In Norse Mythology, Balder is the god of innocence, beauty, joy, purity, and peace; The second son of Odin and good things are to be said of him. He is best, and all praise him; he is so fair of feature, and so bright, that light shines from him. A certain herb is so white that it is likened to Baldr's brow; of all grasses it is whitest, and by it thou mayest judge his fairness, both in hair and in body. He is the wisest of the Æsir, and the fairest-spoken and most gracious; and that quality attends him, that none may gainsay his judgments. He dwells in the place called Breidablik, which is in heaven; in that place may nothing unclean be.His death is seen as the first in the chain of events which will ultimately lead to the destruction of the gods at Ragnarok. Baldr will be reborn in the new world, however, as foretold in the Völuspá. With this resurrection in mind, he is classified as a life-death-rebirth deity. He had a dream of his own death (or his mother had the same dreams). Since dreams were usually prophetic, this depressed him, and his mother Frigg made every object on earth vow never to hurt Baldr. All but one, an insignificant weed called the mistletoe, made this vow. Frigg had thought it too unimportant and nonthreatening to bother asking it to make the vow (alternatively, it seemed too young to swear). When Loki, the mischief-maker, heard of this, he made a magical spear from this plant (in some later versions, an arrow). He hurried to the place where the gods were indulging in their new pastime of hurling objects at Baldr, which would bounce off without harming him. Loki gave the spear to Baldr's brother, the blind god Höðr, who then inadvertently killed his brother with it. For this act, Odin and the giantess Rindr gave birth to Váli who grew to adulthood within a day and slew Höðr. (Wikipedia)
