"Go, then, Hermod," answered Frigga, "saddle Sleipnir with all speed
and ride down to Helheim; there seek out Hela, the stern mistress of
the dead, and entreat her to send our beloved back to us again."

Hermod was gone in the twinkling of an eye, not in at the mouth of the
earth and through the steep cavern down which Odin went to the dead
prophetess's grave; he chose another way, though not a better one;
for, go to Helheim as you will, the best is but a downward road, and
so Hermod found it--downward, slanting, slippery, dark, and very cold.
At last he came to the Giallar Bru--that sounding river which flows
between the living and the dead, and to the bridge over it which is
paved with stones of glittering gold. Hermod was surprised to see
gold in such a place; but as he rode over the bridge, and looked down
carefully at the stones, he saw that they were only tears which had
been shed round the beds of the dying--only tears, and yet they made
the way seem brighter. But when Hermod reached the other end of the
bridge, he found the courageous woman who, for ages and ages, had been
sitting there to watch the dead go by, and she stopped him saying:

"What a noise you make! Who are you? Yesterday five troops of dead men
went over the Giallar Bridge and did not shake it so much as you have
done. Besides," she added, looking more closely at Hermod, "you are
not a dead man at all. Your lips are neither cold nor blue. Why, then,
do you ride on the way to Helheim?"

"I seek Baldur," answered Hermod. "Tell me, have you seen him pass?"

"Baldur," she said, "has ridden over the bridge; but there below,
towards the north, lies the way to the Abodes of Death."