He reached the far end of the bridge, where a maiden stood. She was pale and very beautiful, and she looked at him as if she had never seen anything like him before. Her name was Modgud, and she guarded the bridge.
“Yesterday enough dead men to fill five kingdoms crossed this bridge, but you alone cause it to shake more than they did, though there were men and horses beyond all counting. I can see the red blood beneath your skin. You are not the color of the dead—they are gray, and green, and white, and blue. Your skin has life beneath it. Who are you? Why are you traveling to Hel?”
“I am Hermod,” he told her. “I am a son of Odin, and I am riding to Hel on Odin’s horse to find Balder. Have you seen him?”
“No one who saw him could ever forget it,” she said. “Balder the beautiful crossed this bridge nine days ago. He went to Hel’s great hall.”
“I thank you,” said Hermod. “That is where I also must go.”
“It is downward, and northward,” she told him. “Always go down, and keep traveling north. You will reach Hel’s gate.”
Hermod rode on. He rode northerly, and he followed the path down until he saw before him a huge high wall and the gates to Hel, which were higher than the tallest tree. Then he dismounted from his horse, and he tightened the girth strap. He remounted, and holding tight to the saddle, he urged Sleipnir faster and faster, and at the last it leapt, a jump like no horse has made before or since, and it cleared the gates of Hel and landed safely upon the other side, in Hel’s domain, where no living person can ever go.
Hermod rode to the great hall of the dead, dismounted, and walked inside. Balder, his brother, was seated at the head of the table, at the seat of honor. Balder was pale; his skin was the color of the world on a gray day, when there is no sun. He sat and drank the mead of Hel, and ate her food. When he saw Hermod he told him to sit beside him and spend the night with them at the table. On the other side of Balder was Nanna, his wife, and next to her, and not in the best of tempers, was a dwarf called Lit.
In Hel’s world, the sun never rises and the day can never begin.
Hermod looked across the hall, and he saw a woman of peculiar beauty. The right side of her body was the color of flesh, but the left-hand side of her body was dark and ruined, like that of a week-old corpse that you might find hanging from a tree in the forest or frozen into the snow, and Hermod knew that this was Hel, Loki’s daughter, whom the all-father had set to rule over the lands of the dead.
“I have come for Balder,” said Hermod to Hel. “Odin himself sent me. All things there are mourn him. You must give him back to us.”
Hel was impassive. One green eye stared at Hermod, and one sunken, dead eye. “I am Hel,” she said simply. “The dead come to me, and they do not return to the lands above. Why should I let Balder go?”
“All things mourn him. His death unites us all in misery, god and frost giant, dwarf and elf. The animals mourn him, and the trees. Even the metals weep. The stones dream that brave Balder will return to the lands that know the sun. Let him go.”
Hel said nothing. She watched Balder with her mismatched eyes. And then she sighed. “He is the most beautiful thing, and, I think, the best thing, ever to come to my realm. But if it is truly as you say, if all things mourn Balder, if all things love him, then I will give him back to you.”
Hermod threw himself at her feet. “That is noble of you. Thank you! Thank you, great queen!”
She looked down at him. “Get up,” she said. “I have not said I will give him back. This is your task, Hermod. Go and ask them. All the gods and the giants, all the rocks and the plants. Ask everything. If all things in the world weep for him and want him to return, I will give Balder back to the Aesir and the day. But if one creature will not cry or speaks against him, then he stays with me forever.”
Hermod got to his feet. Balder led him from the hall, and he gave Hermod Odin’s ring, Draupnir, to return to Odin, as evidence that Hermod had been to Hel. Nanna gave him a linen robe for Frigg and a golden ring for Fulla, Frigg’s handmaiden. Lit just grimaced and made rude gestures.
Hermod clambered back on Sleipnir. This time the gates of Hel were opened for him, as he left, and he retraced his steps. He crossed the bridge, and eventually he saw daylight once again.
In Asgard Hermod returned the arm-ring Draupnir to Odin, the all-father, and told him all that had happened and all that he had seen.
While Hermod was in the underworld, Odin had had a son to replace Balder; this son, named Vali, was the son of Odin and the goddess Rind. Before he was a day old, the baby found and slew Hod. So Balder’s death was avenged.
VI