Spirit Bride Archetypes

Many fairy tales tend to have a similar theme, a stereotype, a pattern. These stereotypes are called archetypes, and archetypes are what links the similarities and differences between two stories. "Baldur" and "The Spirit Bride" are both fairy tales that tell about a person going to the underworld to bring back a loved one. In "The Spirit Bride", a warrior was trying to bring back his bride, who died on the day of their wedding, and in "Baldur", a man was trying to revive his brother, who was tricked into death by a trickster, Loki. Both stories sound fairly similar, but there are also many differences in archetypes that set these two stories apart. To begin with, the most obvious difference was the hero's journey to the underworld. In other words, the warrior in "The Spirit Bride" was trying to bring back his bride from the spirit world, while Hermod was trying to revive Baldur from the underworld in "Baldur". I believe that was the hero's journey to the underworld because like the archetype …show more content…
In both stories, the hero had a quest to travel to the underworld to bring someone back from the dead, and both heroes had help along the way. For instance, the warrior had the wise old man who guided him and removed the spirit from his body so that he could enter the spirit world, while Hermod met the beautiful maiden who escorted him to the underworld. Additionally, the underworlds in both fairy tales had a ruler. In "The Spirit Bride", it was the Spirit Master, and in "Baldur", it was Hela, the queen of the underworld. Last but not least, neither heroes accomplished their quests. To demonstrate, the warrior couldn't bring back his bride because "it wasn't the right time yet", according to the Spirit Master, and Hermod couldn't revive his brother, Baldur, because everything in the world needed to weep for him, but one creature didn't. Therefore, both heroes failed at bringing someone back from the