Havamal 126

(Ráðumk þér, Loddfáfnir, en þú ráð nemir, - njóta mundu, ef þú nemr, þér munu góð, ef þú getr -:) skósmiðr þú verir né skeftismiðr, nema þú sjálfum þér séir, skór er skapaðr illa eða skaft sé rangt, þá er þér böls beðit.

"[I counsel you, Loddfafnir, to take advice, It will profit you, if you take it. Do you good, if you get it —:] Be not a shoemaker, Nor a shaftmaker, Unless for yourself it be, for a shoe if ill-made or a shaft if crooked, will call down evil on you."

Viktor Rydberg comments:

"Thus Odin advises the young Loddfafnir ... to make shafts (of arrows and spears) for himself, if he can. He who makes these for another or uses another's does himself harm, if the shaft is defective."

—(Viktor Rydberg, William P. Reaves, tr., Investigations into Germanic Mythology, Volume II, Part 2 : Germanic Mythology: Towards the Baldur Myth)

But Rydberg leaves blank why Odin would advise Hodur against being a "shoe-smith."

"Balder was incessantly tormented at night by phantoms which ... caused him to fall into such an unhealthy condition that he could not even walk properly. For this reason he took to travelling in a chariot or carriage."

"Balder was continually harassed by night phantoms feigning the likeness of Nanna, and fell into such ill health that he could not so much as walk, and began the habit of going his journeys in a two horse car or a four-wheeled carriage."

That he was tormented at night by phantoms indicates that he was subjected to some form of sorcery. We know there was a sorceress involved. Rydberg, op. cit, p. 64 :

"During a hunt, he [Hedin / Hodur] meets a sorceress who solicits him, but is rejected. For revenge, she inspires the evil thought in him to possess his brother's wife. That such a meeting was also spoken of in the myth about Baldur and Hodur is corroborated by what Saxo says of Hotherus, of what Havamal relates in circumstances that shall be presented below, by what Sorla Thattr says about Hedin's meeting with Gandul, and by the myth about Hodur's Indo-European prototype, Keresaspa..."

Hodur and the Wood-Women Louis Moe

Of this latter, Rydberg says, op cit., p. 18,

"But Keresaspa, the hero so mighty in open battle, nevertheless was unable to defend himself against the demon-world's trickery. The prince of evil in the darkness of the deep created a sorceress, a pairika, Khnathaiti, beautiful in appearance, but the quintessence of everything demonic and hostile to the world. In Vendidad, we learn that she "attached herself to Keresaspa."

The Parsi tradition explains the expression as Keresaspa falling in love with her beauty. He came under her influence. Consequently, the old Indo-Iranian myth spoke of an event in Keresaspa's life when he was "... degraded to a pawn in the service of darkness." So the Sorceress who Hodur came under the influence of was throwing nightmares and night-sicknesses at Balder that made it so he could not walk.

The Healing of Baldur's Horse Carl Emil Doepler Jr.

"There was a man called Hedin the Sorcerer, who lived at Kerlingardal. The heathens there paid him to put Thangbrand and his companions to death, and he went up to Arnarstakk heath and performed a great sacrifice there. Then, when Thangbrand was riding from the east, the earth split open under his horse; he leaped off the horse and managed to climb up to the rim of the chasm, but the earth swallowed up his horse with all its gear, and they never saw it again. Then Thangbrand gave praise to God."

—(from Vidar Hreinsson, ed., The Complete Sagas of Icelanders, Volume III, Leifur Eiriksson Publishing, Reykjavik, Iceland, 1997, p. 123.)

 
We cannot be certain, but we do know that Odin's warnings in Havamal's Loddfafnismal are not for nothing. Every one of them pertains to predictions regarding Hodur that will lead to his doom, and therefore refer to actual mythological events that occurred. We know for certain that Hodur's shaftmakings led to Baldur's death; and so we must assume that his shoe-smithing led to similar calamity when the shoes he made were ill-made. These, like the shafts, were not made for or by himself, but for someone else and by someone else. Hodur has failed to make his own arrows or shoes, and Baldur is the victim of this.

We must assume that Hodur in some way ended up either shoeing Baldur's horse or shoeing Baldur himself. Since the sorcery of "Hedin the Sorcerer" in Book 101 of Njal's Saga directly targets Thangbrand's horse, perhaps we ought to assume that Hodur ended up shoeing Baldur's horse, which led to the horse falling, getting sprained, and Baldur, in leaping off, was himself injured in the foot. The horse-shoes, therefore, were ill charmed (skapaðr illa); and since Rydberg supplies us with the identity of the sorceress behind Hodur's folly, we can assume they were ill-charmed by Gullveig herself. (We ought note that "skapa" does not only mean to "shape" or "make"; it also has a strong connotation of assigning destiny, which implies a fate-power or magic. When the shoes were ill-shaped, we can assume sorcery here.)

Did the ancients have horse-shoes? "Mention of an iron horseshoe is made by Appian, a writer not indeed remarkable for accuracy; but the phrase "brasen-footed steeds," which occurs in Homer's Iliad, is regarded by commentators as a metaphorical expression for strength and endurance. Wrappings of plaited fibre, as hemp or broom, were used by the ancients to protect the feet of horses. But the most common form of foot covering for animals appears to have been a kind of leathern sock or sandal, which was sometimes provided with an iron sole. This covering was fastened around the fetlocks by means of thongs, and could be easily removed. Iron horse-shoes of peculiar form, which have been exhumed in Great Britain of recent years, have been objects of much interest to archaeologists. In 1878 a number of such relics shaped for the hoof and pierced for nails were found at a place called Caesar's Camp, near Folkstone, England. In the south of Scotland, also, ancient horse-shoes have been found, consisting of a solid piece of iron made to cover the whole hoof and very heavy." (Robert Means Lawrence, M.D., The Magic of the Horse-Shoe, Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York, 1898, Chapter 1.)

Lawrence's text also says, "The practical value of the horse-shoe is tersely expressed in the old German saying, "A nail preserves a country;" for the nail keeps in place the horse-shoe, the shoe protects the foot of the horse, the horse carries the knight, the knight holds the castle, and the castle defends the country." This interpretation of the German proverb is very interesting, and perhaps the following Germanic fairy-tale can elucidate for us.

Grimm's Fairy Tale # 184, "The Nail", would seem to relate to our inquiry :

"A merchant had done a good business at the fair; he had sold his wares and lined his money-bags with gold and silver. Then he wanted to travel homeward and be in his house before nightfall. So he packed his trunk with the money on his horse and rode away. At noon he rested in a town, and when he wanted to go farther the stable-boy brought out his horse and said: "A nail is wanting, sir, in the shoe of its left hind foot." "Let it be wanting," answered the merchant; "the shoe will certainly stay on for the six miles I have still to go; I am in a hurry," In the afternoon, when he once more alighted and had his horse fed, the stable-boy went to him and said, "Sir, a shoe is missing from your horse's left hind foot; shall I take him to the blacksmith?" "Let it still be wanting," answered the man, "the horse can very well hold out for the couple of miles which remain; I am in haste." He rode forth, but before long the horse began to limp. It had not limped long before it began to stumble, and it had not stumbled Iong before it fell down and broke its leg. The merchant was forced to leave the horse where it was, and unbuckle the trunk, take it on his back, and go home on foot. And there he did not arrive until quite late at night. "And that unlucky nail," said he to himself, "has caused all this disaster." Hasten slowly."

Note that we have a horse, whose shoe was ill-made, and because of this, the horse was made to stumble, and it was all because of the nail missing in the shoe.

Let us note that this story informs us that it was blacksmiths who made horse-shoes, because they involved nails, and remember that Hodur was trained by Mimir as a smith. If it was the nail that was faulty in the horse-shoe that Hodur perhaps made for Baldur, it would have a symmetry with the dart that he threw at Baldur later.

Chapter II of The Magic of the Horse-Shoe says, "As a practical device for the protection of horses' feet, the utility of the iron horse-shoe has long been generally recognized; and for centuries, in countries widely separated, it has also been popularly used as a talisman for the preservation of buildings or premises from the wiles of witches and fiends."

In other words, a horseshoe that has been made correctly is a protection against the evil of witches and sorcery. But that implies that one that is ill-shaped will not carry out the same function.

Lawrence continues, in the same chapter, "Among the Romans there prevailed a custom of driving nails into cottage walls as an antidote against the plague." In other words, a nail itself can be protective. There are many folk customs about an iron nail protecting against sorcery.

Our Grimm's tale has one of the nails missing from the horse's shoe.

Baldur is later killed by a dart, arrow-head, or nail that has been cursed.

Could Hodur, bewitched by Gullveig, and in a daze, have forgotten to put in one of the nails that made the horse-shoe a magical talisman against sorcery, thus exposing Baldur to injury; and could Gullveig have taken this nail and used it to fashion the arrowhead of the arrow whose shaft was made of mistletoe?