\u201cDau\u00f0i Baldrs ins G\u00f3\u00f0a\u201d was commissioned by a Swiss radio station in late 2006 and was first broadcasted in April 2007. The sole imperative was to be inspired by the famous theme of the third movement \u2013 titled Marche fun\u00e8bre<\/em> \u2013 from Fr\u00e9d\u00e9ric Chopin’s Piano Sonata No. 2. This theme has become one of the two major archetypal evocations of death in Western classical music and was already exploited by metal bands like Bathory, Candlemass, Carnivore and The Great Kat. Therefore, we wanted to offer a short funeral doom version related to the burial of the Norse god Baldr, according to the detailed narrative of the 13th-century Icelandic author Snorri Sturluson in his Gylfaginning<\/em> and the sparse information provided by the Eddic poem V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em>, \u201cThe Prophecy of the Seeress\u201d.<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n Baldr, son of \u00d3\u00f0inn and Frigg, is a fair god \u201cso bright that light shines from him\u201d; despite his near invulnerability like the Greek hero Achilles, he was however killed by his blind brother H\u00f6\u00f0r guided by the divine troublemaker Loki. It is a significant event in the eschatological process which will result in the destruction of the leading gods at Ragnar\u00f6k \u2013 or Ragnar\u00f8k(k)r. According to Snorri and V\u00f6lusp\u00e1<\/em>, after that event, Baldr will come back from Hel \u2013 the place of the ordinary dead \u2013 in a renewed world. Besides the fact that for hard polytheists gods are real beings, there are various interpretations among scholars about the profound meaning of the <\/strong>myth of Baldr\u2019s death, from the re-awakening of a vegetation god to a shamanic initiation rite. An interesting explanation is suggested by Claude Lecouteux, who writes: \u201cBaldr corresponds with an archetype of an ideal being whose innocence is intolerable to a world that knows itself as imperfect and blameworthy.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cHe washed not his hands V\u00f6lusp\u00e1 Konungsb\u00f3kar<\/em> 33, English translation by Maria Kvilhaug, The Poetic Edda \u2013 Six Cosmology Poems.<\/em><\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nor combed he his hair
Until he brought to the pyre
The killer of Baldr’s spirit.
And Frigg wept
In the Moist Halls
For the woe of Valh\u00f6ll.
Do you understand now, or what?\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n