It Began with Balder
It is unusual for gods to die. Even the Titans, the original Greek gods, who were vanquished by their Olympian offspring, remain alive in Tartarus, a cavernous hell that serves as their prison. Gods that do perish are resurrected. Isis traveled the world to collect the pieces of her husband, Osiris, so she might put him back together, and he might be reborn. The Aztec deity, Quetzalcoatl, after waking up to discover that, while intoxicated the night before, he had cavorted with his sister, felt such remorse that he set himself on fire, burning to ash. Out of this death, his heart rose to the heavens, becoming the morning star.
Yet in Norse mythology, not only do some of the gods die, they all do.
It started with the death of Balder. A son of the god Odin, Balder was well-loved by nearly all creatures. He was fair and bright, wise and gracious. Everyone praised him. One night, he had a dream that he would die. It turned out that Frigga, his mother, had the same dream. They knew, then, that the dream was prophetic. Balder would indeed die.
Though everyone knows we cannot prevail against a prophecy, most of us still try. Frigga was no exception. She traveled the world, convincing everything that could harm Balder, living or not, to promise never to do so. Birds and crawling things, monsters and insects, stones and trees, metals, diseases, poisons, and more all swore to protect her son. Her task completed, she returned home, weary but joyful.
“Now Balder is safe,” she said.
Eager to find out if this was true, the gods made up a game. They hurled knives and spears at Balder, doused him with fire, hit him with rocks, but nothing harmed him. He was invincible.
Death Comes to Us All
It strikes me as odd that Balder’s life depends, not on his own godhood, but on the restraint of inanimate objects. In most mythologies, invincibility is an attribute of the gods. Though Osiris is hacked into pieces and therefore cannot move, he nonetheless lives, as did Quetzalcoatl even when he was nothing but ash. Prometheus, punished for bringing fire to humans, had to endure having his liver eaten by an eagle day after day because his immortal body kept regenerating the organ. Yet Balder, like any mortal being, was vulnerable to whatever could be used as a weapon.
Death, it seems, really does come for us all.
Every society has myths about how death came to exist. For the ancient Hebrews, it was sin. Many other societies attribute death to a human mistake or flaw, while some conclude death appeared because of a purposeful decision made by one of the first peoples.
Societies also tell stories about what happens after we die. In Norse mythology, for instance, many realms of the dead exist. Valhalla, where Odin presided, was a place in the sky where most fallen soldiers went, though some chose to join the goddess Freya in Fólkvangr. Rán, a giantess who lived at the bottom of the sea, trapped sailors in her nets, then welcomed their souls into her watery world after they drowned. Some people chose to stay with their corpse after they died, haunting their burial grounds. Still others, like Balder, went to a place called Niflheim, a gray underworld similar to the Greek’s Hades or the Hebrew’s Sheol. It was ruled by the goddess Hel, the daughter of the god, Loki. [1]
The Trickster
A trickster god, Loki was cunning and mischievous. Able to change shape and switch genders, he used his talents to spread chaos.
Like all tricksters, Loki lived on the threshold, the space in between, like crossroads, doorways, and the public square. At times, he cooperated with his fellow gods. He saved them from disaster, for instance, and if he did cause trouble, which, being a trickster, he usually did, he mostly tried to make up for it.
In the end, though, Loki couldn’t stop himself from spreading chaos. He offended those around him by breaking society’s rules and making fun of meaningless conventions. Like a wise fool, he and his fellow tricksters won by failing and created by destroying.
Yet, tricksters do not destroy for the sake of destruction. They aren’t evil. By showing us how we are rigid and stuck, they reveal ways we are distant, cold, and harsh. Often, they are generous. Prometheus, who gave us fire, was a trickster. Though he was punished for his actions, he would probably do it again. That’s what tricksters do. They defy, and they advocate, and they’re always certain they’ll land on their feet. [2]
The trickster’s behavior is not always benign, however. It was often tricksters who decided there should be death. In Native American stories, Raven and Coyote both declared that humans should die and their bodies rot. Though Loki didn’t create, and he didn’t bring death to the world, he did give birth to the queen of the Underworld, and he orchestrated the death of Balder. Being the first death of a deity, Balder’s demise presaged Ragnarok, that predestined destruction of all existence, of the entire cosmos, and of the death of all the gods.
Hoder Kills His Brother
One might think that Loki, knowing that if Balder died, Ragnarok would be on its way, would take pains to ensure that Balder survived. But he did not.
Maybe Loki was jealous. Perhaps he felt disdain for the ridiculous gods who fawned over Balder. Whatever the reason, Loki wanted the deity dead. So he turned himself into an old woman and went to see Frigga.
“Is it true that nothing can harm Balder?” the old-woman Loki asked.
Frigga said it was indeed.
“Really?” Loki said. “You have gotten a promise from absolutely everything?”
At that, Frigga admitted that she hadn’t bothered to ask mistletoe. After all, it was such a small thing, growing so far away, and not even having roots of its own. Surely it could do no harm.
“Of course it couldn’t,” the old-woman who was Loki told her.
With a grin, he turned back into himself and strode off to the woods outside of Valhalla, where the mistletoe grew. Picking a thick bough, he fashioned it into a dart. Then he ran back to where the gods still played with Balder.
Now, Balder had a brother named Hoder, who was blind and thus could not take part in the game. Hoder stood off to one side, a little morose. Creeping up to him, Loki whispered in his ear that he could help him.
“Here’s a little dart,” Loki said, putting it into Hoder’s hand. “I’ll guide you. Together, we’ll throw it at Balder.”
Trusting a man he shouldn’t have trusted, and not able to understand what he was doing, Hoder, with Loki’s guidance, sent the dart that struck his brother in his chest and killed him.
Hel Makes a Deal
How awful. Hoder had no idea what was going on when he felt the silence, heard the gasping and moaning that was deeper and more terrible than tears. Then Frigga began weeping, and in her grief, she implored those around her, anyone, everyone, to go to Hel and convince her to release Balder’s spirit back to the living.
We cannot bear death. It takes from us everything. When loved ones die, our worlds fall apart. When we die, our worlds disappear. It is natural to fight to live. Sometimes, we bargain with God or fate or death, trying to undo what was done. That’s what Frigga did. She tried to bargain with the goddess of death, so that her son might come home.
Another of Odin’s sons, Hermod, did her bidding. The journey to Hel was long and dangerous. Perhaps his travels were a metaphor for grief. It is not easy to get through the pain of loss. It takes a long time. We must come face to face with monsters and hardship. We must look honestly at the darkness within ourselves. Then, when we arrive in the depths of despair, the bowels of Hell, when we see the empty eyes of our beloved, and know there is no bringing her back, we begin to heal.
When Hermod found his brother, he discovered that the light and vitality was gone from Balder’s eyes. He was not who he’d once been. Even so, Hermod asked Hel to release him.
“Everything loves Balder. Surely that is reason enough to let him live.”
So Hel made a deal.If every living thing cried for Balder, she would let him go back to the land of the living. If even one thing refused, however, Balder would stay with her.
Grieving Our Losses
Hermod made his way back to the upper world, as most of us eventually do. He gave Hel’s message to his parents, and Frigga again wandered throughout the land, trying desperately to save her son. It was, perhaps, her own way to grieve. On her journey, she spoke of Balder to everyone and everything, remembering his eyes, his smile, his touch. Creature after creature wept with her. Even the cruel giants cried. Except for one.
An old giantess, another Loki-in-disguise, laughed when Frigga asked her to shed tears for Balder. “What did he ever do for me?” Loki asked. “Let Hel keep him.”
And Hel did. And Frigga cried enough tears to fill riverbeds. [3]
Somehow, we must make sense of death. Whether it’s the death of people, pets, homes, or nations, we mourn. We wail, and we rage, we withdraw from the world, and we beg God for release, and then, one day, we begin to surface from this ocean of sadness. We create a story, find meaning, decide there is no meaning, but that we can still live. Somehow, it is enough, and we go on.
Grieving Our Own Deaths
If we are facing our own deaths, the grief process is a little different, but it’s still real. One patient told me recently that death, for her, was like being carried in the air by a hawk, then released, and falling, and falling, and falling, with no one to catch her. She felt frightened and sad. Falling forever didn’t sound appealing.
Another woman, who was so weak she could barely talk, admitted that she felt angry. She didn’t want to die, it was too soon, it wasn’t fair. Her anger wouldn’t help her survive, but it wouldn’t kill her, either. Maybe it gave her courage.
For, as we saw, death can be terrifying. One man, who’d been given a prognosis of months to years, told me that he was so scared of dying, he wanted to die. It sounds funny, but when we’re facing intolerable pain, whether in our bodies or our hearts, we long for some oblivion, and death is one way to get it. Life can get so hard. Ultimately, though, this man didn’t know how to face dying. Few of us do. But at some point, our bodies let go, and we leave this life, whether we’re ready to or not.
Facing Eternity
Some people are sanguine about their end. Of the ones I’ve talked to, most have confidence in a story about eternity. Throughout the world, a belief in a life after death is common. Even for the Norse gods, death would not be forever. After Ragnarok, one of Odin’s sons would rise again and create a new world.
We can’t imagine the death of everything. It’s hard enough to believe in our own deaths. What is it like to have no more consciousness? Is that what death is, a loss of awareness, sensation, knowing? Or is there a life after we die? If so, what’s it like? Do our ghosts wander in some shadowy realm, or is there a glorious heaven? Are we reincarnated until the end of time, until never, until always? If so, what is it that continues on? What is the “us”? Or will the universe simply expand without limit, stretching into oblivion, turning to ice, moving without movement, without purpose, without thought, the atoms from our bodies spreading thin among it all, drifting through space, as lifeless as rock? We make up stories about death, but we really have no idea what it is.
The dying are my teachers. Having journeyed with many of them, perhaps I know something about the process. Certainly, I can make up my own tales, my own platitudes, to keep me calm in the face of a distant oblivion, but when the time comes for me to leave this life, I’m not certain I will be any less terrified than that man who was almost willing to die to escape his death.
The Land Beyond Life
Walt Whitman wrote, “The smallest sprout shows there is really no death.” We take comfort in the cycle of the seasons, in the tale of a new world being born out of the ashes of the old, in the shining eyes of the infant, in the story of a heart rising to become a star. That’s the purpose of the trickster, to remind us of that cycle of chaos and order, creation and destruction, life and death. They are all part of the same whole.
But one day, even the gods will die. The universe will end. “And to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier,” Whitman writes. [4]
I suppose it is lucky that we die. After all, if we lived forever, we would eventually end up floating alone on a burned-out asteroid, streaming without purpose through eternity. Not even a universe lasts.
So we live, and we lose what we love, and we lose our own lives. Others carry on, until they don’t anymore. In the end, it’s all the same thing. Luckier than living forever, certainly. Only our stories can tell us what else death might be, even if they’re not likely to be right.
We can’t imagine that land beyond life. Yet whatever it is, death comes for us all, even for the gods, so we might as well find a way to let go, to fall, not into the kind of nothingness feared by that woman who saw the hawk carrying her, then dropping her. Instead, let us fall into hope, and peace, and maybe even into love. If we don’t know what death is, we might as well imagine it as something good.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- Mark, Joshua J., “Norse Ghosts and the Afterlife,” World History Encyclopedia, last modified December 10, 2018, https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1290/norse-ghosts—the-afterlife/, accessed October 28, 2021, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Niflheim Britannica, The Editors of Encyclopedia, “Niflheim,” Encyclopedia Britannica, 2 Jan. 2008, https://www.britannica.com/topic/Niflheim, accessed 28 October 2021. “Death in Norse Paganism,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_in_Norse_paganism, accessed October 28, 2021.
- See Aigbedion, Irenae, “Tricksters: Change through Chaos,” The First-Year Papers (2010-present), (2009), Trinity College Digital Repository, Hartford, CT, https://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1008&context=fypapers, accessed October 27, 2021 and Ellis, Larry, “Shaman of the Liminal,” Studies in American Indian Literature, Winter 1993, Series 2, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Winter 1993), pp. 55-68, https://www.jstor.org/stable/20736767, accessed October 30, 2021.
- Balder and Ragnarok stories: “The Death of Balder” in Pilling, Ann, Realms of Gold: Myths and Legends from Around the World, New York: Kingfisher Books, 1993, 28-36 and Dronke, Ursula, “Beowulf and Ragnarok,” Saga-Book, 1966-1969, Vol. 17 (1966-1969), Viking Society for Northern Research, https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/48613137 and Mosher, Arthur D., “The Story of Balder’s Death: The Inadequacy of Myth in the Light of Christian Faith,” Scandinavian Studies, Autumn 1983, Vol. 55, No. 4 (Autumn 1983), pp. 305-315, https://www.jstor.org/stable/40918345.
- Whitman, Walt, “Song of Myself: 6,” https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45477/song-of-myself-1892-version.
Photo by Matthias Müllner on Unsplash
Copyright © 2021 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.