Who Is Freya?

Her name is a title

Freyja, often written Freya, is the most prominent goddess of Old Norse literature. Her name means simply Lady: a title of rank, the feminine of her brother Freyr, Lord. She belongs to the Vanir, the gods of fertility and plenty, and came to live among the Æsir. She rides in a chariot drawn by cats.

Where her stories are kept

What we know of her comes from medieval Icelandic writings, the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda, set down after Scandinavia became Christian. They are precious and incomplete. Through them she still comes to us whole: lover, mourner, sorceress, chooser of the slain.

Love and war

Freyja owns Brísingamen, a famed necklace, and a cloak of falcon feathers that lets its wearer fly. She is linked with seiðr, a form of Norse magic. According to the Poetic Edda, each day she chooses half of those who fall in battle for her hall in Fólkvangr; the other half go to Odin.

She is not a soft goddess of romance. Desire and command live in her side by side.

The bride who refused

In the poem Þrymskviða, a giant steals Thor’s hammer and will return it only if Freyja is given to him as his bride. The gods come to ask her. Freyja is so furious that the hall of the gods shakes and her great necklace bursts apart.

She will not be traded. In the end, Thor goes to the giant’s hall dressed as the bride himself.

Tears of gold

Snorri tells that her husband, Óðr, went away on long journeys, and that Freyja weeps for him, and her tears are red gold. She went searching for him among strange peoples, under many names.

The goddess who refuses to be traded also longs, and grieves, and goes looking. Sovereignty in her is not coldness. It is a heart that belongs to itself.