The great ship floated on the sea as she had often done
before, when Balder, full of life and beauty, set all her sails and was
borne joyfully across the tossing seas. Slowly and solemnly the dead god
was carried on board, and as Nanna, his faithful wife, saw her husband
borne for the last time from the earth which he had made dear to her and
beautiful to all men, her heart broke with sorrow, and they laid her
beside Balder on the funeral pyre.
Since the world began no one had seen such a funeral. No bells tolled,
no long procession of mourners moved across the hills, but all the
worlds lay under a deep shadow, and from every quarter came those who
had loved or feared Balder. There at the very water's edge stood Odin
himself, the ravens flying about his head, and on his majestic face a
gloom that no sun would ever lighten again; and there was Frigg, the
desolate mother whose son had already gone so far that he would never
come back to her; there was Frey standing sad and stern in his chariot;
there was Freyja, the goddess of love, from whose eyes fell a shining
rain of tears; there, too, was Heimdal on his horse Goldtop; and around
all these glorious ones from Asgard crowded the children of Jotunheim,
grim mountain giants seamed with scars from Thor's hammer, and frost
giants who saw in the death of Balder the coming of that long winter in
which they should reign through all the worlds.
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