Freyja

Goddess of love, gold and seiðr, who takes half the slain

The foremost goddess of the Norse: the Lady of the Vanir, a goddess of love, desire and gold who also receives half of the slain. Daughter of the sea-god Njörd and sister of Freyr, she belongs to the Vanir, who came to live among the Æsir after the war between the two families of gods, and Snorri says she first taught the Æsir seiðr, the magic of her people. She rides in a chariot drawn by two cats, owns the necklace Brísingamen and a cloak of falcon feathers, and weeps tears of red gold for her absent husband, Ód. Giants want her above everything, and in the myths she is the prize they never win.

Family and suitors

Parents

Njörd Snorri, Gylfaginning 24

of the Vanir; lord of the sea, the wind and ships
Njörd's sister Snorri, Ynglinga saga 4; Lokasenna 36

unnamed; among the Vanir, Snorri says, brothers married their sisters

Brother

Freyr Snorri, Gylfaginning 24; Lokasenna 32

lord of rain, sunshine and harvest; Loki says the gods caught them in bed together

Husband

Ód Snorri, Gylfaginning 35; Völuspá 25

went away on long journeys; she weeps red gold for him

Children

Hnoss Snorri, Gylfaginning 35

her daughter by Ód; the name means “treasure”
Gersemi Snorri, Ynglinga saga 10

a second daughter, also “treasure”; named only here

Shares the slain with

Odin Grímnismál 14; Snorri, Gylfaginning 24

she chooses half of the fallen each day, he the other half

Favourite

Óttar Hyndluljód

a mortal who reddened her altar with blood; Hyndla says her boar is Óttar in disguise

Accuser

Loki Lokasenna 30–32

claims every god and elf in the hall has been her lover

Suitors

The master builder Snorri, Gylfaginning 42

a giant who asked for her, the sun and the moon as his wage for a wall
Thrym Thrymskvida

wanted her in exchange for Thor's hammer
Hrungnir Snorri, Skáldskaparmál

drunk in Asgard, boasted that he would carry her off

Her stories

The war of the gods

The first war in the world broke out between the Æsir and the Vanir, after a woman called Gullveig had been pierced with spears and burned three times in Odin's hall, and three times reborn. When neither side could win, they made peace and exchanged hostages, and Njörd and his children came to live among the Æsir.

Völuspá 21–24; Snorri, Ynglinga saga 4; some scholars see Freyja herself in Gullveig

Brísingamen

Freyja saw four dwarfs forging a golden necklace and wanted it more than anything; the price was a night with each of them, and she paid it. Loki told Odin, who sent him to steal it: he slipped into her locked bower as a fly and undid the clasp at her neck. Odin gave it back only on condition that she set two kings to fight a battle without end.

Sörla tháttr, in the Flateyjarbók of the late fourteenth century; the battle is the everlasting fight of the Hjadnings

The bride who refused

When the giant Thrym stole Thor's hammer and asked for Freyja as its price, Thor and Loki came to tell her to put on the bridal veil. She was so angry that the hall of the gods shook and her necklace burst: she would be called the most man-mad of women, she said, if she drove to Giantland as a bride. Thor went in her place, wearing her necklace.

Thrymskvida 12–13, 15

Óttar and the giantess

Freyja rode her golden boar to the cave of the giantess Hyndla to make her recite the ancestry of her favourite, Óttar, who needed it to win an inheritance. Hyndla named his forebears back to the gods and mocked Freyja for riding her lover to Valhalla. In the end, ringed by Freyja's fire, she gave Óttar the beer of memory with a curse on it, and Freyja turned the curse aside.

Hyndluljód, preserved only in Flateyjarbók

The Lady of the Vanir

A goddess of the other family

Freyja means simply “the Lady”, as her brother's name Freyr means “the Lord”, and Snorri says that noblewomen were called by her name. She belongs to the Vanir, the second family of Norse gods, bound up with wealth, fertility and the sea, who fought the Æsir and then made peace with them. Her father Njörd and her brother came to Asgard as hostages, and she brought the Vanir's magic with her. Snorri calls her the most glorious of the goddesses, and in Ynglinga saga the last of the gods left alive, who kept up the sacrifices after the others had died.

She lives at Fólkvang, in a hall called Sessrúmnir, and travels in a chariot drawn by two cats or on the gold-bristled boar Hildisvíni. Snorri says she loved love songs and was the one to pray to in matters of love. The giants all want her. A builder asks for her as his wage, Thrym as the price of Thor's hammer, and the drunken Hrungnir boasts that he will carry her home; none of them gets her.

Love and gold

Ód, the tears and the necklace

Her husband Ód went away on long journeys, and Freyja weeps for him; her tears are red gold, so that the poets could call gold “Freyja's tears”. She looked for him among strange peoples and took a new name in each place. Their daughters are called Hnoss and Gersemi, both words for a treasure.

The myths do not make her a faithful wife. In Lokasenna Loki tells her that every god and elf in the hall has been her lover and that the gods once caught her in bed with her brother; the giantess of Hyndluljód says she runs about at night like the goat Heidrún among the bucks. In a late tale she buys the necklace Brísingamen with a night with each of the four dwarfs who made it. The insults come from her enemies, but they fit a goddess of desire, and of the wealth that goes with it.

Seiðr and the slain

Magic, the dead and the conversion

Freyja is not only a goddess of love. Snorri says she first taught the Æsir seiðr, the trance magic of the Vanir by which the future could be seen and minds bent, and that when she rides to battle half the slain are hers and half Odin's:

Fólkvang is the ninth, and there Freyja decides who sits where in the hall; half the slain she chooses every day, and half Odin has.

— *Grímnismál* 14

Women, too, went to her. In Egils saga, Egil's daughter Thorgerd, refusing food in her grief, says that she will take no supper until she sups with Freyja. The goddess still mattered at the very end: in the summer before Iceland accepted Christianity, the Christian Hjalti Skeggjason called Freyja a bitch in a verse at the Althing and was outlawed for blasphemy.