Freyja means Lady or Mistress, also known as Freya.
Freyja is the Scandinavian goddess of fertility, lust, beauty, wealth, gold as well as being a witch skilled in magick and enchantment. She is the main goddess of the Vanir, daughter of Njörðr.
Here are a some Folklore Facts about this lofty goddess.
Freyja is not Frigg the queen of the Aesir goddesses and is married to Odin. Many scholars still debate this topic that over time Frigg and Freyja somehow combined in identity. However, Frigg is the goddess who has the English word Friday named after her.
She enjoys love and poetry and is famous for her promiscuity. Freyja worship was erotic and she is connected to several Eastern deities, like Cybele. Freyja represents the planet ‘Venus’ which is the love planet.
Freyja has a brother ‘Freyr’ who is the Norse god of harvest and bounty.
She has two large male Norse forest cats that pull her and her chariot among the clouds, named, ‘Bygul’ and ‘Trjegul’.
Freyja has a wild boar at her side his name is ‘Hildisvini,’ who once was a man. Sadly, or not, the dark elves turned him into a boar.
She is married to the god Óðr who is rarely around and she searches for him under various names such as including the thrice-burnt and thrice-reborn Gullveig/Heiðr, the goddesses Gefjon, Skaði, Þorgerðr Hölgabrúðr and Irpa, Menglöð, and the 1st century CE “Isis” of the Suebi. Freyja cries tears of gold when she can’t fine him.
She has a falcon cloak that enables her to travel throughout the nine worlds.
Freyja is known as an accomplished sorceress of the Norse nine worlds.
She is the leader of the Valkyries, female goddesses that help her collect the fallen brave soldiers souls from the battlefield.
Odin and Freyja collect the dead souls of valiant soldiers on the battlefield and carry half of them, off to Valhalla the hall of Odin and the other half Freyja takes to her hall Sessrúmnir in Folksvangr. She reigns over ‘Folksvangr’ in the heavens.
Freyja has a magickal gift of Seidr, she can shape-shift and change her environment that surrounds her.
Odin taught her Rune wisdom and in exchange she taught Odin her spell craft.
Freyja takes pride in her amber necklace called Brísingamen. This frisky goddess bargained to attain the Necklace of Brísingamen also known as Brisings, by sleeping with four crafty dwarfs that created it.
Her most desired fruit are strawberries and her number is 13 and she is the goddess of Friday this is her good fortune day, Friday the 13th.
Source and Reference:
- Britt-Mari Näsström, Ph.D. Freyja, the Great goddess of The North. ISBN 10:1593860196
- Featured Art: Freia—a combination of Freyja and the goddess Iðunn—from Richard Wagner’s opera Der Ring des Nibelungen as illustrated (1910) by Arthur Rackham in Public Domain.
Freyja (1905) by John Bauer (1882–1918) Public Domain
*Folklore, poetry & fiction writer 