Balder loi 



history, Iiigeborg, Ingegerd, are perhaps derived from 

 Yngvi-Frey. 



Then Tyr : we need not pause to speak much of 

 him. In times long past he had been the chief god of 

 all the Teutonic races, and he is essentially one with 

 the classic Zeus and Jupiter. But before the Norse 

 mythology comes much into view he has sunk to be 

 a secondary character. He is called the God of War. 

 But in the Eddas Odin is really this. So we may 

 speak of Tyr as having become a lesser Odin and no 

 more. 



Another god about whom we hear much in the 

 Younger Edda, the Prose Edda of Snorri, but much less 

 in the Edda lays which have come down to us, is Balder. 

 Most readers know something of the story of this beauti- 

 ful young god, who was slain by accident by his blind 

 brother Hoder, was carried to the under- world, with 

 such universal grief that all nature, save one being only, 

 wept to bring him back to earth. After Balder had 

 been carried down to the kingdom of the dead, the 

 gods sent a messenger to the regent of that kingdom, 

 whose name was Hel,^ to pray her to let the god come 

 back to earth. She promised that she would do so 

 if all things on earth, both living and dead, wept for 

 him. And when the message was brought round, all 

 things did weep, all living things, and earths and stones 

 and trees and metals, 'just as thou hast no doubt seen 

 these tilings weep when they are brought from a cold 

 place into a hot one.' Only one person refused 



1 Our word Hell is, of course, identical witli this word. But in tlie 

 Norse mythology Hel appears not so often as the name for the kingdom 

 of the dead, which is called Helheim, as for the queen of that region. 



