Freyja
In Norse mythology, Freyja (Old Norse "(the) Lady") is a goddess associated with love, beauty, fertility, sex, war, gold, and seiðr (magic for seeing and influencing the future). Freyja is the owner of the necklace Brísingamen, rides a chariot pulled by two cats, is accompanied by the boar Hildisvíni, and possesses a cloak of falcon feathers. By her husband Óðr, she is the mother of two daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi. Along with her twin brother Freyr, her father Njörðr, and her mother (Njörðr's sister, unnamed in sources), she is a member of the Vanir. Stemming from Old Norse Freyja, modern forms of the name include Freya, Freyia, and Freja.
For people named Freya, see Freya (given name). For other uses, see Freyja (disambiguation). Not to be confused with Frigg.
Freyja rules over her heavenly field, Fólkvangr, where she receives half of those who die in battle. The other half go to the god Odin's hall, Valhalla. Within Fólkvangr lies her hall, Sessrúmnir. Freyja assists other deities by allowing them to use her feathered cloak, is invoked in matters of fertility and love, and is frequently sought after by powerful jötnar who wish to make her their wife. Freyja's husband, the god Óðr, is frequently absent. She cries tears of red gold for him, and searches for him under assumed names. Freyja has numerous names, including Gefn, Hörn, Mardöll, Sýr, Vanadís, and Valfreyja.
Freyja is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; in the Prose Edda and Heimskringla, composed by Snorri Sturluson in the 13th century; in several Sagas of Icelanders; in the short story "Sörla þáttr"; in the poetry of skalds; and into the modern age in Scandinavian folklore.
Scholars have debated whether Freyja and the goddess Frigg ultimately stem from a single goddess common among the Germanic peoples. They have connected her to the valkyries, female battlefield choosers of the slain, and analyzed her relation to other goddesses and figures in Germanic mythology, including the thrice-burnt and thrice-reborn Gullveig/Heiðr, the goddesses Gefjon, Skaði, Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr and Irpa, Menglöð, and the 1st century CE "Isis" of the Suebi. In Scandinavia, Freyja's name frequently appears in the names of plants, especially in southern Sweden. Various plants in Scandinavia once bore her name, but it was replaced with the name of the Virgin Mary during the process of Christianization. Rural Scandinavians continued to acknowledge Freyja as a supernatural figure into the 19th century, and Freyja has inspired various works of art.
Name[edit]
Etymology[edit]
The name Freyja transparently means 'lady, mistress' in Old Norse.[1] Stemming from the Proto-Germanic feminine noun *frawjōn ('lady, mistress'), it is cognate with Old Saxon frūa ('lady, mistress') or Old High German frouwa ('lady'; cf. modern German Frau). Freyja is also etymologically close to the name of the god Freyr, meaning 'lord' in Old Norse.[2][3] The theonym Freyja is thus considered to have been an epithet in origin, replacing a personal name that is now unattested.[4]
Alternative names[edit]
In addition to Freyja, Old Norse sources refer to the goddess by the following names:
Attestations[edit]
Poetic Edda[edit]
In the Poetic Edda, Freyja is mentioned or appears in the poems Völuspá, Grímnismál, Lokasenna, Þrymskviða, Oddrúnargrátr, and Hyndluljóð.
Völuspá contains a stanza that mentions Freyja, referring to her as "Óð's girl"; Freyja being the wife of her husband, Óðr. The stanza recounts that Freyja was once promised to an unnamed builder, later revealed to be a jötunn and subsequently killed by Thor (recounted in detail in Gylfaginning chapter 42; see Prose Edda section below).[22] In the poem Grímnismál, Odin (disguised as Grímnir) tells the young Agnar that every day Freyja allots seats to half of those that are slain in her hall Fólkvangr, while Odin owns the other half.[23]
Theories[edit]
Relation to Frigg and other goddesses and figures[edit]
Due to numerous similarities, scholars have frequently connected Freyja with the goddess Frigg. The connection with Frigg and question of possible earlier identification of Freyja with Frigg in the Proto-Germanic period (Frigg and Freyja common origin hypothesis) remains a matter of scholarly discourse.[70] Regarding a Freyja-Frigg common origin hypothesis, scholar Stephan Grundy comments, "the problem of whether Frigg or Freyja may have been a single goddess originally is a difficult one, made more so by the scantiness of pre-Viking Age references to Germanic goddesses, and the diverse quality of the sources. The best that can be done is to survey the arguments for and against their identity, and to see how well each can be supported."[71]
Like the name of the group of gods to which Freyja belongs, the Vanir, the name Freyja is not attested outside of Scandinavia, as opposed to the name of the goddess Frigg, who is attested as a goddess common among the Germanic peoples, and whose name is reconstructed as Proto-Germanic *Frijjō. Similar proof for the existence of a common Germanic goddess from which Freyja descends does not exist, but scholars have commented that this may simply be due to lack of evidence.[70]
In the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá, a figure by the name of Gullveig is burnt three times yet is three times reborn. After her third rebirth, she is known as Heiðr. This event is generally accepted as precipitating the Æsir–Vanir War. Starting with scholar Gabriel Turville-Petre, scholars such as Rudolf Simek, Andy Orchard, and John Lindow have theorized that Gullveig/Heiðr is the same figure as Freyja, and that her involvement with the Æsir somehow led to the events of the Æsir–Vanir War.[72]
Outside of theories connecting Freyja with the goddess Frigg, some scholars, such as Hilda Ellis Davidson and Britt-Mari Näsström, have theorized that other goddesses in Norse mythology, such as Gefjon, Gerðr, and Skaði, may be forms of Freyja in different roles or ages.[73]
Receiver of the slain[edit]
Freyja and her afterlife field Fólkvangr, where she receives half of the slain, have been theorized as connected to the valkyries. Scholar Britt-Mari Näsström points out the description in Gylfaginning where it is said of Freyja that "whenever she rides into battle she takes half of the slain", and interprets Fólkvangr as "the field of the Warriors". Näsström notes that, just like Odin, Freyja receives slain heroes who have died on the battlefield, and that her house is Sessrumnir (which she translates as "filled with many seats"), a dwelling that Näsström posits likely fills the same function as Valhalla. Näsström comments that "still, we must ask why there are two heroic paradises in the Old Norse view of afterlife. It might possibly be a consequence of different forms of initiation of warriors, where one part seemed to have belonged to Óðinn and the other to Freyja. These examples indicate that Freyja was a war-goddess, and she even appears as a valkyrie, literally 'the one who chooses the slain'."[74]
Siegfried Andres Dobat comments that "in her mythological role as the chooser of half the fallen warriors for her death realm Fólkvangr, the goddess Freyja, however, emerges as the mythological role model for the Valkyrjar [sic] and the dísir."[75]
The Oriental hypothesis[edit]
Gustav Neckel, writing in 1920, connects Freyja to the Phrygian goddess Cybele. According to Neckel, both goddesses can be interpreted as "fertility goddesses" and other potential resemblances have been noted. Some scholars have suggested that the image of Cybele subsequently influenced the iconography of Freyja, the lions drawing the former's chariot becoming large cats. These observations became an extremely common observation in works regarding Old Norse religion until at least the early 1990s. In her book-length study of scholarship on the topic of Freyja, Britt-Mari Näsström (1995) is highly critical of this deduction; Näsström says that "these 'parallels' are due to sheer ignorance about the characteristics of Cybele; scholars have not troubled to look into the resemblances and differences between the two goddesses, if any, in support for their arguments for a common origin."[76]
In popular culture[edit]
Frigga (sometimes called Freyja) is a fictional character appearing in Marvel Comics starting in 1963. The character in particular is based on goddess Freyja of the Norse mythology.[83]
Starting in the early 1990s, derivatives of Freyja began to appear as a given name for girls.[81] According to the Norwegian name database from the Central Statistics Bureau, around 500 women are listed with the first name Frøya (the modern Norwegian spelling of the goddess's name) in the country. There are also several similar names, such as the first element of the dithematic personal name Frøydis.[84]
Freyja is featured in several video games including the 2002 Ensemble Studios game Age of Mythology,[85][86] the 2014 third-person multiplayer online battle arena game Smite,[87] the 2018 Santa Monica Studio game God of War,[88] and in its 2022 sequel God of War Ragnarök.[89]
"Freya" is a song by American heavy metal band The Sword from their 2006 debut album Age of Winters.[90] A playable cover version was featured in Guitar Hero II, released the same year.[91]
