All But One

In Snorri, a rider goes nine nights down to Hel, and she names a condition that sounds generous and is not: if everything in the world, living and dead, weeps for Baldr, he goes home. What Snorri lingers on is the weeping itself. The gods send word everywhere, and people weep, and beasts, and the earth, the stones, the trees and every metal — the way, he says, things weep when they come out of frost into warmth. The whole world thaws for him, and it very nearly works. One giantess in a cave, Þökk, offers only dry tears, and people think she was Loki. Still, Völuspá has Baldr come back after Ragnarök, when the earth rises green from the sea, to live with Höðr in Odin's old halls.