Rinda and Odin had a son by name Bous. The latter, to avenge the death of his brother Balder, attacked Hotherus, who fell in the conflict. But Bous himself was severely wounded and died the following day from his wounds. Hotherus was followed on the Danish throne by his son Röricus.
In the examination of this narrative in Saxo there is no hope of arriving at absolutely positive results unless the student lays aside all current presuppositions and, in fact, all notions concerning the origin and age of the Balder-myth, concerning a special Danish myth in opposition to a special Norse-Icelandic, &c. If the latter conjecture based on Saxo is correct, then this is to appear as a result of the investigation; but the conjecture is not to be used as a presupposition.
That which first strikes the reader is that the story is not homogeneous. It is composed of elements that could not be blended into one harmonious whole. It suffers from intrinsic contradictions. The origin of these contradictions must first of all be explained.
The most persistent contradiction concerns the sword of victory of which Hotherus secured possession.[6] We are assured that it is of immense value (ingens præmium), and is attended with the success of victory (belli fortuna comitaretur), and Hotherus is, in fact, able with the help of this sword to accomplish a great exploit: put Thor and other gods to flight. But then Hotherus is conquered again and again by Balder, and finally also defeated by Bous and slain, in spite of the fact that Gevarus had assured him that this sword should always be victorious. To be sure, Hotherus succeeds after several defeats in giving Balder his death-wound, but this is not done in a battle, and can hardly be counted as a victory; and Hotherus is not able to commit this secret murder by aid of this sword alone, but is obliged to own a belt of victory and to eat a wonderful food, which gives Balder his strength, before he can accomplish this deed.
There must be some reason why Saxo fell into this contradiction, which is so striking, and is maintained throughout the narrative. If Hotherus-Hödr in the mythology possessed a sword which always gives victory and is able to conquer the gods themselves, then the mythology can not have contained anything about defeats suffered by him after he got possession of this sword, nor can he then have fallen in conflict with Odin's and Rind's son. The only way in which this could happen would be that Hotherus-Hödr, after getting possession of the sword of victory, and after once having used it to advantage, in some manner was robbed of it again. But Saxo has read nothing of the sort in his sources, otherwise he would have mentioned it, if for no other reason than for the purpose of giving a cause for the defeat suffered by his hero, and it is doubtless his opinion that the sword with which Balder is mortally wounded is the same as the one Hotherus took from Mimingus. Hence, either Hödr has neither suffered the defeats mentioned by Saxo nor fallen by the sword of the brother-avenging son of Odin and Rind, or he has never possessed the sword of victory here mentioned. It is not necessary to point out in which of these alternatives we have the mythological fact. Hödr has never possessed the irresistible sword.
But Saxo has not himself invented the episode concerning the sword of victory, nor has he introduced this episode in his narrative about Hotherus without thinking he had good reason therefor.
It follows with certainty that the episode belongs to the saga of another hero, and that things were found in that saga which made it possible for Saxo to confound him with Hödr.
The question then arises who this hero was. The first thread the investigation finds, and has to follow, is the name itself, Hotherus, within which Latin form Oder can lie concealed as well as Hödr.
In the mythology Odr, like Hödr, was an inhabitant of Asgard, but nevertheless, like Hödr, he has had hostile relations to Asgard, and in this connection he has fought with Thor (see No. 103). The similarity of the names and the similarity of the mythological situation are sufficient to explain the confusion on the part of Saxo. But there are several other reasons, of which I will give one. The weapon with which Hoder slew Balder in the mythology was a young twig, Mistelteinn. The sword of victory made by Volund, with hostile intentions against the gods, could, for the very reason that it was dangerous to Asgard, be compared by skalds with the mistletoe, and be so called in a poetic-rhetorical figure. The fact is, that both in Skirnersmal and in Fjölsvinnsmal the Volund sword is designated as a teinn; that the mistletoe is included in the list of sword-names in the Younger Edda; and that in the later Icelandic saga-literature mistelteinn is a sword which is owned in succession by Saming, Thráinn, and Romund Greipson; and finally, that all that is there said about this sword mistelteinn is a faithful echo of the sword of victory made by Volund, though the facts are more or less confused. Thus we find, for example, that it is Máni Karl who informs Romund where the sword is to be sought, while in Saxo it is the moon-god Gevar, Nanna's father, who tells Hotherus where it lies hid. That the god Máni and Gevar are identical has already been proved (see Nos. 90, 91, 92). Already before Saxo's time the mistelteinn and the sword of victory of the mythology had been confounded with each other, and Hoder's and Oder's weapons had received the same name. This was another reason for Saxo to confound Hoder and Oder and unite them in Hotherus. And when he found in some of his sources that a sword mistelteinn was used by Oder, and in others that a mistelteinn was wielded by Hoder, it was natural that he as a historian should prefer the sword to the fabulous mistletoe (see more below).
The circumstance that two mythical persons are united into one in Hotherus has given Saxo free choice of making his Hotherus the son of the father of the one or of the other. In the mythology Hoder is the son of Odin; Oder-Svipdag is the son of Orvandel. Saxo has made him a son of Hoddbrodd, who is identical with Orvandel. It has already been demonstrated (see No. 29) that Helge Hundingsbane is a copy of the Teutonic patriarch Halfdan. The series of parallels by which this demonstration was made clear at the same time makes it manifest that Helge's rival Hoddbrodd is Halfdan's rival Orvandel. The same place as is occupied in the Halfdan myth by Orvandel, Hoddbrodd occupies in the songs concerning Helge Hundingsbane. What we had a right to expect, namely, that Saxo, when he did not make Hotherus the son of Hoder's father, should make him a son of Oder's, has actually been done, whence there can be no doubt that Hoder and Oder were united into one in Saxo's Hotherus.