“Balder, the Beautiful, shall ne’er
From Hel return to upper air!
Betrayed by Loki, twice betrayed,
The prisoner of Death is made;
Ne’r shall he ’scape the place of doom
Till fatal Ragnarok be come!”
Valhalla (J. C. Jones).
The sole consolation left Odin was to fulfill the decree of fate. He therefore departed and achieved the difficult courtship of Rinda, which we have already described. She bore Vali, the Avenger, who, coming into Asgard on the very day of his birth, slew Hodur with his sharp arrow. Thus he punished the murderer of Balder according to the true Northern creed.
The physical explanation of this myth is either the daily setting of the sun (Balder), which sinks beneath the western waves, driven away by darkness (Hodur), or the end of the short Northern summer and reign of the long winter season. “Balder represents the bright and clear summer, when twilight and daylight kiss each other and go hand in hand in these Northern latitudes.”
“Balder’s pyre, of the sun a mark,