Baldr

Snorri calls Baldr Odin's second son and says there is good to tell of him. He is the best of the gods and everyone praises him. He is so fair and so bright that light shines from him, and the whitest of all plants is named after his eyelashes, Baldrs brá. He is the wisest of the Æsir, the most eloquent and the most merciful, yet, Snorri adds, none of his judgements can hold (the sense of the phrase is disputed). He lives in Breiðablik, 'broad-shining', a place in heaven where nothing unclean may be. His mother is Frigg, his wife is Nanna and his son is Forseti.
Baldr dreams that his life is in danger. Frigg makes fire and water, iron and every metal, stones, earth, trees, sicknesses, beasts, birds, poisons and serpents swear not to harm him, and the gods make a game of shooting and striking at him. Loki, disguised as a woman, learns from Frigg that one young shoot growing west of Valhöll, the mistletoe, was not asked to swear. He pulls it up, puts it in the hand of the blind god Höðr and guides his aim. The shaft goes through Baldr and he falls dead: 'the greatest misfortune ever done among gods and men', in Snorri's words.
Baldr is burned on his ship Hringhorni, which only the giantess Hyrrokkin can launch. His wife Nanna dies of grief and is laid on the pyre with him, Thor hallows the fire with Mjölnir, and Odin lays on it the gold ring Draupnir. Hermóðr rides Sleipnir to Hel to ask for him back. Hel agrees on one condition: every thing in the world, living and dead, must weep for him. Everything weeps except a giantess called Þökk, sitting in a cave, who says she will weep dry tears, and people believe she was Loki. So Baldr stays with Hel. The Eddic poem Völuspá says that in the new world after Ragnarök 'Baldr will come', and he and Höðr will live together in Odin's victory-halls.
The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, writing around 1200, tells a very different story: Balderus is a demigod who fights the human hero Hotherus over Nanna. Only a sword kept by the satyr Mimingus can harm him; Hotherus wins it, wounds him in the side, and Balderus dies three days later and is buried in a mound. Snorri's version is the one that shaped the modern picture.