Freyja

This article is about the Norse goddess Freya. See Freya radar for the German WWII radar. For the municipality, see Frøya, Norway. For the FFIX character, see Freya Crescent.

Freya, in an illustration to Wagner's operas by Arthur Rackham.

Freya (Old Norse: Freyja), sister of Frey (Freyr) and daughter of Niord (Njǫrðr), is usually seen as the fertility goddess of Norse mythology.

Freyja means lady, female ruler, in Old Norse (cf. fru or Frau in Scandinavian and German). While there are no sources suggesting that she was called on to bring fruitfulness to fields or wombs, she was a goddess of love, sex, war, beauty, prophecies and attraction. Freya correspondingly became one of the most popular goddesses.

According to Snorri's Edda Freya had a husband named Odr. He often went away on long journeys, and for this reason Freya cried tears of red gold. The Lay of Hyndla also names a protégé of Freya Óttar.

Prose Edda

In Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, Freya is introduced as follows.

Njörðr í Nóatúnum gat síðan tvau börn, hét sonr Freyr en dóttir Freyja. Þau váru fögr álitum ok máttug. ... Freyja er ágætust af ásynjum, hon á þann bœ á himni er Fólkvangar heita, ok hvar sem hon ríðr til vígs, þá á hon hálfan val, en hálfan Óðinn ... Salr hennar, Sessrýmnir, hann er mikill ok fagr. En er hon ferr, þá ekr hon köttum tveim ok sitr í reið. Hon er nákvæmust mönnum til á at heita, ok af hennar nafni er þat tignarnafn er ríkiskonur eru kallaðar fróvur. Henni líkaði vel mansöngr. Á hana er gott at heita til ásta. - [1]

Njördr in Nóatún begot afterward two children: the son was called Freyr, and the daughter Freyja; they were fair of face and mighty. ... Freyja is the most renowned of the goddesses; she has in heaven the dwelling called Fólkvangr, and where so ever she rides to the strife, she has one-half of the kill, and Odin half ... Her hall Sessrúmnir is great and fair. When she goes forth, she drives her cats and sits in a chariot; she is most conformable to man's prayers, and from her name comes the name of honor, Frú, by which noblewomen are called. Songs of love are well-pleasing to her; it is good to call on her for furtherance in love. - [2]

Freya as goddess of love

Freya was thought to be the most desirable of all goddesses. When she desired to acquire the famous necklace Brosingamen (Brísingamen) from four dwarfs, (Dvalin, Alfrik, Berling, and Grer), they desired a night each with her, a demand which she eventually acceded to. Later on,Odin made Loki steal the necklace for him, and demanded the same price of Freya as the dwarves had, though he eventually relented.

Freya loved jewellery so much that she named her daughter "Hnoss", meaning "jewel". Besides the necklace Brosingamen, she owned a cloak of hawk/eagle feathers, which gave her the ability to change into any bird. She lends this garment to Loki in Þrymskviða.

Early traditions do not distinguish clearly between Freya and Frigg, though in the later Scandinavian mythology, Freya and Frigg were obviously not one and the same, being different goddesses with separate functions, personalities and symbols. They appeared in the same text together on many occasions, however. Some sources say Freya was married to Odin, most likely due to Frigg and Freya once being the same character, and Loki claims that she had a sexual relationship with her brother Freyr in Lokasenna.

In two myths a giant wants to marry Freya; the owner of Svaðilfari as related in Gylfaginning and Thrym as related in Þrymskviða. Both were ultimately deceived and killed by the gods.

Freya as battle goddess

As a battle-goddess, Freya rides a boar called Hildisvín the Battle-Swine. In the poem Hyndluljóð, we are told that in order to conceal Ottar, Freya transformed him into the guise of a boar. The boar has special associations within Norse Mythology, both relative to the notion of fertility and also as a protective talisman in war, probably because real boars can be quite fierce animals. Seventh century Swedish helmet plates depict warriors with large boars as their crests, and a boar-crested helmet has survived from Anglo-Saxon time and was retrieved from a tumulus at Benty Grange in Derbyshire. In Beowulf, it is said that a boar on the helmet was there to guard the life of the warrior wearing it.

Other sources show that Freya rode a chariot drawn by a pair of cats the size of lions.

Freyja rides her cat-driven chariot in this romantic painting by Nils Blommér.

Freya chooses certain of the slain on the battlefield to come under her wing in the afterlife whilst Odin gets chooses others, according to Grímnismál:

The ninth hall is Folkvang, where bright Freyja

Decides where the warriors shall sit:

Some of the fallen belong to her,

And some belong to Odin.

The association of Freya with death is underlined in Egil's saga when his daughter, Thorgerda (Þorgerðr), threatens to commit suicide in the wake of her brother's death, saying: "I shall not eat until I sup with Freya".

Her palace was in Fólkvangr and her hall was Sessrúmnir, known as the "Rich-in-Seats".

Freya as a witch

Freya was a skilled practitioner of seiðr, a form of magic which Snorri relates in the Ynglinga Saga in his Heimskringla she introduced among the Aesir. It has been widely speculated that Gullveig was Freya under another name (This is unlikely, though, fair Freyja being very famous in her own right, that she would go prophetizing as Gullveig, the eponymous seeress of the Völuspá without being clearly identified and recognized) .

Other names

Forms of "Frey(j)a"

• Freia
• Froya
• Freja - common Danish and literary Swedish form.
• Frøya, Fröa - common Norwegian, and rural Swedish form.
• Reija - Finnish form
• Frya - the name of the eponymous Frisian goddess in the controversial Oera Linda Book, though her attributes are somewhat different.

Other forms

• Gefn (according to Snorri Gefyon/Gefjun is not the same as Gefn)
• Heath
• Vanadís

Homologues

Freya might be considered the counterpart of Venus and Aphrodite, although she has a combination of attributes no known goddess possesses in the mythology of any other Indo European ancient people and might be regarded as closer to the Mesopotamian Ishtar as being involved in both love and war. It is also sometimes thought that she is the most direct mythological descendant from Nerthus.

References

• Egils Saga
• Grímnismál
• Lokasenna
• Snorri Sturluson, The Prose Edda
• H. R. Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe
• E. O. G. Turville-Petre, Myth and Religion of the North
• Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte, 2nd Edition (the seminal work of reference on Germanic and Scandinavian religion).