In Baldrs draumar, Odin rides down to the gates of Hel and wakes a dead seeress to ask who will avenge Baldr. Her answer names Rindr. In the western halls, Vestrsalir, Rindr will bear a son, and that son will kill Höðr when he is one night old, refusing to wash his hands or comb his hair until he has carried Baldr's slayer to the pyre. Rindr enters the myth this way, as a womb prophesied before the child inside it has a father.
Snorri counts Rindr among the Ásynjur in Gylfaginning, but the older skalds knew a harder story. Kormákr Ögmundarson, writing in the 10th century, compressed it to three words: seið Yggr til Rindar, 'Odin worked seiðr to get Rindr.' Saxo Grammaticus later spelled out what the magic did. In his telling she is Rinda, a princess of the Ruthenians, and Odin wants her only for the son the seers have promised him. She turns him down twice. So he scratches runes onto a strip of bark, touches her with it, and drives her mad, then returns disguised as a healing-woman called Wecha. The cure will be violent, he warns; on his advice the king has his raving daughter bound to her bed. Then Odin rapes her.
From that came Bous, Saxo's version of Váli, who struck down Höðr and died of his own wounds the day after, a vengeance that killed the avenger too. The episode throws a cold light on Odin. Here the Allfather is a rapist working by fraud and spellcraft, and medieval Christian writers pointed to it as proof the old gods deserved no worship. The name kept its charge in verse: a poet could call Odin 'Rindr's foe' or Váli 'Rindr's son,' and the audience would feel the whole story tighten behind the kenning.