons ride over Myrkwood, thou shalt not know with what to fight, unhappy one." The story is told in full in Skirnisför. Freyja is called by Snorri "the chief Goddess after Frigg," and the two are sometimes confused.

Omitting the heroic poems, there are in Codex Regius the following: Of a more or less comprehensive character, Völuspa, Vafthrudnismal, Grimnismal, Lokasenna, Harbardsljod; dealing with episodes, Hymiskvida, Thrymskvida, Skirnisför.

Like Odin, he travels much, but while the chief God generally goes craftily and in disguise, to gain knowledge or test his wisdom, Thor's errands are warlike; in Lokasenna he is absent on a journey, in Harbardsljod and Alvissmal he is returning from one.

He is admitted among the Aesir, though not one of them by birth, and his whole relation to them points to his being an older elemental God. He is in alliance with them against the giants; he and Odin have sworn blood-brothership, according to Lokasenna, and he helps Thor to recover his hammer that Asgard may be defended against the giants.

Otherwise, he only appears in connexion with two more popular Gods: he speaks in Frey's defence in Lokasenna, and in Hymiskvida he is Thor's companion in the search for a cauldron; the latter poem represents him as a giant's son.

There is an allusion in Völuspa to the war which caused the giving of hostages: "Odin shot into the host: this was the first war in the world. Broken was the wall of the citadel of the Aesir, so that the Wanes could tread the fields of war." Loki taunts Njörd with his position, in Lokasenna: "Thou wast sent from the east as a hostage to the Gods...." Njörd.