"Never can I sleep
In my couch by the strand,
For the wild, restless waves
Rolling over the sand,
For the scream of the seagulls,
For the mew as he cries,
These sounds chase for ever
Sweet sleep from mine eyes."
Then, putting on a pair of snow-skates, she set off more swiftly than the wind, and Niörd never saw more of her. Ever afterwards, with her bow in her hand, she spent her time in chasing wild animals over the snow, and she is the queen and patroness of all skaters.
The next story is about Baldur, of whom Har says "that he is the best of the sons of Odin. So fair and dazzling that rays of light seem to issue from him, and thou mayest form some idea of the beauty of his hair when I tell thee that the whitest of all plants is called 'Baldur's brow'" (a plant in Sweden still called Baldur's eyebrow). Baldur is the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the Æsir.
"Broad glance 'tis called
Where Baldur the Fair
Hath built him a bower
In that land where I know
The least loathliness lieth."
CHAPTER VI.
BALDUR.
PART I. THE DREAM.
Upon a summer's afternoon it happened that Baldur the Bright and Bold, beloved of men and Æsir, found himself alone in his palace of Broadblink. Thor was walking low down among the valleys, his brow heavy with summer heat; Frey and Gerda sported on still waters in their cloud-leaf ship; Odin, for once, slept on the top of Air Throne; a noon-day stillness pervaded the whole earth; and Baldur in Broadblink, the wide-glancing most sunlit of palaces, dreamed a dream.