60 MYTHOLOGY AND RELIGIOUS RITES. 
most beautiful, virtuous, and gentle of all the goddesses, ever ready to grant 
the prayer and petitions of man. 
She loved music, spring, and flowers, and was particularly fond of the 
Elwes (fairies). The Scalds also drew their inspiration for their love songs from 
her. Her husband Odur left her and travelled into distant countries ; when 
she found after some time that he did not return, she went in search of him, 
but without success. She began therefore to lament and weep her loss; 
but her tears became gold and her lamentation the sweetest melodies. 
She is always described as attended by two of her maids ( pl. 13, fig. 4). 
The strangest figure in the whole circle of Scandinavian gods is Loke, 
the ever fickle, the disturbing element. He is the symbol of the resisting . 
force in the material world against the laws of nature, the embodiment of 
that wild, unruly recklessness which breaks down all barriers that will yield 
to its strength. In the spiritual world he represents arbitrariness, untruth, 
falsehood, frivolity, impudence, sin, and generally all evil in the world 
arising from its compound nature of spirit and matter. 
Locke or Loke, for he is called by either name, was the son of the giant 
Farbauti, and surpassed most created beings in beauty, skill, agility, as 
well as in craftiness and perfidy. He appeared as if belonging neither to 
heaven nor to hell, but partaking of the virtues of the one and vices of the 
other. He remained on indifferently good terms with the gods, into the 
company of whom he had forced himself, and he delighted equally in 
bringing them into difficulties and in extricating them again out of the 
danger by his cunning, wit, and skill. His greatest crime was the plan 
which he devised and which resulted in the death of Baldur, the best and 
most beloved of the gods. 
This Baldur was a son of Odin and Frigga, and is described in the. Edda 
as “so fair and dazzling in favor and features, that rays of light seem to 
issue from him, and of so fair a head that the eee of all plants is called 
Baldur’s brow. Baldur is, moreover, the mildest, wisest, and the most 
eloquent of the Asir, yet such is his nature that the judgment he has pro- 
nounced can never be altered.” For a long time he lived in happiness by 
the side of his wife Vana in his splendid palace Brecdablik (far shining 
splendor) until he dreamed one night that his life was in danger. 
Disturbed by this dream he related it to the gods. His mother, who 
became alarmed, sought to prevent all danger by making everything 
animate or inanimate, fire, water, earth, animals, stones, trees, and reptiles, 
take an oath that they would not hurt him. Baldur being now thought 
invulnerable, the gods amused themselves by making him a target at which 
they discharged arrows, stones, and swords, without occasioning him any 
injury, all things that had taken the oath being mindful not to hurt him. 
But Loke, who hated and envied this pure being, was hatching a malicious 
trick. Disguised as an old woman he elicited from Frigga the avowal 
that, deeming the mistletoe too weak and insignificant to do harm, she had 
omitted to take the oath from it. Loke immediately went in search of the 
mistletoe, which he found and returned with it to the assembly. He now 
persuaded Héduwr, who was blind, and had taken no part in the sport, to 
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