d it reverently down to the deep sea, which lay, calm as a
summer afternoon, waiting for its precious burden. Close to the water's
edge lay Balder's Ringhorn, the greatest of all the ships that sailed
the seas, but when the gods tried to launch it they could not move it an
inch. The great vessel creaked and groaned, out no one could push it
down to the water. Odin walked about it with a sad face, and the gentle
ripple of the little waves chasing each other over the rocks seemed a
mocking laugh to him.

"Send to Jotunheim for Hyrroken," he said at last; and a messenger was
soon flying for that mighty giantess.

In a little time, Hyrroken came riding swiftly on a wolf so large and
fierce that he made the gods think of Fenrer. When the giantess had
alighted, Odin ordered four Berserkers of mighty strength to hold the
wolf, but he struggled so angrily that they had to throw him on the
ground before they could control him. Then Hyrroken went to the prow of
the ship and with one mighty effort sent it far into the sea, the
rollers underneath bursting into flame, and the whole earth trembling
with the shock. Thor was so angry at the uproar that he would have
killed the giantess on the spot if he had not been held back by the
other gods. 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 J