Freyja, Fire, Brísingamen, and Other Musings...

(Maybe not appropriate for children under 14, or whatever. That is up to your discretion.) What is Freyja’s association with fire, or does she have one at all? This is what I will (mostly) be exploring today in this blog, but there is a lot about Freyja to unpack, and honestly, it starts with just trying to clear up what exactly she is associated with in a more broad sense. If we let this narrative be told through a christian lens we would probably say that Freyja is the Nordic Aphrodite, the goddess of love (or lust?) and beauty. I take issue with this. At least insofar as that Freyja’s nature is much more complicated than just those elements. It seems like there is a lot of dismissiveness of the importance of goddesses in Nordic mythologies, and I attribute this largely to an attempt at erasure of the power of the feminine by the church. Most goddesses were minimalized, but Freyja, and Frigg, were too big to erase. Instead the tactic was to make Freyja appear as some lustful sorceress woman with no moral compass who is a prize to be won by men, and Frigg appear to be just Odin’s stay-at-home housewife. Now, I don’t want to get much into Frigg here, because I am writing a blog entry, not a book. The obvious place to jump in would be the argument about whether or not Freyja and Frigg are aspects of the same goddess. If you want to read about that, there is lots of other stuff written on that topic; go find it. I am focusing on Freyja in instances where it is clear that it is Freyja. The nature of Freyja is extremely complex. She is the goddess of love, and beauty, but also she is associated with war, death, magic, treasure, and fertility. I think most importantly Freyja represents the autonomy of women. Despite all the efforts to weaken her power over centuries, she still is the one who chooses her fate in the literature if you read it closely. She chooses who she loves, she chooses who she has sex with, she chooses half of the battle-slain, she stands up and gives her opinions in public, and she is respected for it. The Æsir don’t dare to force her to marry against her will, to the point that Thor dresses up as her to trick the Jotunn, and Loki has to turn into a mare to lure Svadilfari away from his owner and sabotage the building of the wall in Asgard. Odin respects Freyja enough that he seeks her out in order to learn seidr. Freyja embodies the traits that heathen women should aspire to emulate. She is her own person. She is loyal to her tribe, and capable of living peaceably with other tribes. However, she still holds her own counsel and is not willing to be untrue to herself just to please others. She knows women’s wisdom and her knowledge gives her empowerment. She has agency over her body, her mind, and her voice. It is actually quite laughable that the church tries to slut-shame her as a way of reducing her power, because it has the inverse effect. Freyja sleeps with a lot of men, and she has every right to. She is not a whore, and even if she was, that is not shameful. Women having sex is not shameful. Women enjoying sex is not shameful. Let that sink in, or find something else to read. Not my problem. Women having agency over their bodies is powerful, and the double-standard where men can sleep around and women are shamed for it is antiquated and just wrong. The only reason why this argument even gets any traction anymore is because women are made to feel like them getting pregnant is entirely their own responsibility and then they are scared to have that kind of agency. The stigma is quickly disappearing though. It is okay not to be married. It is okay to raise children as a single mother. Women don’t owe men anything that they have not earned through mutual trust and respect. That’s what Freyja represents. Freyja is pure feminine energy without any expectations laid on where they don’t belong. Freyja is woman. She commands life and death. She has magic that men don’t understand, and that scares them. That is powerful. Okay that should be enough broad information. If not you can always go looking on Google or sift through the Lore. I am actually surprised there aren’t more books dedicated to just Freyja out there, although there are a few. In any case, this blog entry is supposed to be about Freyja and the Brísingamen and her association with fire. So what is the Brísingamen? That is her necklace. She bought it from the 4 Brísing dwarves. Or she slept with all 4 of them as payment for it. The story is in the Sörla þáttr, which is a short story within the Flateyjarbók. The necklace was supposedly extremely valuable, although in what way is not explained in the story. It is believed the Brísingamen is made of gold or amber or a combination of the two, and it can be found that Freyja is associated with both. It is said that Freyja’s tears for Oðr were of gold and when they fell into the sea, amber. Freyja has two daughters with Oðr, named Hnoss and Gersemi, and both these names have to do with treasure. Also, many believe the name Gullveig, meaning approximately gold-drunk or possibly gold-strength, is a kenning for Freyja. She is the sorceress in the Völuspá who is burned 3 times by the Æsir and then reborn. It is important to note that the Æsir did not have magic like the Vanir tribe and were afraid of it, until Odin learned it from Freyja. This makes Freyja’s character even more interesting because she was born to the Vanir tribe but became accepted among the Æsir along with her brother Freyr. It is important to look at Freyja’s family to understand her associations. There is her brother, Freyr, who is also associated with fertility. They are both associated with the symbol of the boar, and indeed Freyr is associated with Gullinbursti, the golden boar and Freyja with the golden-bristled Hildisvín. Freyr and Freyja are complementary forces of frith and strife, fertility, death, and rebirth. We also need to look at Freyja’s father, Njord, who is the god of the sea. This may seem like a bit of a strange familial connection at first, but it becomes relevant to this blog post later on, so bear with me. All of these points probably seem like they are very disconnected currently, but they will come together in the end. Is Freyja associated with fire? The short answer is yes, but it is a tentative complicated yes. It is too easy to try to dismiss this association and say women are associated with hearth and so all goddesses have some sort of association with hearthfire, but Freyja isn’t the type to sit by the fire and do as she’s told. Freyja is out there in the sphere of men, talking to them as equals. Acting as their equal. So an association between Freyja and hearthfire is a pale ghost of the explanation that is deserved. The best place to see fire associated with Freyja is in her connection with the Brísingamen, and I feel this holds the key to understanding this association. The Old Nordic root brísingr, means “fire” or “amber.” If we are looking at the Brísing dwarves however, it makes more sense that they are fire dwarves, not amber dwarves. So Brísingamen is fire neck ring, or fire necklace. Freyja wears a necklace of fire. (Or amber.) But if amber and fire can be swapped does she cry tears of fire for Oðr into the sea? There is still one more vital piece we are missing. This is another of Freyja’s kennings, Mardöll. The name translates as “light of the sea.” It is the sunlight dancing on the waves. She is the beauty of the ocean. The fire associated with Freyja is that sunlight dancing, it is her warmth, and her passion. What gives her beauty is her strength. We see this reflected in every aspect of her. The associations with gold and amber are an echo of her beauty and connection with this fire, and this warmth, that sparkles like sunlight. But fire burns, and stirs strife. And fire is passion and a force of will. It is not always just beauty and warmth and life-bringing force. There is the darker side, her association with magic and death. Her fire is also her lustful passion, but also her words that burn those who she scorns. Her fire is really the essence of her womanhood. Her fire is the torch that lights the way for other women to follow. Freyja’s fire tears are tears of passion. When Loki angers Freyja her throat swells and her fire necklace bursts. What a powerful image of rage. What a perfect representation of her passion. So Freyja is associated with fire, but the fire is a metaphorical fire that represents her essence. It is all of her traits combined: her beauty, her lust, her seidr, her associations with fertility and with death. It is also all of her emotions: her love, her anger, her heartbreak. The fire is representative of her being from the Vanir tribe and it also is represented as the gold and amber that adorns her and her hall. It is the shining of the sunlight on the water, and it radiates out and affects all those around her. The fire is the essence of a woman who knows her worth.

Further Reading: (Okay, so this is a tricky one. I referenced the Eddas heavily and also a few Sagas. I am just going to include the highlights here because there are a lot of stories that have to do with Freyja.) Flateyjarbók https://openlibrary.org/books/OL6922638M/Flateyjarbok. Gylfaginning https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm Skáldskaparmál https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre05.htm Þrymskviða https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe11.htm Völuspá https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe03.htm Picture Source: "Freyja in the Cave of the Dwarfs" Foster, Mary H. 1901. Asgard Stories: Tales from Norse Mythology. Silver, Burdett and Company.