TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY VOL. I

CHAPTER XL
rALTAR (BALDER).
The myth of
Balder, one of the most ingenious and beautiful in
the Edda, has happily for us been also handed down in a later
form with variations :
and there is no better example of fluctuations
in a god-myth. The Edda sets forth, how the pure blameless deity
is struck with Mistiltein by the blind Ho5r, and must go down to
the nether world, bewailed by all ; nothing can fetch him back, and
Nanna the true w T ife follows him in death. In Saxo, all is pitched
in a lower key Balder and Hother are rival : suitors, both wooing
Nanna, and Hother the favoured one manages to procure a magic
sword, by which alone his enemy is vulnerable when the fortune
;
of war has wavered long between them, Hother is at last victorious
and slays the demigod, to whom Hel, glad at the near prospect of
possessing him, shews herself beforehand. But here the grand
funeral pile is prepared for Gelder, a companion of Balder, of whom
the account in the Edda knows nothing whatever. The worship of
the god
is attested chiefly by the Fri(5]?iofssaga, v. Fornald. sb g. 2,
63 seq. (see Suppl.).
Baldr, gen. Baldrs, reappears in the OHG. proper name Paltar
(in Meichelbeck no. 450. 460. 611) 5
1
and in the AS. bealdor, baldor,
signifying a lord, prince, king, and seemingly used only with a gen.
pi. before it : gumena baldor, CsBdm. 163, 4.
wigena baldor, Jud.
132, 47. sinca bealdor, Beow. 4852. winia bealdor 5130. It is
remarkable that in the Cod. exon. 276,18 nuegSa bealdor (virginum
princeps) is said even of a maiden. I know of only a few examples
in the OX. : baldur i
brynju, Seem. 272 b and herbaldr 218 b are
,
used for a hero in general ; atgeirs baldr (lanceae vir), Fornm. sog.
5, 307. This conversion from a proper name to a noun appellative
1
Graff 1,
432 thinks this name stands for Paltaro, and is a compound of
aro (aar, aquila), but this is
unsupported by analogy ; in the ninth and tenth
centuries, weak forms are not yet curtailed, and we always find Epuraro
(eberaar, boar-eagle), never Epurar.