I heard a voice, that cried, “Balder the Beautiful Is dead, is dead!” And through the misty air, Passed like the mournful cry, Of sunward sailing cranes.
They launched the burning ship! It floated far away, Over the misty sea, Till like the sun it seemed, Sinking beneath the waves. Balder returned no more!
So perish the old Gods! But out of the sea of Time, Rises a new land of song, Fairer than the old Over its meadows green, Walk the young bards and sing. The law of force is dead! The law of love prevails! Thor, the thunderer, Shall rule the earth no more, No more, with threats, Challenge the meek Christ.
Selections from Tegnér's Drapa, by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Thanks to Hollywood’s overactive imagination, most of us are already familiar with Thor, Odin, Loki, and the rest of the Nordic Brady Bunch. But there's another god — one of the best and brightest in fact —whose story has yet to be Marvelized. He is Baldur the Bright. Baldur the Brave. Baldur the Impossibly Exquisite. I imagine Baldur the Movie would run something like Terminator 2, if Arnold Schwarzenegger had been an Abercrombie & Fitch model and also not a robot.
Contrary to most of the Aesir — who could be vengeful, moody, or despotic but mostly a combination of all three — Baldur was reasonable and well-loved by all. Thanks to his mother, Frigg, he was also nearly invincible.
Despite his wide admiration, however, there’s always going to be that one insecure person in the room who feels threatened by the invincible, awesome guy. And, goshdarnit, just isn’t going to stand for it. Loki, whose “pranks” most definitely stray into the war crimes category, eventually ferrets out news of the one plant whose Baldur application got lost in the mail, fashions a spear out of it, and entrusts it to the steady hands of a blind god named Hoeder. Amazingly, it strikes home, killing Baldur and plunging the divine council into an existential crises.
Stunned with grief, Hermod, Frigg’s son and Baldur’s brother make a deal with Hel to release him on the condition that every single object on earth weep bitter tears for him. All do . . . except Loki, who disguised himself as a doddery giantess and hid in a cave counting silverfish until everything calmed down. No deal as far as Hel is concerned. Baldur’s immortal soul would stay imprisoned forever in the underworld. His mortal frame would be tucked into a ship and set ablaze, setting in motion the onset of Ragnarök and Asgard’s eventual ruin.
In his poem, Tegnér's Drapa, Longfellow identifies a correlation between the mythic event of Baldur’s death, and the real-world collapse of Norse paganism itself. For back in cold Scandanavian reality, the Vikings were encountering their own existential crisis. It turns out that, despite their prowess in battle, it was hard to build a stable society on Odin’s chaotic, bloodthirsty principles.
From the ashes of this old world, a new power would rise — not a superior war-machine, but a superior worldview. A new Branch. Not the death-bringing Holly, but the life-bringing “meek Christ,” who would himself be pierced for our transgressions. Thus, between the late 10th and 11th centuries, and through the tireless labors of faithful missionaries, most vikings had abandoned the old ways and converted to Christianity.
By all accounts, it truly was a time “fairer than the old.”
No More With Threats
So what does all this Norse nonsense have to do with us, on this 31st day of October, in the year 2023?
For those who may not know, today is All Saints Day. Better known among Protestants as Reformation Day. Even better known among Protestants as the day when a rogue monk decided to nail up his “95 Beefs With the Papacy” to the Castle Church door in Wittenberg. It would be the first of many matches that would eventually light the funeral pyre of a once-monolithic christopagan establishment.
In the wake of Luther’s newfound biblicism, a flood of light would wash over the beaten German people. Faith, not priestcraft, would emerge as the cornerstone of God’s kingdom. In those bright days, “A poor milk-maid milking, if done in faith, is more glorious than the conquests of Caesar or Alexander.” This was a far, and welcome, cry from the rigid sacred/secular division that had aliented so many sincere folk from the tender heart of Christ.
All this to say that throughout history, various peoples and powers have burst onto the scene like meteors — seemingly unstoppable entities with totalizing powers. During such times, the already poor are ground into ever-finer powder, the pious are assaulted, and the Word of God is blasphemed.
But here is a call for the endurance of the saints. The old gods, still present in some withered capacity, have already been disarmed and put to open shame. Their threats and thunder — their windbagging puppets — are as but wind and cloud. Though the shade from Thor’s tree may now seem thick and impenetrable, we can hope, and pray, for a new wind of God to blow it down, letting in times of revival and refreshing.
In these days of darkness, may Christians once again take up the Protestant battlecry, “After darkness, Light!” And may the grace of God, and the courage of the saints, see it done.
In due season we will reap, if we do not give up.