The Celtic Sun Hero and the Norse Balder.
It is proposed at this point to give you the means of comparing the story of the Sun-god of the Celts with that of Balder. The latter, as given in old Norse literature, is approximately as follows:[1]—
Balder was one of the sons of Woden and Frigg: he was the best of the Anses and praised of them all. He was so fair of face and so bright that rays of shining light issued from his body. The whitest of all plants was compared to Balder's brow and known by that name, whence an idea may be formed, says one author,[2] of the beauty of his hair and of his body. He was not only the whitest, the sweetest-spoken and the mildest of all the Anses, but it was a property of his nature that he could not go wrong in his judgments. He dwelt in a place in heaven called Breiᵭablik or Broad-gleam, the most blessed of all lands, where nought unclean or accursed could abide. But once on a time Balder began
- ↑ The sources which I have consulted are the following: the Prose Edda in Edda Snorronis Sturlæi (Copenhagen, 1848), i. 90-2, 102, 104, 172-86; Vigfusson & Powell, Corpus Poet. Bor. i. 69, 71, 104, 108, 114, 181-3, 197, 201, 574-5, ij. 23, 623-4, 628, 637, 641-8; Simrock, Die Edda (Stuttgart, 1855), pp. 292-3, 295-6, 299, 316-20.
- ↑ What plant or flower he referred to is not quite certain; the cotula foetida, pyrethrum inodorum, and the eye-bright or euphrasy, are mentioned in Vigfussun's Icelandic Dictionary, s.v. Baldr.
donn, 'brown or dark,' ij. 85; but the words are separated by the artifice or the straits of the poet, and the editor, taking a view different from mine, treats Donn as a separate name, ij. 89. The conjecture that Diarmait is to be reckoned as belonging to the Ivernians, is in some measure corroborated by the fact that hitherto no successful attempt has been made to explain his name as Celtic, and that the same remark applies to that of Duben.
