Freyja belongs to the family of Vanir, she is the daughter of the god Njörd and the twin sister of Frey. Together with her brother and father, she came to Asgard as a hostage after the Vanir-Æsir War. Victor Rydberg has noticed a peculiarity; although we have a lot of material on how the family of Æsir was established and we have their entire genealogy, we don’t know much about the Vanir, and we know mostly the names of those who live together with the Æsir. That is also why Freyja is listed among the Asynjur, even though we know that she belongs to the Vanir tribe.
The name Freyja means ‘Lady’, and the German address for a woman Frau also evolved from a similar basis. Freyja is also often called Vanadís, the lady of the Vanir. According to one theory, Freyja is not her real name, but only a title. This would also make her a counterpart to Frey, the Lord. This assumption would also support the theory that Frigg and Freyja were once one goddess. The name Frigg comes from a different word with the meaning ‘Beloved’. We know, however, that the cults of the Germanic gods and goddesses were not the same everywhere. They varied from place to place, so it is quite possible that the more popular cult of Freyja “overwrote” other local goddesses. These goddesses were probably worshipped for prosperity and fertility, which is also the role of both Frigg and Freyja. Also, Snorri describes that as Freyja wandered the land, she was given different names – which may be interpreted as aspects of these local goddesses. Freyja’s wanderings and her search for her lost husband Od can also be seen as a reflection of the ancient myth of Psyche searching for her husband Cupid, a harrowing journey to find her true love and happiness.
Freyja has several attributes. One of them is the Brísingamen necklace, for which she spent four nights, each with a different dwarf, in order to obtain it. Dwarves are among the best smiths and their jewellery or magical items are renowned. They are the ones who created Thor’s hammer and Frey’s mechanical boar. Looking at it from a different perspective, while the male gods received the creations of the dwarves without any effort, Freyja had to earn it. Sibling sexual unions are also typical of the Vanir, which of course Frey and Freyja renounced when they came to Asgard. In any case, Freyja’s sexuality and lust are sometimes a bit much even for the relatively free-spirited Æsir, and even the giantess and seer Hyndla points this out.
In some ways, Freyja can be seen as some sort of Odin’s female counterpart. Snorri writes that Freyja’s companion was Od (Óðr, the same inspiration and ecstasy we see in Óðinn), who abandoned her and her daughter Hnoss. She weeps, wanders the world, and searches for him. According to a folk legend, we can find her tears in the morning on leaves and blades of grass, in the form of dew. The morning sun gives them a golden colour, and that is why Freya’s tears are said to be made of gold. Thus, golden tears, the necklace and the love of gold and jewellery in general are typical of Freyja, as are amber, honey and mead.
Like her brother, Freyja is also associated with wild pigs, especially with a swine, and also with the cats that pull her carriage. She is also connected to smaller birds of prey, especially the falcon, which is apparently derived from her falcon robe, in which Freyja flies across the wide countryside, and which she occasionally lends to Loki.
For her hall of Fólkvangr (translated as ‘People-field or Army/Folk-field’) she chooses half of the fallen warriors, the other half being received by Odin. The exact criteria are not recorded anywhere in the Eddas or the sagas, so some speculate that she chooses the faithful, or those who have not betrayed their true love. In The Lay of Hárbard, it is said that in Freyja’s hall the lovers will meet again, so the last option is those whom even death will not separate.
Freyja is also associated with the magic called seidr (seiðr). Snorri states that Freyja taught seidr to the Æsir and Odin. Virtually any kind of folk witchcraft can be classified under this term, e.g., divination, shapeshifting, weather influencing, fertility and prosperity rituals, cursing or healing.
Freyja is the goddess of a wide range of activities: sex, love, beauty, prosperity, magic, war, the dead and those killed in battle, and she is even the only one of the Asynjur who has her own army. For women she is a symbol of almost unlimited freedom, for men of love, sex and sensuality. Friday is more commonly attributed to Frigg, but the Romans dedicated Friday to Venus, whose Germanic counterpart would have been Freyja.
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S. Sedlakova, Brno, CZE