The outline gathered from the poems is as follows:  Baldr, Odin’s son, is killed by his brother Hoed through a mistletoe spray; Loki is in some way concerned in his death, which is an overwhelming misfortune to the Gods; but it is on Hoed that his death is avenged.  He is burnt on a pyre (Snorri says on his ship, a feature which must come from the Viking age; Hyndluljod substitutes howe-burial).  He will be absent from the great fight at Ragnaroek, but Voeluspa adds that he will return afterwards.  Nanna has nothing to do with the story.  The connexion with the hierarchy of the Aesir seems external only, since Baldr has no apparent relation to the great catastrophe as have Odin, Thor, Frej, Tyr and Loki; this, then, would point to the independence of his myth.

The genuineness of the myth seems to depend on whether the mistletoe is an original feature of it or not, and on this point there can be little real doubt.  The German theory that Baldr could only be killed by his own sword, which was therefore disguised by enchantment and used against him, and that the Icelandic writers misunderstood this to mean a mistletoe sprig, is far-fetched and romantic, and crumbles at a touch.  For if, as it is claimed, the Icelanders had no mistletoe, why should they introduce it into a story to which it did not belong?  They might preserve it by tradition, but they would hardly invent it.  Granting this, the mistletoe becomes the central point of the legend.  The older mythologists, who only saw in it a sun-myth, overlooked the fact that since any weapon would have done to kill the God with, the mistletoe must have some special significance; and if it is a genuine part of the story, as we have no reason to doubt, it will be hard to overturn Dr. Frazer’s theory that the Baldr-myth is a relic of tree-worship and the ritual sacrifice of the God, Baldr being a tree-spirit whose soul is contained in the mistletoe.

The contradictions in the story, especially as told by Snorri (such as the confusion between the parts played by Hoed and Loki, and the unsuspicious attitude of the Gods as Loki directs Hoed’s aim) are sometimes urged against its genuineness.  They are rather proofs of antiquity.  Apparent contradictions whose explanation is forgotten often survive in tradition; the inventor of a new story takes care to make it consistent.  It is probable, however, that there were originally only two actors in the episode, the victim and the slayer, and that Loki’s part is later than Hoed’s, for he really belongs to the Valhall and Ragnaroek myth, and was only introduced here as a link.  The incident of the oath extracted from everything on earth to protect Baldr, which occurs in Snorri and in a paper MS. of Baldr’s Dreams, was probably invented to explain the choice of weapon, which would certainly need explanation to an Icelandic audience.  If Dr. Frazer’s theory be right, Vali, who slew the slayer, must also have been an original figure in the legend.  His antiquity is supported by the fact that he plays the part of avenger in the poems; while in Snorri, where he is mentioned as a God, his absence from the account of Baldr’s death is only a part of that literary development by which real responsibility for the murder was transferred from Hoed to Loki.