Gefjon

Steam is coming off the oxen. That is the detail the oldest poem about her bothers to keep: four great beasts leaning into the yoke, four heads low, eight eyes shining like small moons under their brows, and the heat of them rising into cold air as a slab of Sweden tears loose behind the plough. The poet was Bragi Boddason, working in the ninth century, and he did not explain any of it. He expected his listeners to know who was walking behind the team.

She was Gefjon, and the land she was stealing had been given to her fairly, more or less. Snorri Sturluson tells it at the very start of Gylfaginning, written in Iceland around 1220. Gylfi, king of the Swedes, was entertained by a travelling woman, and in thanks he offered her as much ploughland as four oxen could turn in a day and a night. It sounded like a modest gift. He did not know she was of the Aesir, or that she had already gone north into the land of the giants and come back with four oxen who were her own sons by a jötunn.

The plough bit so deep that it did not turn the soil. It cut the ground free. The oxen hauled the whole piece west and out into the sea, and there they stopped in a sound, and Gefjon fixed the land in place and named it. That island is Zealand, where Copenhagen stands now. The hole left behind filled with water and became a lake in Sweden, and Snorri adds a neat surveyor’s remark: the bays of the lake lie just the way the headlands of Zealand do, like a key and its lock.

He told the story a second time in Ynglinga saga, the first part of Heimskringla, and there the frame is different. Odin, leading his people north, settles for a while at Odense on the island of Fyn and sends Gefjon across the water to look for land. Gylfi gives her the ploughland, she fetches her four sons, and the island is pulled away as before. This telling names the lake Lögrinn, which is the old name for Mälaren, though a quick look at a map shows that Vänern is the better fit for size and shape, and that argument has never quite ended. The saga also gives her a husband. She marries Skjöldr, a son of Odin and the founding father of the Danish kings, and they make their home at Lejre.

Which makes one line elsewhere in Snorri hard to square. In his list of the goddesses he puts Gefjon fourth, calls her a maiden, and says that women who die unmarried serve her. A virgin with four sons and a husband is a puzzle. Snorri does not try to solve it. It may be that two traditions about her sat side by side, one of a giver of land and founder of a royal house, one of a keeper of unwed women, and that he wrote down both because both were said.

The poem Lokasenna shows her in company. The gods are drinking in Aegir’s hall, the air close with ale and firelight, and Loki has come in to insult every one of them in turn. Gefjon speaks up early, trying to cool the quarrel. Loki turns on her at once and says he knows about the fair young man who gave her a jewel, and what she gave him for it. Then Odin steps in. Loki must be out of his mind, he says, to make Gefjon angry, because she sees what is fated for everyone as clearly as Odin himself. It is a striking thing to hear from that mouth, and nothing else in the record follows it up.

Smaller traces fill in a little more. In Völsa þáttr, a rough comic tale set on a remote farm in Norway, a servant girl swears by Gefjon. Medieval Icelandic translators, needing a Norse name for foreign goddesses, used hers for Diana, and at other times for Minerva, Vesta and Venus. That is a wide spread. It suggests the translators knew she mattered and were less sure what for.

Her name most likely belongs with the verb for giving, the same root as Gefn, one of the names of Freyja. Some readers have taken the jewel in Loki’s taunt as a sign that Gefjon and Freyja were once the same figure, since Freyja’s necklace was won in a similar way. The link is possible. It is also the kind of insult Loki throws at nearly every goddess in the hall.

What she can do is clear from the stories. She can turn her children into beasts and back, plough land out of the bedrock, set an island in the sea and make it hold, and read fate. Her limits are quieter. She works by bargain: she takes only what the king’s own words gave her, measured by oxen and by a day and a night. And outside these few scenes she is silent. No story tells how she was born or how she ends, and she has no part in the tales of the last battle. She got one great myth, and it is on the map.

Frequently Asked Questions

Who is Gefjon in Norse mythology?

Gefjon is a Norse goddess of the Aesir best known for ploughing the island of Zealand out of Sweden. Snorri Sturluson also says she is a maiden goddess served by women who die unmarried. In the poem Lokasenna, Odin says Gefjon knows the fates of people as well as he does.

How did Gefjon create Zealand?

King Gylfi of Sweden promised Gefjon as much land as four oxen could plough in a day and a night. Gefjon turned her four sons by a giant into oxen, and their plough cut the land free. The oxen dragged it west into the sea, where it became the Danish island of Zealand, and the hole left in Sweden became a lake.

Which lake did Gefjon’s ploughing leave behind?

Ynglinga saga names the lake Lögrinn, the old name for Lake Mälaren in Sweden. Many readers think Lake Vänern fits the story better because of its size and shape. Snorri says the bays of the lake match the headlands of Zealand.

Was Gefjon a virgin goddess or a mother?

The sources say both. In one passage Snorri calls Gefjon a maiden who receives women who die unmarried. In the ploughing story Gefjon has four sons by a giant, and Ynglinga saga adds that she married Skjöldr, a son of Odin, and lived at Lejre in Denmark.

Is Gefjon the same as Freyja?

No source says Gefjon and Freyja are the same goddess. Gefjon’s name is close to Gefn, one of Freyja’s by-names, and Loki accuses Gefjon of trading her favours for a jewel, which resembles a story told of Freyja. The texts list them as two separate goddesses.

Related Entries

Odin, Loki, Freyja, Frigg, Æsir, Jötunn, Aegir, Bragi, Brísingamen, Idun, Sif, Jörð, Asgard