Freyja
Freyja was the foremost goddess of Norse myth, a goddess of love and fertility who also chose half of the slain for her hall and taught Odin the magic called seiðr. Her attributes are the necklace Brísingamen, a chariot drawn by two cats, a feather cloak for flying and the golden boar Hildisvini.
Meaning
Freyja, said fray-uh in Dictionary.com’s spelling Freya, was one of the Vanir, the daughter of Njord and sister of Freyr. Her name means “lady” or “mistress”, as both Lex and Store norske leksikon explain it. Store norske leksikon gives her as the goddess of erotic love, love and fertility, but also of death and of seiðr, a magic that held deep knowledge of life and death. Snorri’s Prose Edda places her first among the goddesses: when she rides to battle she takes half of the slain, she drives a chariot drawn by cats, and it is good to call on her for help in love. Those stories come from books written down by Christian writers at the start of the Middle Ages, the National Museum of Denmark notes, and they show how Christians saw the gods as much as how the Vikings did. Freyja is worshipped today, and the Troth, an American Heathen organisation, writes that the Freyja her worshippers know is more than the goddess of desire of popular books.
Origin and history
The Swedish History Museum has a Viking Age silver pendant from a grave at Aska in Östergötland. It is round, and inside its ring stands a pregnant woman, feet apart, her hands clasped under her belly, her cloak fastened at the neck with a brooch and a necklace of six strings of beads across her chest. The museum’s catalogue says much suggests that it shows Freyja, who besides being counted first of the valkyries was called on in pregnancy and childbirth. The same museum has a small amber cat from Birka, and its catalogue calls the cat Freyja’s animal, said to have drawn her chariot. Store norske leksikon notes that the wagon from the Oseberg ship burial is decorated with cats, which may mean that the two women buried there had ties to her cult.
Place names show how widely she was worshipped: Lex gives Frølund and Frøbjerg in Denmark and Frölunda and Frötuna in Sweden. Store norske leksikon adds that at the conversion the men of the church were particularly displeased with her, and Lex tells of the newly Christian Icelandic poet and chieftain Hjalti Skeggjason, exiled in 999 for a mocking verse about her.
Brísingamen, her necklace
Store norske leksikon calls the necklace Brísingamen her chief mark, made by four dwarfs. In the Eddic poem Thrymskvitha the giant Thrym has stolen Thor’s hammer and wants Freyja as his bride in exchange. She refuses so fiercely that “burst was the mighty | Brisings’ necklace”, and it is Thor who goes to the giants dressed as the bride, wearing the necklace (see Mjölnir). Bellows explains the name in his notes: the necklace of the Brisings, “Twiners”, a marvel fashioned by the dwarfs.
Cats, a boar and a falcon’s cloak
When Freyja goes on a journey, Snorri says, she drives her cats and sits in a chariot, and she comes that way to Baldr’s funeral. In the poem Hyndluljóð (Hyndluljoth) she rides a boar instead: “There shines the boar | with bristles of gold, Hildisvini”, made by the dwarfs Dain and Nabbi. Store norske leksikon says her feather cloak lets her fly, and that Loki borrows it in Thrymskvitha to search for Thor’s hammer; Lex calls her flight in the shape of a falcon a shaman-like trait. Lex also records her by-names Gefn, “the giving one”, and Sýr, “the sow”. The Troth adds a recent find, a Viking Age metal fitting of a seated woman holding her hair with two cats beside her, which it calls almost certainly Freyja.
Half of the slain
Freyja has a war goddess’s side. In Grímnismál (Grimnismol) Odin names her hall: “The ninth is Folkvang, | where Freyja decrees Who shall have seats in the hall; The half of the dead | each day does she choose, And half does Othin have.” Store norske leksikon adds that it was she who brought the knowledge of seiðr to Odin and the other gods and taught them how to work it. Snorri tells that her husband Odr went away on long journeys and that she weeps for him, “and her tears are red gold”; Store norske leksikon notes that Odr may be Odin himself.
Freyja or Frigg?
The two goddesses are easily confused, and the confusion is old. Both are bound to Odin: Frigg is his wife, and Freyja shares the slain with him. Lex finds a good many parallels between them and says they may once have been the same goddess. Bellows, annotating Grímnismál in 1923, cites the scholar Mogk: the Freyja who chooses half the dead is a confusion of two originally distinct goddesses, Odin’s wife and the northern goddess of love, and “Snorri has this same confusion”. Friday shows the problem. The National Museum of Denmark says the day is either Frigg’s or Freyja’s, Lex derives it from Frigg, and the calendar Ásatrúarfélagið sends its members calls it freyjudagur, Freyja’s day.
Freyja in Heathenry today
The Troth, which calls itself inclusive Heathenry, writes that Freyja is “probably the best-known of the Norse goddesses today, and also the most misunderstood”: books make her a goddess of lust, “but that’s not the Freyja known to her worshipers today, or at least, that’s not the only Freyja.” To them, it says, she is “the sorceress, the seeress, and the high priestess”. Ásatrúarfélagið in Iceland dedicates its spring blót to Freyr and Freyja. In Denmark, the National Museum describes modern believers in the old Nordic religion drinking toasts at their gatherings, where young women may praise Freyja to become pregnant or to find eternal love.
Read next
- Next in Norse gods and their symbolsLokiLoki is the shape-shifting trickster of Norse myth, a giant’s son counted among the gods, who helps them and harms them by turns and leads the giants against them at Ragnarök. His best-known image, on the Snaptun stone from Denmark, is a face with its lips sewn shut.
- Freyja drives a chariot drawn by two cats; the Swedish History Museum calls the cat her animalCat symbolismAncient Egyptians held the cat sacred to the goddess Bast; in Norse myth two cats draw the goddess Freyja's car; in the British witch lore John Brand collected, the cat was the witch's familiar. The black cat crossing your path is unlucky in American and English superstition, and lucky in Scotland and Japan.
See also
Freyr, Goddesses of love, Frigg, Odin, Thor, Baldr.
Sources
- Frøya (Store norske leksikon), Ellen Næss, Store norske leksikon, whole article and picture captions
- Freja (Lex), Finn Stefánsson, Claus Jensen, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, whole article
- Freja – fruktbarhetens och krigets gudinna (Historiska museet), collection entries 107873_HST and 267204_HST, Swedish History Museum (Statens historiska museer), object captions: Hänge (107873_HST), Kattfigurin (267204_HST)
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Thrymskvitha, stanzas 12 and 18, and note to 12; Grimnismol, stanza 14 and note; Hyndluljoth, stanza 7
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapters XXIV, XXXV and XLIX
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark, Written sources; “The gods are with us on many days of the week!”
- The old Nordic religion today, National Museum of Denmark, main text
- Freyja (The Troth), Our Troth, vol. 2 (edited for the web), The Troth, Summary
- Blót (Ásatrúarfélagið), Ásatrúarfélagið, Sigurblót
- Vor siður (Ásatrúarfélagið), Ásatrúarfélagið, the association’s calendar
- Frigg (Lex), Finn Stefánsson, Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon, opening paragraph
- Freya (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com, American entry
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Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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