OK, I think it's time for another exercise in wild,
somewhat substantiated flight of speculation on the
nature and origins of our favorite goddesses.  In
particular, I've been speculating on the identity of
the father of the three sisters.

*Ignores massive groan from rest of ML*

Seatbelts fastened?
Trays stored in the upright position?
Here we go!


What we know:

1.  The goddesses Belldandy, Urd and Skuld have the
same father.
2.  Hild says Belldandy is just like Him (meaning the
father).

As popular as Kami-sama is for the father role, I have
always had serious problems with him being the father.
 Besides the obvious
conceptual difficulties inherent in visualizing the
rulers of Heaven and Nifelheim getting together for a
fling, there are significant conflicts in the
story-line.  For one thing, as Mr. Cobb (in his
infrequent episodes of non-Oni-ness) is always quick
to point out, if Kami-sama is the father then given
his treatment of Skuld when she was alone in Heaven
(after Urd had hacked her way to Earth to "help"
Belldandy and Keiichi) he is an uncaring one.  I would
like to add that given his treatment of Belldandy in
the Terrible Master Urd story arc (i.e. setting her up
to "kill" the Lord of Terror) he is also a
manipulative one.  Uncaring?  Manipulative?  Those are
hardly the Belldandy-like qualities Hild attributes to
the father.  If Kami-sama is indeed the father then he
has been greatly changed for the worse and Hild hasn't
heard about it or else doesn't consider it worth
mentioning.

If not Kami-sama, though, then who? The available
evidence isn't much to go on, but something did hit me
a couple months ago whilst I was in the shower (and
no, it wasn't the shower head @_@ ).  Out of the
entire Norse pantheon what god was bright and
cheerful,
in other words the most like Belldandy?  That would be
of course Baldur, who was liked by almost everyone and
usually referred to as "Baldur the Bright", the god of
wisdom, mercy, harmony, happiness and other
Belldandy-like things.  In fact, out of the entire
Norse pantheon there were only 2 who were anything
like
Belldandy - Freya's dauther Noss (from whose name we
get the English word "nice", by the way) and Baldur. 
So, besides the fact that Baldur fits Hild's
description of "Him", what other evidence is there to
recommend Baldur as the father?  Baldur was
unwittingly
killed by a mistletoe arrow from the blind and
not-so-intelligent god Hod who had been set up by
Loki.  When Baldur died he went to Hel's realm, from
which he emerges after Ragnarok.  So here we have a
god remarkably like Belldandy who has the opportunity
to father children both with Hild and later with some
goddess.

The problems I see with Baldur as the father are:

1.  Baldur has never been mentioned in the storyline.

2.  Ragnarok hasn't happened, so he should still be in
Hel.

3.  The goddesses get preferential treatment from
Kami-sama.

In defense of the Baldur-as-father theory I point out:

1.  Hild's appearance in the story-line was years away
when the     "Terrible Master Urd" storyline came out,
yet looking at TMU     from the perspective of Norse
mythology showed that the AMG Urd was likely the
daughter of the AMG equivalent of Hel.  If Fujishima
did it once, he might do it again.

2.  Has Ragnarok not occurred?  I believe there is
some evidence     in the manga that a Ragnarok-like
event has indeed occurred.  I may post on that later.

3.  There are reasons why Kami-sama would give the
sisters preferential treatment even if they weren't
his daughters, the simplest being that they still
command some of the respect that they once did as the
Norns.

What are your thoughts on the possibilities of Baldur
being the father of the goddesses?  Does anyone like
this theory?  Anyone think it's absolute rubbish?

Brian W.