Freyja

A chariot drawn by two cats comes down out of a grey northern sky, and the goddess who rides it has come for the dead. Each day half of everyone who falls in battle is carried to her hall; the rest go to Odin. This is not a minor courtesy granted to a minor god. Freyja takes her share of the slain into Fólkvangr, the field of the host, seats them in her hall Sessrúmnir, and the warriors who hoped for a place at Odin’s table had as good a chance of waking in hers instead.

She was not born among the gods who would come to honour her. Freyja belonged to the Vanir, the older family of deities tied to the earth, to growth and seafaring and wealth, and she came to the Æsir as the terms of a truce. The two divine families had gone to war and ground each other down to exhaustion, and when the fighting ended they traded hostages. Freyja arrived in Asgard alongside her father Njörðr and her twin brother Freyr, sent as a pledge of peace. She did not stay a prisoner for long. She brought something the Æsir did not have.

That something was seiðr, a magic of trance and prophecy, of seeing the threads of fate and pulling them loose. It could find what was hidden and bend what was coming. Freyja knew it the way a smith knows iron, and she taught it to the Æsir, Odin among them. The craft never quite shed its danger or its disrepute; to work it was to step outside the ordinary order of things, and there was an edge of shame attached to it for men. Freyja carried none of that shame. The magic was hers first.

The image the old stories hand down is a specific one. Around her throat lies Brísingamen, a necklace of gold so finely made that it became the most beautiful thing in the nine worlds, and so bound up with her that the gods used it to recognise her. Over her shoulders hangs a cloak sewn from falcon feathers. When she puts it on she can take the falcon’s shape and cross the sky in a few wingbeats, and other gods borrow the cloak often enough that it works as a kind of communal key to the heavens. She is beautiful in the way the old stories mean beautiful: not soft, but overwhelming.

The necklace came at a price she chose to pay. Four dwarves, the Brísings, had forged it in their hall, and when Freyja saw it she wanted it past all reason. They named their terms. She spent a night with each of the four, and she walked out wearing the gold. The story is told plainly and without much hand-wringing. She wanted the thing and she got it, and the cost was the cost.

Such a treasure attracts thieves, and the largest thief in the cosmos was Loki. On Odin’s orders he slipped into her chamber as she slept, shrank himself to a flea, and bit her so she turned in her bed and bared the clasp. He worked it open and carried the necklace off. Heimdall, who sees everything, saw this too. He chased Loki to a rock at the sea’s edge, and the two of them fought there in the shapes of seals until Heimdall won the necklace back. It returned to Freyja’s throat where it belonged.

Her temper, when it came, shook the halls. When the giant Thrym stole Thor’s hammer and demanded Freyja as the price of its return, the gods came to her chamber and told her to put on a bridal veil and ride to the land of the giants. She refused with such fury that the hall of the Æsir trembled and Brísingamen snapped off her neck. The marriage did not happen. Thor went instead, veiled and seething, and got his hammer back.

For all that she is a goddess of war and the dead, the grief most often told of her is a private one. Her husband was Óðr, a figure who is little more than a name and an absence, and he went travelling and did not return. Freyja went looking. She crossed strange countries searching for him, taking new names among new peoples, and when she could not find him she wept, and her tears fell as red gold. The poets remembered it. To this day, in the old kennings, gold can simply be called Freyja’s tears. By Óðr she had two daughters, Hnoss and Gersemi, whose names both mean treasure, so precious that the words for them passed into ordinary speech for anything of great worth.

She kept a boar as well, Hildisvíni, the name meaning battle swine, and at least once the boar was a man. A mortal named Óttar had served her faithfully, and to help him prove his ancestry and claim his inheritance she disguised him as the boar and rode him to the cave of the giantess Hyndla. There she coaxed and flattered and finally threatened the giantess with a ring of fire until Hyndla recited the long line of Óttar’s forebears. Freyja looked after her own.

Her powers run along the seams of the things people most want and most fear. She governs love and desire and fertility, the fullness of crops and the conceiving of children. She commands seiðr and can read and reshape what is coming. She takes the falcon’s shape and the falcon’s view. She holds a portion of the dead that rivals Odin’s own. Her weaknesses are the human-sized ones the myths keep returning to. She can be robbed in her sleep, deceived, made the unwilling chip in someone else’s bargain. Her longing for beautiful things put her in debt to the dwarves, and her longing for an absent husband left her weeping across the world. The same desire that makes her a goddess of love is the lever others use to move her.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Freyja?

Freyja is the Norse goddess of love, beauty, fertility, gold, war, and the magic called seiðr. A member of the Vanir family of gods, she came to the Æsir as a peace hostage and became one of the most important and widely worshipped deities in Norse mythology.

What is Freyja’s necklace called?

Freyja’s necklace is called Brísingamen, a piece of gold said to be the most beautiful object in the cosmos. It was forged by four dwarves known as the Brísings, and Freyja obtained it by spending one night with each of the four.

Where do warriors go when they die, Freyja or Odin?

Half of those who die in battle go to Freyja and half go to Odin. Freyja receives her share into her afterlife field Fólkvangr and seats them in her hall Sessrúmnir, while the rest go to Odin’s Valhalla.

Why does Freyja weep tears of gold?

Freyja weeps tears of red gold over the absence of her husband Óðr, who left on long journeys and did not return. She travelled through foreign lands searching for him under many different names, and her weeping is why Norse poets used “Freyja’s tears” as a kenning for gold.

What powers does Freyja have?

Freyja is a master of seiðr, the magic of prophecy and fate, which she taught to the Æsir. She can shapeshift into a falcon using her feather cloak, commands love and fertility, and holds authority over half of all who die in battle.

Related Entries

Freyr (Frey), Njord, Odin, Thor, Loki, Heimdallr, Balder, Valkyrie, Vanir, Æsir, Aphrodite, Ishtar, Inanna, Hathor, Isis