Nanna

Nanna is the maiden over whom Balder and Hother become deadly rivals in Saxo's Danish History — the beauty whose love turns a god and a mortal prince into mortal enemies. In Saxo's earthbound retelling of the Baldr myth, both the demigod Balder, son of Odin, and the brave mortal prince Hother desire her; Nanna loves and is won by the mortal Hother, and their rivalry over her drives the long war that ends in Balder's death. Where the Eddic myth makes Baldr's death a cosmic tragedy of innocence and Loki's malice, Saxo recasts it as a love-triangle settled by the sword, with Nanna as its prize and cause. Nanna is the saga's image of the woman at the heart of the human Baldr-story — the maiden whose love for a mortal man, over a god, turns the bright myth of the gods' great loss into a hard, jealous war between two suitors, won by the one she chose.