Baldr in Later Traditions
The strongest cross-border witness is the Second Merseburg Charm, preserved in a tenth-century Fulda manuscript and the only pagan theogonic text in Old High German: 'Phol and Wodan rode to the wood; then Balder's foal wrenched its foot' — and Wodan charms it whole, bone to bone and blood to blood. Since Jacob Grimm, Phol has widely been read as Baldr himself, which would make the charm the one continental attestation of the god — though the identification is argued, not proven, and Simek counsels caution. The deeper syncretic debate is modern: nineteenth-century scholars, struck by the innocent god who dies and returns after the world's end, read Baldr as a northern Christ or a Frazerian dying-and-rising vegetation spirit. Current scholarship is cooler — Lindow and Orchard note that Baldr's return is scheduled strictly after Ragnarǫk, and that the myth's true company is not the Gospels but the northern complex of fratricide, failed ransom, and prophesied loss.