Baldur, Through Frey's Eyes
by Raven Kaldera
The
Golden One of Vanaheim was speaking to me, in the vision. I had asked about the
true situation with Baldur, and the one who stepped forward to tell me was not
his one-eyed father, nor his desperate mother, nor his blood-uncle who had
taken his vengeance. It was Frey, the Golden One of Vanaheim, tall and beautiful,
but his joyful green eyes were cast down in gentle sorrow, in remembrance. He
sat next to me without fanfare, and spoke:
You must understand the wyrd of the Golden One. When my mother Nerthus came to me for the first time and told me that I must die for the life of my people, that they might be fed year after year, I told her that they might have all the blood in my body. She told me that was exactly what would happen, but not once and then be done with it. I would have to endure that death every year, autumn after autumn. I would have to walk the Hel Road and return, enduring the pain, and live again knowing that any year could be my last. I must look at the leaves turning and think, Soon I will die. Most important, I must do all this with joy.
This is the path of the Golden One. This is how the bounty and power of Vanaheim is sustained. That is what feeds us, and feeds Asgard too, by our hostage agreement … for Asgard had no Golden One. Until Baldur was born.
We in Vanaheim, we knew what he was, but the Aesir would not see it. They did not understand our ways, and we seemed barbaric to them. They loved Baldur like a talisman, like a good luck charm that must be passed on but the owner cannot bear to give it up. They taught him to reject his destiny, to disbelieve in it.
I tried to tell him. I tried to talk to the kid, but he wouldn’t listen. I tried to make him understand that being the Golden One of Asgard would be an honor; that it was no less wonderful a sacrifice than a warrior makes. But he turned his head away, and they all went with him on that. Then the dreams began, and I knew that his wyrd had come for him. If the Golden One will not agree to die each year, he must die once and for all, in a death that shakes the world.
And that was exactly what happened. He did not go to his death with joy; he did all he could to flee from it, aided and abetted by those who loved him the most. If they had truly loved him for his highest self, and not the bright doll they saw in him, they would have helped him to face his wyrd with pride, with compassion, with understanding. But it was a death done badly. I do not think Flame-Hair even understood fully what he was doing, what force pushed his hand that was so much greater than his own revenge for his wife and children. After all, they call him the Breaker of Worlds; he was the destined tool for the job, wielded by the Fates. That death tore a hole in Ginnungagap, like that of Odin on the Tree, but instead of magical rune-spirits, only chaos came through. It tore about the worlds like a stinking wind, claiming deaths all around. You do not know half of the untold stories, of the other, smaller, tragedies that came that month in all the worlds. Not small to the weeping mourners, perhaps; Baldur’s was not the only boat that sailed that month, and the Hel Road was clogged with honored guests afoot.
And now it is over, and we sit in the ashes of that act. This is wyrd, child. There are wyrds that are flexible, and the Fates can be bargained with … and then there are those that are not. Being a sacrifice is like this. You know that, though; someone must lay down their lives, and to shy from that is to invite disaster. That error rang through the worlds like a terrible bell, and yet was he destined to make it? That I do not know. Perhaps the old ones of Urdabrunnr have some knowledge there. For me, however, I always keep hope that the next time, the next one, he will listen.
Artwork by Righon.