Baldr's death was the first domino in the Norse end of the world
Baldr, son of Odin and Frigg, owned the finest ship ever built and a hall more beautiful than any other. Yet the Norse remembered him chiefly for dying. Icelandic poems treat his killing as a disaster for the gods and the opening move in a chain of events leading to Ragnarök.
Most of what survives comes from Iceland in the 13th century, when the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda were compiled from older verse. A century earlier, Danish chroniclers such as Saxo Grammaticus had told his story as if he were a human hero. Snorri gives him a wife, Nanna, a son, Forseti, the ship Hringhorni and the hall Breidablik, and counts Thor and Váli among his many brothers.
The Eddic poem Baldr's Dreams opens with the gods troubled by his nightmares. Odin rides down to Hel, wakes a dead seeress with magic and, calling himself Vegtam, the Wanderer, presses her with question after question. She reveals that mead is already brewing to welcome Baldr, that his brother Höðr will kill him, and that Váli will avenge him at one night old. Each time she insists she has spoken against her will, until she sees through the disguise and refuses to say more before Loki breaks free. In another poem, Loki taunts Frigg that he is the reason her son will never ride home, and in Völuspá the seeress foresees that Baldr and Höðr will return together after the destruction, a sign of a peaceful new age.
His name probably descends from a Proto-Germanic word for hero or prince, rooted in a term meaning brave. Rudolf Simek points out that this suggests a warrior, which the myths do not really support. Jacob Grimm proposed in 1835 a link to a Lithuanian word for white, tracing a shift from white to shining to strong, and early scholars accordingly read Baldr as a god of light, matching Snorri's picture of him.
One of the Merseburg charms may also mention him, describing a horse's sprained foot healed by the singing of Frigg, Odin and others, though some modern scholars think Freyr is meant.
Source: Baldr
