Bio

Baldr Ondoffr Ketelson, who’s name translated in Old Norse, literly means “brave lord, who stares with a piercing and firey gaze”, was named so, nearly thirty years gone now. His mother Salmei, while she was pregnant with Baldr, would have vivid and incredible dreams of Baldr when he was grown. She would see him as a large and powerfully built man, with the bluest eyes she had ever seen. In her dreams, his gaze seemed, to be able to look through a man, into his heart, his very soul. He had a seemingly placid nature, but there was a frightening rage, that seemed to boil beneath the surface. His mother dreamed of him working at a forge, with lightning, sparks, and fire, all around him, as he used his hammer. The Hammer in her dreams seemed to be a…part, of him. Sometimes it shone like the Sun, as it worked the metal, sometimes lightning flashed and arced, as it struck the anvil. In one of these dreams, Salmei saw an image of Baldr screaming his future name, in rage, to the heavens while the now familiar lightning, sparks, and flames swirled around him. After that dream, Salmei convinced her husband, with some effort, not to name a junior. Baldr’s parents had lived in Philadelphia, for almost ten years, after leaving Norway, before his mother became pregnant with him. His father, Halldor was a very talented blacksmith of custom ironwork. He had his own wharehouse and forge, in the Northern Liberties section of the city, two years before Baldr was born. Halldor began teaching Baldr, how to blacksmith small items, as soon as he was old enough to hold a forge hammer. By the time Baldr, was ten, he could make small items out of steel, horseshoes were the easiest. As he grew in size and strength, and with some experience under his belt, he quickly began getting better and better, both with more complex designs, and harder to work metals. By the time Baldr turned twenty, he could almost equal his father’s work. Then one day while working at his fathers forge, Baldr’s vision became tunnellike, and he felt a sense of vertigo. His tunneled vision kept being drawn to the still unshapen piece of metal in his hand, all of his thoughts and focus were of the metal. He had no idea how, but he could see INTO the metal, minute cracks and imperfections, at the almost molecular level. This vision gave him the means to correct the imperfections, and to forge the fire poker and the the metal flawlessly. When he was finished, his vision cleared, and he almost collapsed. The shock at what he had just seen and done, and the vertigo, had caught up to him. Baldr told no one about what happened, he thought possibly he was sick, or had some other type of ailment, that had made him hallucinate and feel dizzy.