Odin

Odin is the grieving father at the head of a heaven that has lost its brightest god, and his response is not lamentation but action: he loans Sleipner and sends Hermod down the nine-night ride to Hela's realm. His grief is the poem's engine, and the poem's tension is that even the All-Father cannot command death to give back what it holds — Hela's reply is a cold reminder that the gods have taken more from her race than they have given. He matters because his mourning sets the whole descent in motion and gives the Norse poem its human center.