After this investigation which is to be continued more elaborately in another volume, I now return to the Merseburg formula:
"Fall and Odin
Went to the wood,
Then the foot was sprained
Of Balder's foal."
With what here is said about Balder's steed, we must compare what Saxo relates about Balder himself: Adeo in adversam corporis valetudinem incidit, ut ni pedibus quidem incedere posset (Hist., 120).
The misfortune which happened first to Balder and then to Balder's horse must be counted among the warnings which foreboded the death of the son of Odin. There are also other passages which indicate that Balder's horse must have had a conspicuous signification in the mythology, and the tradition concerning Balder as rider is preserved not only in northern sources (Lokasenna, Gylfaginning), and in the Merseburg formula, but also in the German poetry of the middle ages. That there was some witchcraft connected with this misfortune which happened to Balder's horse is evident from the fact that the magic songs sung by the goddesses accompanying him availed nothing. According to the Norse ancient records, the women particularly exercise the healing art of witchcraft (compare Groa and Sigrdrifva), but still Odin has the profoundest knowledge of the secrets of this art; he is galdrs fadir (Veg., 3). And so Odin comes in this instance, and is successful after the goddesses have tried in vain. We must fancy that the goddesses make haste to render assistance in the order in which they ride in relation to Balder, for the event would lose its seriousness if we should conceive Odin as being very near to Balder from the beginning, but postponing his activity in order to shine afterwards with all the greater magic power, which nobody disputed.
The goddesses constitute two pairs of sisters: Sinhtgunt and her sister Sunna, and Frigg and her sister Fulla. According to the Norse sources, Frigg is Balder's mother. According to the same records, Fulla is always near Frigg, enjoys her whole confidence, and wears a diadem as a token of her high rank among the goddesses. An explanation of this is furnished by the Merseburg formula, which informs us that Fulla is Frigg's sister, and so a sister of Balder's mother. And as Odin is Balder's father, we find in the Merseburg formula the Balder of the Norse records, surrounded by the kindred assigned to him in these records.
Under such circumstances it would be strange, indeed, if Sinhtgunt and the sun-dis, Sunna, did not also belong to the kin of the sun-god, Balder, as they not only take part in this excursion of the Balder family, but are also described as those nearest to him, and as the first who give him assistance.
The Norse records have given to Balder as wife Nanna, daughter of that divinity which under Odin's supremacy is the ward of the atmosphere and the owner of the moon-ship. If the continental Teutons in their mythological conceptions also gave Balder a wife devoted and faithful as Nanna, then it would be in the highest degree improbable that the Merseburg formula should not let her be one of those who, as a body-guard, attend Balder on his expedition to the forest. Besides Frigg and Fulla, there are two goddesses who accompany Balder. One of them is a sun-dis, as is evident from the name Sunna; the other, Sinhtgunt, is, according to Bugge's discriminating interpretation of this epithet, the dis "who night after night has to battle her way." A goddess who is the sister of the sun-dis, but who not in the daytime but in the night has to battle on her journey across the sky, must be a goddess of the moon, a moon-dis. This moon-goddess is the one who is nearest at hand to bring assistance to Balder. Hence she can be none else than Nanna, who we know is the daughter of the owner of the moon-ship. The fact that she has to battle her way across the sky is explained by the Norse mythic statement, according to which the wolf-giant Hate is greedy to capture the moon, and finally secures it as his prey (Völuspa, Gylfaginning). In the poem about Helge Hjorvardson, which is merely a free reproduction of the materials in the Balder-myth (which shall be demonstrated in the second part of this work), the giant Hate is conquered by the hero of the poem, a Balder figure, whose wife is a dis, who, "white" herself, has a shining horse (str. 25, 28), controls weather and harvests (str. 28), and makes nightly journeys on her steed, and "inspects the harbours" (str. 25).
The name Nanna (from the verb nenna; cp. Vigfusson, Lex.) means "the brave one." With her husband she has fought the battles of light, and in the Norse, as in the Teutonic, mythology, she was with all her tenderness a heroine.
The Merseburg formula makes the sun-dis and the moon-dis sisters. The Norse variation of the Teutonic myth has done the same. Vafthrudnersmal and Gylfaginning (ch. 11) inform us that the divinities which govern the chariots of the sun and moon were brother and sister, but from the masculine form Máni Gylfaginning has drawn the false conclusion that the one who governed the car of the moon was not a sister but a brother of the sun. In the mythology a masculine divinity Máni was certainly known, but he was the father of the sun-dis and moon-dis, and identical with Gevarr-Nökkvi-Nefr, the owner of the moon-ship. The god Máni is the father of the sun-dis for the same reason as Nat is the mother of Dag.
Vafthrudnersmal informs us that the father of the managers of the sun- and moon-cars was called Mundilföri. We are already familiar with this mythic personality (see Nos. 81-83) as the one who is appointed to superintend the mechanism of the world, by whose Möndull the starry firmament is revolved. It is not probable that the power governing the motion of the stars is any other than the one who under Odin's supremacy is ruler of the sun and moon, and ward of all the visible phenomena in space, among which are also the stars. As, by comparison of the old records, we have thus reached the conclusion that the managers of the sun and moon are daughters of the ward of the atmosphere, and as we have also learned that they are daughters of him who superintends the motion of the constellations, we are unable to see anything but harmony in these statements. Mundilföri and Gevarr-Nökkvi-Nefr are the same person.