Hodr

Snorri gives Höðr only a few lines in his list of the Æsir. He is blind and very strong, and the gods would rather not have to name him, 'because his handiwork will long be remembered among gods and men'. Snorri's list of poetic names for him in Skáldskaparmál adds 'the blind god', 'Baldr's slayer', 'shooter of the mistletoe', 'Hel's companion' and 'Váli's foe', and calls him a son of Odin, which would make him Baldr's brother; Gylfaginning itself never names his parents. In the surviving texts the blindness is Snorri's detail: Völuspá and Baldrs draumar, the Eddic poems that name Höðr, make him Baldr's killer but never call him blind.
His one scene is Baldr's death (Gylfaginning 49). Frigg had made everything swear not to harm Baldr, and the gods made a game of shooting and striking at him. Höðr stood at the edge of the ring because he was blind. Loki, who had learned from Frigg that the young mistletoe had sworn no oath, came to him with a shoot of it and asked why he was not shooting. Höðr answered that he could not see where Baldr was and had no weapon. Loki told him to honour Baldr as the others did and offered to show him where to aim, and Höðr shot. The shaft went through Baldr and he fell dead. No one could take vengeance there, Snorri says, because the place was a great sanctuary. Völuspá 31–32 tells the same moment in verse: the slender mistletoe became a dangerous shaft of grief, and Höðr shot. In Baldrs draumar 9 a dead seeress tells Odin beforehand that Höðr will be Baldr's bane.
Vengeance came from a son born for it. Völuspá 32–33 says that Baldr's brother was born soon after and fought when one night old; he did not wash his hands or comb his hair until he had brought Baldr's adversary to the pyre. Baldrs draumar 11 names him: Rindr bears Váli in the western halls. Völuspá in skamma, preserved inside Hyndluljóð, says Váli slew his brother's killer, and Snorri's kennings call Váli 'Höðr's foe and slayer'. Gylfaginning itself never tells Höðr's death and moves straight to Loki's punishment. Both brothers come back. Völuspá 62 says Höðr and Baldr will live together in Odin's victory-halls in the new world, and in Gylfaginning 53 the two come from Hel to sit with the surviving gods, talking over their secret lore and the old days of the Midgard Serpent and Fenrir.
The Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, writing around 1200, tells a separate story in Book 3 of his Gesta Danorum. His Hotherus is a human prince, son of the Swedish king Hothbrodus and foster-son of King Gevarus, whose daughter Nanna he loves. Balderus, a son of Othinus, wants her too; the forest maidens who advise Hotherus warn him that Balderus is a demigod. Hotherus is not blind: Saxo praises him as a swimmer, an archer and a musician. He forces the satyr Mimingus to give up the one sword that can wound Balderus, wins a sea battle against the gods by cutting Thor's club off at the haft, and marries Nanna. Balderus later beats him twice, but Hotherus wounds him in the side on a chance meeting, and Balderus dies three days after. Othinus then fathers Bous on Rinda, and Bous kills Hotherus in battle, dying of his own wounds the next day. The two traditions share the names, the killing and the avenger born to Rind; which is closer to the older myth is debated.