Balder was the most beloved figure in the Norse cosmos, radiant enough that light shone from his skin, and rendered invulnerable by his mother Frigg’s world-spanning campaign of oaths. Then a twig of mistletoe killed him. This episode reconstructs his life from the Poetic Edda, Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda and Saxo Grammaticus’s Gesta Danorum, beginning with the debate between Jacob Grimm’s ‘white’ etymology and the Proto-Germanic root meaning brave and defiant, which suggests a warlike figure softened by Christian-era retelling.

The hosts cover the shared nightmares that sent Odin to raise a seeress in Hel, Merrill Kaplan’s reading of the mistletoe as legally too young to swear an oath, Loki guiding the blind Hod’s hand, and Vali’s same-day vengeance. They then describe the funeral on the ship Hringhorni, launched by the giantess Hyrrokkin who arrived on a wolf, Nanna’s death from grief, Thor kicking the dwarf Litr into the pyre, Hermod’s ride to negotiate with Hel, and the giantess Thokk, probably Loki in disguise, who refused to weep. The episode ends with Saxo’s rival account of a warlord Balderus fighting Hotherus over Nanna, and Balder’s survival as Baeldaeg in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle’s royal genealogies and in street names across Scandinavia.

• The gods’ weapon-throwing game that turned invulnerability into a parlor trick
• Ibn Fadlan’s eyewitness account of a Rus ship burial and its echoes in the myth
• Euhemerism: how Saxo strips the magic and treats gods as exaggerated kings
• Why Balder’s death starts the countdown to Ragnarok
• Baldersgade, Baldersgatan and Baldursgata: the god on modern maps