"Under the root, which stretches out
towards the Joetuns, there is Mimir's Well, in which Wisdom and Wit lie
hidden." Longfellow, too, has drunk of Mimir's Well, and hence the rare
charm and witchery of his "Evangeline," "Hiawatha," and "Golden
Legend." This well in the North is better than Castalian fount for the
children of the North.
How much more genial and lovable is Balder, the Northern Sun-god, than
his Grecian counterpart, the lord of the unerring bow, the Southern
genius of light, and poesy, and music! Balder dwelt in his palace of
Breidablick, or Broadview; and in the magical spring-time of the North,
when the fair maiden Iduna breathed into the blue air her genial
breath, he set imprisoned Nature free, and filled the sky with silvery
haze, and called home the stork and crane, summoning forth the tender
buds, and clothing the bare branches with delicate green. "Balder is
the mildest, the wisest, and the most eloquent of all the AEsir," says
the "Edda." A voice of wail went through the palaces of Asgard when
Balder was slain by the mistletoe dart. Hermod rode down to the kingdom
of Hela, or Death, to ransom the lost one. Meantime his body was set
adrift on a floating funeral pyre.
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