Baldur the Beautiful dies by mistletoe, waits in Hel, and is promised return after Ragnarok. Beowulf remembers a brother-slaying that looks a lot like Hod and Baldur. What do those northern stories have to do with Christ?

In this Life, Death, and Meaning with Beowulf and Boethius episode, Dr. Andrew Snyder retells Baldur’s death and “resurrection,” notes the Herebeald/Haethcyn contact in Beowulf, and turns to C.S. Lewis’s “Myth Became Fact”: if the gospel is the myth that entered history under Pontius Pilate, pagan dying-rising gods are not a threat but expected shadows of the Logos. Christ is more than Baldur, not less.

Part of the Beowulf & Boethius / Life, Death, and Meaning series.