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2-2016

The Goddess: Myths of the Great Mother

Christopher R. Fee
Gettysburg College

David Leeming
University of Connecticut

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Fee, Christopher R., and David Leeming. The Goddess: Myths of the Great Mother. London, England: Reaktion Press, 2016.

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The Goddess: Myths of the Great Mother
Description
The Goddess is all around us: Her face is reflected in the burgeoning new growth of every ensuing spring; her
power is evident in the miracle of conception and childbirth and in the newborn’s cry as it searches for the
nurturing breast; we glimpse her in the alluring beauty of youth, in the incredible power of sexual attraction, in
the affection of family gatherings, and in the gentle caring of loved ones as they leave the mortal world. The
Goddess is with us in the everyday miracles of life, growth, and death which always have surrounded us and
always will, and this ubiquity speaks to the enduring presence and changing masks of the universal power
people have always recognized in their lives. Such power is the Goddess, at least in part, and through its
workings we may occasionally catch a glimpse of the divine.

Keywords
God, Goddess, Transformation, Soul

Disciplines
English Language and Literature | Folklore | Religion

Publisher
Reaktion Books

ISBN
9781780235097

Comments
"Chapter IV: The Battle Lust of the Northern Goddess," is available by clicking the download button above.

This book is available at The Cupola: Scholarship at Gettysburg College: https://cupola.gettysburg.edu/books/95

t he g odde ss
THE GODDESS
M Y T H S O F T H E G R E AT M O T H E R

Christopher Fee &

David Leeming

r e akt ion bo oks

To our mothers, grandmothers, daughters, granddaughters, sisters, aunts and nieces:
goddesses all. David sees the faces of the Goddess in Pam, Margaret, Juliet, Julia,
Morgan, Brooklyn, Emilia and Margaret. Chris traces his devotion to the Goddess
to Allison, Emma, Chandler, Emmy Lou, Martha, Betty, Catherine, Sandie, Pat,
Bernice, Ann, Carmen, Charley, Arrielle and Alyssa.

Published by Reaktion Books Ltd

Unit 32, Waterside
44–48 Wharf Road
London n1 7ux, uk
www.reaktionbooks.co.uk

First published 2016

Copyright © Christopher Fee and David Leeming 2016

All rights reserved

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers

Printed and bound in Great Britain by TJ International, Padstow, Cornwall

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

isbn 978 1 78023 509 7

 Contents

Introduction: The Many Guises of the Goddess 7

i The Dawn of the Indian Goddess 13

ii The Religious Conversion of

the Near Eastern Goddess 37

iii The Scourge of the Middle Eastern

and Mediterranean Goddess 57

iv The Battle Lust of the Northern Goddess 87

v The Seductive Destruction of the Goddess

of the Western Isles 119

Conclusion: The Identity of the Goddess 153

Further Reading 156

Acknowledgements 160

Photo Acknowledgements 161

Index 162
 iv
The Battle Lust of the
Northern Goddess

Genesis

W  e are most familiar with the face of the Northern goddess

through the visages recognized and recorded by her
Scandinavian children. These peoples were illiterate until their con-
version to Christianity around the turn of the first millennium, and
they are best known to modern readers through records of medieval
monks lamenting the scourge of the Vikings. Not all early
Scandinavians were part-time pirates and raiders, however, and
their culture involved more than shipbuilding, weapon-making
and pillaging. It is useful, therefore, to mark this distinction:
Scandinavian culture, language and mythology in general we may
term ‘Norse’; ‘Viking’, meanwhile, refers to Scandinavian raiders and
raiding practices spanning from the late eighth through to the
eleventh centuries.
The term ‘Viking’ most likely derives from vik, the Old Norse
word for a bay or inlet; to go i viking, in the phrase of the day, ori-
ginally meant signing on for a seasonal raiding adventure during
the days of high summer between the planting and the harvesting
of the crops at home on the farm. The later, prosperous Vikings
would draw more and more followers, eventually developing into
‘sea-kings’, powerful military and political figures in their own right.
These western Vikings conquered or were granted lands in regions
from Scandinavia to Sicily, and colonized new territories in Iceland,
Greenland and Vinland (North America). Eastern Vikings, known
as Rus’, founded a principality which ultimately evolved into modern
Russia, and they opened eastern trade routes to Constantinople, where
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 the g odde ss

This early 7th-century Anglo-Saxon purse clasp from the famous Sutton Hoo ship
burial illustrates the fine workmanship of the period, as well as the importance of
animal imagery and complex patterns to the art of the Anglo-Saxons and their
Scandinavian cousins.

they formed the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine emperor. The

Scottish Isles, the Irish coastal towns and the Isle of Man fell under
Viking sway, and a wide swathe of England became the ‘Danelaw’, a
region characterized by Norse influences in language and law which
are still discernable to this day. Moreover, in 1016 a Scandinavian king,
Cnut, ascended to the English throne.
While the reasons for the sudden and widespread success and
enduring legacy of these peoples were many and complex, it is hard
to deny that their religion and world view played a role, and it is
perhaps for such reasons that the fierce face of the Northern battle
goddess, especially in her role as a Valkyrie, is especially well remem-
bered today. As ever, however, the goddess may not be easily reduced
to a simple characterization, and in her Northern guise one may
glimpse manifold attributes concerning fertility, fecundity, sexuality
and sorcery, as well as those denoting destruction, despair and death.
The great paradox of Norse mythology is that, on the one hand,
it provides us with the richest available view of Northern European
pagan beliefs and rituals, while on the other, most of that material
comes to us second-hand, as it were, either through the pens of ene-
mies, proselytizers and foreigners, or through the sepia-tinged view
of later generations of ancestor-revering Icelanders. Thus, classical
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 The Battle Lust of the Norther n Goddess

historians, Christian missionaries and monks, and Arab emissaries

provide us with shocking tales of barbarous, wild-eyed Northmen,
while nationalistic Icelanders regale us with a mythic heritage worthy
enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with that of Rome or Greece.
In the first camp we must include the Germania of the Roman
historian Tacitus, the Gesta Danorum of Saxo Grammaticus, the
histories of Adam of Bremen, the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and various
eyewitness accounts, such as that of a funeral ritual and concomitant
human sacrifice recorded by Ibn Fadlan. In the second camp we
find the Elder or Poetic Edda, a collection of more than thirty poems
written down around 1270 but representing much older concepts; the
Landnámabók, or ‘Book of Settlements’ of Iceland; various sagas of
the Icelanders; and – most notably – the work of Snorri Sturluson,
author of the Prose Edda.
Written around 1220 as something of a step-by-step guide
for poets, the Prose Edda is divided into four parts: a prologue;
Gylfaginning, or the ‘Beguiling of Gylfi’; Skáldskaparmál; and Háttatal.
In Gylfaginning, Gylfi is a Swedish king who is able to quiz disguised
pagan gods about key aspects of Norse mythology. Skáldskaparmál
comprises a collection of poetic techniques and phrases, while
Háttatal is a compilation of skaldic verse – that is, of the forms of
Norse courtly poetry. Snorri was an important farmer and political
figure, and his intrigues against the Norwegian king ended when he
was assassinated in his own home in September 1241.

Faces of the Goddess

Perhaps the best-known face of the Northern goddess is worn by
the Valkyries, called the valkyrjar – ‘Choosers of the Slain’ – in Old
Norse, who are virgin demigoddesses and Odin’s emissaries and
functionaries upon the field of battle. The Valkyries often give great
victories to mighty warriors time and again, only to slay these same
warriors and bring them to Valhalla in the end. While selecting daily
the cream of the crop of each earthly battle to swell the ranks of the
heavenly einherjar, the Valkyries also serve mead and pork each even-
ing to Valhalla’s chosen warriors, thus emphasizing the traditional
role of noble woman as cup-bearer in early Germanic societies. As is
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amply illustrated by Wealhtheow, queen of the Danes and mistress

within the great hall Heorot in Beowulf, the function of the cup-
bearer establishes and reinforces rank and privilege among warriors
based on attributes of honour and heroic deeds. To be served by the
virgin oskmeyjar, ‘wish girls’, of Odin himself is the greatest honour
a warrior could receive.
The Valkyries belong to a class of female beings known collectively
as the Dísir, which seems in some sources to include most feminine
spirits of any power, from mighty goddesses to guardians of the dead,
to the undead spirits of human women. Moreover, the Valkyries have
close associations with Freyja, the most potent of the Norse goddesses,
who takes a share of the battlefield dead and who counts among her
treasures a feather coat which allows her to fly. Freyja may thus be
linked with these battle goddesses, and most especially with the swan
maidens of the Völundr/Weland myth. One may note dryly, however,
that Freyja lacks the chastity generally associated with the Valkyries.
The handmaids of the All-father Odin are sometimes said to
total nine, other times twelve or thirteen, and then again 29 or even
an infinite number. Their names, often evocative of battle and tumult
(‘Screaming’, ‘Axe-time’) may be more literary than mythic. Though
originally clearly superhuman, it seems that some earthly shield
maidens and princesses may have swelled the ranks of the Choosers
of the Slain. Minor death goddesses such as the Valkyries abound
in Indo-European mythic traditions, from India and Iran to Ireland
and Iceland. More specifically, the Old English term waelcyrge, which
has the same etymology as valkyrie, generally denotes a kind of witch
or fury, possibly revealing the earlier Indo-European female death
spirit who is devoid of the late Viking Age trappings that transform
this being into the familiar form of the wing-helmeted, breast-plated
shield maiden – the Anglo-Saxon records are quite disparaging
of such figures, describing them as malevolent and demonic. The
description of the Valkyries in the Norse sources, however, is generally
more positive, as the death they bring is in a way a rich reward for
battlefield valour. The Valkyries thus function as a minor or helping
form of a goddess of Fate; indeed, Gylfaginning makes it clear that the
youngest of the Norns or Fates, Skuld (‘Future’ or ‘What Must Be’),
rides forth with the Valkyries on their battlefield missions. The poem
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 The Battle Lust of the Norther n Goddess

Hákonarmál contains speeches by the Valkyries Göndul, ‘Magical

One’, and Skögul, ‘Battle’, which explicate the role of Odin’s shield
maidens as battle Fates, and thus perhaps reinforce the association
between the Valkyries and the Norns. The clearest reference to the
Valkyries as a form of the Fates comes from Njáls saga, in which a
vision is described which casts the Valkyries as weavers foretelling
the carnage of the Battle of Clontarf in Ireland in 1014. The weft and
warp threads tied to the loom were wrought of human intestines,
while men’s heads served as the weights; the beater was a sword and
the shuttle an arrow. The weavers sang a grisly song of the gore and
slaughter depicted on the gruesome tapestry woven by the Valkyries.
Primary sources containing references to the Valkyries include
most of those texts detailing the entourage of Odin and the afterlife
in Valhalla, perhaps most notably Grímnismál and Gylfaginning, as
well as two tenth-century poems in praise of fallen kings: Eiríksmál,
written after the death of King Eric Bloodaxe at the Battle of
Stainmoor in England in 954 ce, and most especially Hákonarmál,
written in praise of King Hákon the Good after his death at the
Battle of Fitjar, on the island of Stord in Norway in 961. The extant
versions of Hákonarmál include a full transcription in Heimskringla,
Snorri Sturluson’s history of Norway’s kings. Hákonarmál, although
longer and much more fully articulated in its treatment of the Valkyrie
theme than Eiríksmál, seems to owe a substantial debt to the poet
who composed the earlier poem; this is perhaps not surprising, as Eric
Bloodaxe and Hákon the Good were both sons of Harald Fairhair,
and so their lives were bound to invite comparison. Because Odin’s
handmaidens choose which warriors will die and when, it is thus
natural that they would invite comparison with the Norns.
The number of the Norse Fates is not entirely clear, although
they are mentioned and described in a large number of sources. In
Gylfaginning, Snorri first names three individual Norns and then
elaborates on the many other varieties of these figures. The three
he calls by name are Urd (‘Fate’), Verdandi (‘Present’) and Skuld
(‘Future’), and they live near the Well of Urd at the foot of a root of
Yggdrasil, the great World Tree of the Norse cosmos. Here they tend
to the World Ash and determine the fates of gods, men and all other
creatures. The Old Norse word urd (urðr) is cognate with the Old
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English term wyrd, and thus is directly related to our modern word
‘weird’, which gave Shakespeare his ‘Weird Sisters’, or soothsaying
witches, of Macbeth.
The Norns manifest a terrible kind of beauty, as they embody
both man’s hopes and his fears for the future. As Snorri assures us,
there are both good and bad Norns, and some are descended from the
gods, some from the elves and some from the dwarfs. Some Norns
are associated with childbirth, and thus with reproductive, life-giving
powers, and the three who are caretakers of Yggdrasil keep the cosmos
in balance. The Norns are sometimes also associated with weaving,
as is the goddess Frigg, although sometimes the Valkyries are given
this task; in any case, the loom is clearly associated with fate, as is, in
some cases, the cutting of notches in wood, which may refer both to
the mystical practice of rune writing and to the practice of marking
time by notching frames and lintels. The Norns, like the Valkyries,
may have been related to or even in some measure derived from the
Dísir, a sort of catch-all term for a number of female demigods, of
which some were patrons of the living, others guardians of the dead
or battle goddesses. The destructive power of the norna dómr, the
‘Doom of the Norns’, in any case explicitly emphasizes the life-taking
power of the Norns, and thus aligns them with destroyer goddesses
such as the Valkyries. The Norns have typically been associated with
the Fates of the classical world – the Moirai of the Greeks and the
Parcae of the Romans – and this probable link may well point to an
ancient provenance, as well as to later literary influences.
Aspects of the Great Earth Mother fertility goddess are repre-
sented by several deities in the Norse pantheon, including most
notably Jord, ‘Earth’, identified as the mother of Thor and the consort
of Odin, as well as the more familiar Frigg, from whom the word
Friday arises, who is the mother of Baldr and was the chief consort
of Odin by the literary period. The earliest fairly complete informa-
tion available describing an earth goddess concerns Nerthus, who
has been transformed into Njörd by the time of the Viking Age;
Sif, the wife of Thor, and Idun, the keeper of the Golden Apples of
Youth, both manifest major attributes of fertility goddesses as well.
The two most significant goddesses in the surviving literature of
Norse mythology are, however, Frigg and Freyja, and there is some
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reason to believe that the two may offer different faces of what was
once the same deity: frigg means ‘love’, and the Romans equated her
with Venus; thus she is associated with the sexuality and pleasure we
might be tempted to attribute to Freyja.
Furthermore, while Frigg clearly is designated as the wife of Odin,
Freyja is said to have a husband named Od, whose name is cognate
with Odin and who often (always, it seems) is away. Moreover, authors
including Saxo Grammaticus and Snorri Sturluson accused Frigg,
like Freyja, of the easy virtue and transgressive sexuality one would
associate with a fertility goddess. In any case, from earliest times an
Earth Mother goddess was worshipped as the mate of a Sky Father
god, and Frigg clearly was revered in that regard: indeed, a multitude
of place names involving compounds of frigg make it clear that her
cult was active and widespread. Frigg was also the goddess of the
loom, and thus was said to have the ability, like that of the Norns,
to discern the fates of men. Frigg would sometimes interfere in the
enacting of such fates as well: in disputes with Odin concerning their
particular favourite mortals, Frigg was not above resorting to the kind
of trickery we might expect of the one-eyed god Odin himself. The
most important myths concerning Frigg are those surrounding the
death of her son Baldr, however, and thus are best dealt with in a
discussion of the conclusion of the Norse mythic cycle. References to
Frigg are not uncommon, but for details of her sexual promiscuity, see
Saxo’s Gesta Danorum and Snorri’s Ynglinga saga in his Heimskringla:
Loki references her incestuous unions with the brothers of Odin in
the Poetic Edda poem Lokasenna, which, along with Gylfaginning, is
a source of our knowledge that she is a seeress; the Grímnismál also
contains an example of the disputes of Frigg and Odin.
Stories of the relationship of the goddess to forces of vitality
and fecundity, on the other hand, have much to teach us about the
starkness of the Norse view of the natural world. For example, the
myth of the kidnapping of Idun and the Theft of her Apples of Youth
invites a re-examination of the role of the giants as adversaries to
the forces of life and vitality embodied by fertility goddesses. The
story begins with Loki in the role of boon companion to Odin, but
soon we see evidence that the forces of chaos have begun to unravel
that relationship. One day Odin, Hoenir and Loki determined to go
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forth together in search of adventure, and after a long march they

found and slayed an ox and built a fire beneath it in order to roast
it. As time passed, however, it became clear that some magical force
was keeping the ox from cooking, and the gods were perplexed by
this turn of events. From high up above them in a tree a mighty
eagle called down to them, informing them that it was he who had
bewitched their supper, and offered to undo the charm if he were
offered his fair share of the meat. The gods assented to this demand,
but when the eagle ripped off most of the best meat from the car-
cass, Loki became angry and struck at the bird with a staff; the blow
stuck where it landed, however, and Loki’s hand stuck to the staff;
thus by the eagle’s magical powers Loki soon found himself a most
unwilling passenger on a high-speed, low-level flight across the most
rugged terrain the eagle could find. Bashed and battered by every
stone and stump in the line of flight, Loki feared that he would soon
be broken into bloody bits, and he cried out for mercy. In return for
his freedom, Loki was forced to swear an oath to deliver Idun and
her Apples of Youth outside of the safety of the domain of the gods;
this the Trickster did, and he soon made his way more tenderly back
the way he had been brought.
Upon his return to Asgard, Loki found it easy enough to trick
Idun into coming with him on a search for the most fabulous apples
ever seen. The crafty one told the goddess to bring her own Gold
Apples for comparison. At the appointed time and place, he handed
her over to the claws of the eagle, who was in fact the giant Thjazi
in disguise. The gods soon noticed Idun’s absence and lamented her
departure, as they began to wither and age. When it was determined
that Loki was the last one seen with the missing goddess, the gods
threatened him with certain and painful death if he did not undo his
mischief; to this Loki tremblingly agreed, with the condition that
Freyja lend him her feather cloak, which imparts upon the wearer
the guise and flight of a bird of prey. Loki soon winged his way to
Thrymheim, Thjazi’s home, where he found the giant out and the
goddess eager to return to her home; transforming Idun into the
semblance of a nut, Loki sped for home as fast as Freyja’s wings could
take him. He left not a moment too soon, however, as Thjazi almost
immediately returned home, realized that Idun was missing, donned
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his eagle guise and flew after the retreating Loki. The eagle was much
more powerful than the falcon, however, and soon Thjazi had gained
much of the distance between them; the gods were watching for
Loki’s return however, and as he raced over the walls of Asgard they
kindled a mighty blaze that Thjazi, in his great rush, was unable to
avoid. The feathers burned from his back and the giant plunged to
the ground, where the gods quickly dispatched him. Thjazi’s daughter
Skadi, meanwhile, waited in vain for her father’s return.
In this tale, Loki’s role as less than trustworthy is emphasized
in his deception of the credulous Idun, and in his willingness to
betray the life-giving treasure of the gods we see intimations of
the ultimate betrayal to come. Shape-shifting is also emphasized
in this myth, and likewise provides a cautionary tale about the
misuse of such powers. There is an obvious parallel between the
Apples of Youth of Idun and those of the classical tradition, and
it seems that these traditions may stem from a common source;
indeed, a number of close parallels in the Irish tradition support
this argument. Apples and nuts have a special place in Irish myth
from earliest times as harbingers of eternal life, perhaps because
they contain the mysterious power to sprout forth new life; it may
be of special interest, then, to note that Snorri added the details of
Idun’s transformation into a nut from an unidentified source. Apples
and nuts have been identified among grave goods and in graven
images in the northern world since at least the classical period;
apples may have been linked to the otherworld in Anglo-Saxon
England, and the Viking Age Oseberg burial ship contained a bucket
of apples. The name Idun signifies eternity and continual replenish-
ment, marking the goddess and her apples as symbols of fertility
and the life force itself. Hence Thjazi’s attempt to capture and contain
this life force is not only an attempt to destroy his enemies, the gods,
but another reminder of the role of the giants as personifications of
the forces of destruction and chaos which constantly threaten to
overwhelm the powers of creation and order. The kidnapping of
Idun and the Theft of the Apples of Youth ultimately comes from
Haustlöng, a skaldic poem by Thjodolf of Hvin credited by Snorri
as his main source in his retelling of the tale in the Skáldskaparmál
section of the Prose Edda.
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In the myth of the Shearing of Sif, Loki takes a more direct role
in meddling with one of the goddesses, this time acting entirely of his
own volition, and to no discernable end but to wreak havoc. Although
the prank that sets the story in motion seems relatively harmless on
the surface, the trickster’s demonic mirth bespeaks darker deeds to
come. Despite the gods receiving mighty weapons through Loki’s
quest to compensate Sif for her loss, none of these gifts will avail
their owners enough to save them in the final battle of RagnarÖk.
Loki’s use of shape-shifting and his duplicitous interpretation of
agreements in this myth also flesh out our growing understanding
of his volatile character.
Skulking about and acting when no one was aware, Loki sheared
the hair of Sif out of pure malice. Once Thor had discovered what
Loki had done, he threatened to break every bone in the trickster’s
body. In the face of Thor’s rage, the prankster swore to replace Sif ’s
hair with waves of flowing, growing gold. In order to save himself,
Loki convinced the sons of Ivaldi the Dwarf to fashion this hair
from gold; they also made Gungnir, Odin’s spear, and Skidbladnir,
the ship of the god Frey, brother of Freyja. The dwarfs gained little
but the goodwill of the gods for their labours, but the treasures they
produced were magical and beautifully crafted. Loki displayed these
masterpieces to Brokk the Dwarf, and the trickster wagered his own
head that Brokk’s brother Eitri could not fashion three greater treas-
ures. The dwarfs accepted this bet, and Brokk handled the bellows
as Eitri fashioned the crafts. Three times Eitri warned Brokk not to
dawdle at the bellows, and three times Loki, in the form of a pesky,
biting fly, attempted to distract Brokk from his task. The first time, the
fly bit Brokk on the arm, disturbing him not at all, and Eitri crafted
Gullinbursti, Frey’s golden boar; the second time, the fly bit Brokk
on the neck, barely annoying him, and Eitri created Draupnir, Odin’s
Ring of Plenty; the third time, the fly drew blood between Brokk’s
eyes, causing him to let go of the bellows for an instant, and Eitri
produced Mjölnir, Thor’s hammer, although the dwarf claimed that
his work was nearly ruined, and the handle clearly was a little short.
Brokk and Loki travelled on to Asgard, where the six treasures
were placed before the gods, who were called upon to determine
the winner of the wager for Loki’s head. The golden hair cunningly
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crafted by the sons of Ivaldi rooted instantly to Sif ’s head, restoring

her beauty, and Odin and Frey were very pleased with the attributes
of Gungnir and Skidbladnir, just as they were with those of Draupnir
and Gullinbursti. The gods were all captivated, however, with the ham-
mer Mjollnir, which promised to be their greatest protection against
the incursions of the Frost Giants; thus Brokk and his brother were
declared the winners of the wager, and the dwarf called for Loki’s
head. The trickster tried to offer a ransom to save his life, but when
Brokk dismissed this offer out of hand, Loki sped away upon his magic
shoes, traversing the sky and the sea. When the dwarf called upon
the Thunder God for justice, Thor himself ran Loki to the ground
and delivered him for judgement. Just as Brokk moved to take his
winnings by cutting off Loki’s head, however, the Sly One argued
that the dwarf had a right to the trickster’s head, but not to the neck.
Disgusted but undeterred by Loki’s cleverness, the dwarf acted upon
the head that he had won and sewed Loki’s lips together, presumably
so that the trickster might choke upon his own false words, honeyed
though his tongue might be.
While on the surface this myth may seem to relate only tan-
gentially to Sif and her hair, the Shearing of Sif is the catalyst that
incites the creation of the great treasures of the gods; more to the
point, it seems no coincidence that the greatest treasure produced in
the course of this myth, the mightiest weapon of the gods in their
struggle against the giants, is the phallic hammer which embodies
the power and vitality of the husband of the violated fertility god-
dess. Sif, ‘related by love’, is the wife of Thor, and references to her
are usually in regard to this relationship; as the veneration of Thor
by farmers became more and more widespread, his consort may have
developed as a tandem deity, and thus the pair might be seen in the
light of the classic pattern of Sky God mated with Earth Goddess.
Whether Sif always displayed the fidelity attributed to her name is
called into question when the goddess is condemned for unfaithful-
ness by Loki in Lokasenna; then again, the trickster accused most of
the goddesses of the same or worse.
Still, the question of how Loki had access to the person of Thor’s
wife in order to cut her hair while she ostensibly slept is an intriguing
one in this context, although to a shape-shifter like Loki, this task
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might not prove overly difficult. Loki’s relationship with the forces
of chaos may be easily inferred by his impish impulse to steal – for
no reason except to cause mischief – the golden hair of a goddess of
fertility, hair which might well be likened to golden waves of grain. His
playful crime has a dark undercurrent, foreshadowing the trickster’s
ultimate betrayal of the fecundity and life force of the gods in his
plot against Baldr, whose own eyelashes are themselves compared by
Snorri to sun-bleached grass. While it has been argued that there is
no direct evidence of a cult of Sif and that her name in fact refers to
a variety of moss, the image of the goddess’s hair magically renewed
evocatively reflects the annual miracle of the growth of the new grain
crop which undulates rhythmically in the gentle breeze of the grow-
ing season. Sif ’s hastily shaved pate conversely might be likened to
a field of stubble as the cold winds blow across it after the harvest.
Most importantly, it is often overlooked that the gods gained their
greatest treasures precisely because of the consequences of this shear-
ing episode, and one wonders if the relationship between a surplus
of agricultural plenty and the opportunity to obtain manufactured
goods such as those represented by the treasures of the gods was lost
on the audience of the myth.
When the giant Hrungnir grew drunk and boastful in the com-
pany of the gods, it was Sif and Freyja he threatened to steal away
with him, articulating once more the constant threat of the forces
represented by the giants to swallow up the powers of fecundity and
sexuality embodied by such goddesses. Snorri provides the fullest
telling of the myth concerning Sif ’s hair in the Skáldskaparmál in his
Prose Edda, in the section in which he details how the gods came to
possess their greatest treasures, perhaps thus underscoring the rela-
tionship between the potency of fertility and the magic associated
with those valuables.
Njörd is another god associated with fertility; moreover, this
figure is properly examined in the context of the goddess and changes
to her visage. Njörd seems to have been derived from the ancient
Germanic goddess Nerthus, the worship of whom is described for us
by Tacitus in his Germania. Tacitus glossed the name of the goddess
as terra mater, or Mother Earth, though her cult existed many centur-
ies before the Viking Age; she clearly seems a great goddess fertility
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figure related to the family of the Vanir, and the early Germanic
name Nerthus is certainly cognate with the later Norse Njörd. (The
Vanir is the group of Norse fertility gods; the other pantheon, the
Æsir, are war gods. Originally, the two groups had been in conflict,
and the Æsir both desired and loathed the forces of fecundity and
sexuality wielded by the Vanir.) It also seems highly likely that the
cults of Frey and Freyja appropriated many aspects of the rites of
their forebears. The goddess Nerthus dwelled in a ritual cart which
was covered with a sanctified cloth and kept in a sacred grove upon
a holy island; none but the high priest of her cult might look upon
or touch the cart, the cloth or the numen, ‘god-head’ (presumably
the goddess herself or at least her earthly representation) therein, on
pain of death. When the cycle of the year had turned to the moment
deemed by the goddess to be most propitious, she would embody her
shrine within the cart; her priest would divine her presence and would
then hitch the cart to a yoke of cattle and take Nerthus forth to visit
her followers, although the goddess would remain sequestered and
veiled within her sacred wagon at all times. This peregrination marked
a festival of peace, calm and tranquillity: all weapons were put up for
the duration of the sacred procession, fighting was strictly forbidden
and objects of iron were locked securely away. All who received the
goddess feasted and rejoiced in peace and harmony until the goddess
returned to her home upon the holy island. Then the cart, the cloth
and the goddess herself, if it is to be believed, were washed in the
sacred waters surrounding her home; once the temple-wagon had
been properly cleansed and reassembled, the slaves who performed
these tasks were sacrificed to the goddess by ritual drowning in the
same waters. The cult and shrine of Nerthus were thus imbued with
a sense of terrible awe and sanctified ignorance, since the uninitiated
must not survive the sight of her holiest of holies.
Tacitus places the sanctified homeland of Nerthus upon a holy
island in the sea, which has been suggested to have been located in the
Baltic. Subsequent followers of related cults seem to have practised
their worship upon islands in inland lakes, and in marshy or boggy
areas. Like Artemis, Nerthus appears to have been a virgin goddess
whose nakedness was never permitted to be violated by profane eyes.
Tacitus notes the use of boar masks in similar rites, which may provide
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a suggestive link to the association of these animals with both Frey

and Freyja; the boar is in any case associated with fecundity among the
Germanic peoples and many of their northern neighbours, including
the Celts. Ritual carts and related artefacts of the type described by
Tacitus and dating to late antiquity have been found in the bogs of
Denmark, and a cart and tapestries unearthed in the great Viking
Age ship burial at Oseberg may also represent related rites. Tacitus
identified the Angles as one of the tribes which worshipped Nerthus,
and thus it is possible that this deity travelled to Britain with that
tribe; it is certainly true that charms associated with the Earth Mother
were common in the Anglo-Saxon world, as were representations
of pagan fertility figures such as Sheela-na-gigs. If Njörd is indeed
the late Norse manifestation of the earlier Germanic Nerthus, the
transformation of Earth Goddess into Sea God may explain in some
measure the suggestion that Frey and Freyja were the fruit of an
incestuous union: perhaps this mythic understanding stems from the
historical fact that the twin fertility god and goddess were ultimately
derived from a single source in the form of Nerthus, a much older and
perhaps hermaphroditic Germanic fertility figure. The main source
of information concerning the cult of Nerthus is Chapter 40 of the
Germania, but it is noteworthy that a number of archaeological finds
contain ritual carts which may somewhat substantiate the literary
record. Many of the ritual aspects described by Tacitus seem to have
been appropriated into the worship of Frey and Freyja, and some
commentators further note that the classical record offers a Syrian
counterpoint in the figure and worship of Cybele, also a fertility deity.
Freyja, or ‘Lady’, came to the Æsir from the Vanir and, as this
origin implies, is an archetypal fertility goddess. Freyja is the sister
and perhaps lover of Frey, or ‘Lord’, as well as both the daughter and
niece of Njörd, who begat the twin fertility deities upon his own sister.
Fertility and sexuality of all kinds is permitted and even promoted
among the Vanir, who tap the rich wellspring of life force in any and
all of its manifestations; the taboo of incest and the forbidden magic
of seid (seiðr, a fountainhead of feminine natural forces wielded with
abandon by the Vanir but considered transgressive by the hyper-
masculine Æsir) both represent the power and the mystery of giving
free reign to desire. Indeed, it is the very licentiousness of the Vanir,
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coupled with the forces released through the embrace of such forbid-
den pleasures and powers, that the Æsir simultaneously loathe and
envy. Freyja is the wife of Od, who is often away, and for whom she
weeps tears of red gold; Od is sometimes associated with Odin, but it
is true in any case that Freyja is hardly a faithful wife. Freyja and Od
have a daughter called Hnoss (‘Gem’), who sparkles like a diamond;
gemstones take their name from her, and her glittering visage is no
surprise as Freyja is herself the most beautiful of the goddesses, as well
as the most promiscuous: her rampant sexuality is both representative
of and perhaps a catalyst for agrarian fecundity. Love songs are dear
to Freyja, and it is wise to solicit her help in romantic affairs.
The darker side of Freyja’s character is exemplified by the violent
death and destruction of war, which is the opposite side of the coin
of unbridled passion that she manifests: uncontrollable sexual urges
are not so very different, we are perhaps called upon to understand,
from blind bloodlust – it is likewise self-evident that the former are
often a trigger for the latter. As an aspect of her role as a war goddess,
Freyja claims a share of the battlefield dead, and in this way she mani-
fests a Valkyrie-like attribute; her falcon-feather flying coat further
reinforces this association, although it is clear that the hot-blooded
Freyja is not cut entirely from the same cloth as Odin’s virginal battle
goddesses. Odin himself, of course, lusts as much for Freyja’s prowess
at seid as for her voluptuous body. Freyja is, however, without a doubt
the object of desire of most males who gaze upon her, including the
giants, such as Thrym, Hrungnir and the mason who built Asgard’s
wall, all of whom represent the forces of chaos which covet and would
steal away the gods’ powers of fertility. Freyja’s vehicle is a chariot
drawn by cats, and her home is Sessrúmnir, ‘Roomy-seated’, which is
situated in Fólkvang, ‘Folk-field.’ Her mode of transport reminds us
again of Nerthus, of course, and some have seen in such replicating
earth goddesses a pattern reaching back as far as the Near Eastern
goddess Cybele, whose cart was pulled by lions. More to the point, it
has been suggested that the incestuous links between Njörd and his
children in fact evoke the true nature of their hidden relationship:
they are all, in reality, different faces of the same deity.
Freyja’s falcon-feather coat implies a spirit journey: she manifests
attributes of a shamanic shape-shifter and seeress, whose spirit can
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take flight and return with secret knowledge. In this way she shares
traits with Odin, and it is noteworthy that each of these gods serves
also as a deity of the dead. Furthermore, animal-skin or bird-feather
garments and ritual objects might well be seen to be associated with
the magical practices and soothsaying rites we might gather together
under the rubric of seid. Freyja, we are informed by Snorri, served
among the Vanir as a high priestess of the arts of seid, and she was
the first to teach these rites to the Æsir. Although it is clear from
various sources that Odin was a willing pupil of these practices, it is
equally clear that this was the form of magic most closely associated
with women, and that its practice was considered suspect, at best,
among the Æsir. Although it is apparent in the accounts of the war
between the Æsir and the Vanir that seid could be destructive, most
of the rites seem to have involved divination, especially concerning
matters of the field and of the heart, the two domains in which Freyja
reigned supreme.

This copper-alloy openwork brooch from 11th-century Norway displays an animal

figure typical of the Urnes style, which combines zoomorphic forms with interlace.

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It is intriguing that Snorri informs us that Freyja was the last

of the surviving Norse goddesses, and there is reason to believe
that aspects of her cult we would associate with seid rituals survived
well into the Christian period in the northern world. Certainly the
proliferation of place names associated with the goddess throughout
Scandinavia bear out her widespread popularity. From various sources,
it appears that seid rituals most often involved a seeress, called a
völva, a term meaning ‘prophetess’ or ‘witch’, which may refer to the
staff or wand sometimes used in such a rite; the most famous mythic
example of such a figure is the eponymous völva of the Eddic poem
Völuspá, the title of which means, literally, the spá, or ‘prophecy’, of
the seeress. Odin himself called forth this seeress and compelled her
to utter her prophecy, again underscoring that god’s penchant for
gaining hidden knowledge through forbidden activities. In general
practice, völva rituals seemed to have involved a raised platform upon
which the seeress served as officiate, often surrounded by a chanting
ward-circle of women. Seid practices are associated in some sources
with curses and maladies, of course, as well as with shape-shifting
(most especially into the figure of a horse), in which guise, presum-
ably, one might crush one’s enemies. Generally, however, these rituals
seem associated with divination, especially concerning crops, famine,
pestilence and personal destinies, as well as in evoking blessings of
health and fertility upon crops and people alike.
Perhaps one of the most instructive of the examples of such rites
is preserved for us in Eiríks saga rauda, the Saga of Erik the Red,
which famously discusses the Greenland settlements and reports
of the travels of Leif the Lucky, son of Erik the Red, to Vinland in
North America. In Greenland during this time there lived a völva by
the name of Thorbjörg, the last of a group of ten seeresses. Thorbjörg
made it her practice to travel from farm to farm during the winter
months, predicting for those who invited her what would become of
their lives and farms over the course of the coming year. Times had
been tough of late, the hunting was scarce, and quite a few hunters had
been lost to the wilds. The responsibility of determining when times
would improve fell upon the leading farmer in each district, and so
Thorkel invited Thorbjörg to visit his house and made arrangements
to entertain her with appropriate honours: these preparations included
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devising a high seat for the völva, complete with a cushion stuffed
with chicken feathers. Thorbjörg arrived clad in a black mantle with
a bejewelled hem, a black lambskin hood lined with white catskin,
white catskin gloves and calfskin boots, and holding a staff with a
brass finial set with stones. The seeress wore a string of glass beads
and carried at her waist a bag of charms necessary to perform her
rites; she was belted with a linked girdle. The wise woman was greeted
respectfully by all present, was asked to look over all of the people,
animals and buildings comprising the farmstead, and then was seated
upon her high seat, where she was served a gruel of kid’s milk and
a stew of heart flesh culled from all the kinds of animals available.
After her meal the völva rebuffed any questions and took her rest.
As evening fell the next day, preparations were made for the
divination ceremony, all items necessary for the ritual were gathered,
and the völva called out for women who knew the ancient ward
chants necessary to proceed. At first it appeared that no such women
were present, but eventually it came to light that Gudrid, a Christian,
had learned the proper chants at the knee of her foster mother in
Iceland. Although Gudrid attempted to refrain from participating
in these pagan rites because of her Christian faith, the host prevailed
upon her, and finally she consented. The völva took her seat upon the
raised platform, the women formed a circle about her, and Gudrid
drew the spirits to the völva through the beauty of her chanting. The
völva commended her for this, and reported that the poor seasons
and long sickness that had harried the colony were at an end; she also
predicted a brilliant match for Gudrid in Greenland, and that a long
and prosperous line of descendants would spring forth from that union,
which would be transplanted to Iceland. The völva had good answers
for all who questioned her, and, so the saga claims, little she foresaw
failed to come to pass. This saga, which preserves a pagan seid ritual,
also treats the topic of the conversion of Greenland to Christianity:
Gudrid is a professed Christian who only hesitantly acknowledges her
childhood indoctrination into the heathen rites. We are also informed
that this seeress is the last of a sisterhood of ten, and there is some
evidence that such practitioners might have travelled in groups until
the demise of the cult under the growing pressure of Christianity.
Gudrid’s reluctant participation in a rite presided over by the ageing
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This 11th- or 12th-

century Norwegian
copper-alloy belt
fitting features
two horse heads,
underscoring the
importance of animal
figures to Norse
ornamental styles.

lone survivor of a ritual group speaks eloquently of the slow demise of

this cult during the course of the Middle Ages. The catskin gloves and
lining of the hood of the seeress evoke Freyja’s link to cats, while the
feather stuffing of the cushion provided for the seeress might provide
a somewhat more tenuous link to the feather cloak of the goddess.
Perhaps the most well known of the myths in which Freyja plays
an active role is that which recounts her acquisition of the Necklace
of the Brísings, a treasure associated with a number of sagas and
tales of the northern world; this precious object links the goddess
to an ancient tradition that associates fertility goddesses with
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This 5th-century gold pendant found in Suffolk most likely originated

in Jutland or southern Scandinavia. The images combine the Romulus and
Remus myth of Rome with Norse runes which reference the she-wolf of the
classical myth. This blending of cultures underscores the duality of the goddess
in both mythologies: she is nurturing life-giver at the same time that she is
ravenous life-taker.

necklaces. Brísingamen, meaning either ‘necklace/girdle of fire’ or

more probably the ‘necklace of the Brísings’, is referenced in several
Old Norse sources, the earliest of which is thought to be Húsdrápa,
a tenth-century skaldic poem by Ulf Uggason which is discussed
in Laxdæla saga and cited by Snorri in Skáldskaparmál and
Gylfagynning of the Prose Edda; the necklace is a key identifying
attribute of Freyja in Thrymskvida in the Poetic Edda. Heimdall is
linked to the necklace in that poem, when he suggests that Thor
wear it as a key component to the Thunder God’s drag costume, and
elsewhere Heimdall and Loki are said to have clashed over the
necklace. Most of the detail concerning Freyja’s gain and Loki’s theft
of the necklace is preserved, however, in a Christianized version of
the myth recounted in Sörla tháttr in the Icelandic Flateyjarbók
(Flatey Book or Codex Flateyensis). The necklace is referred to as
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Brosinga mene in Beowulf, and in it Háma (Heimir) is said to have

stolen it from the hall of Eormenric.
In the fullest version of the myth of Freyja and the Necklace of
the Brísings, we are told that one morning, leaving under cover of the
dawn mists, the goddess departed her hall and crossed the rainbow
bridge as she left the abode of the gods; she was all alone and on foot,
and thought that all still slept. Unbeknown to the goddess, however,
Loki noticed her movement, and, his curiosity piqued, he followed
her as silently as a shadow. Freyja travelled all day across a rocky plain
and frozen river and alongside a great glacier until, near nightfall,
she followed the sound of hammering down a narrow passage and
through a dank cavern into the hidden underground workshop of the
dwarfs Álfrigg, Berlíngr, Dvalin and Grér. The goddess was at first
blinded by the brilliant glare of the smithy until her gaze fell upon
the most beautiful necklace she had ever seen, a river of precious fluid
metal, and her heart was struck with an insurmountable desire to
possess this peerless treasure. She offered the smiths gold and silver
in great mounds, but the dwarfs refused with disdain what they had
themselves already in plenty; only the price of her beautiful, shining
body, to be shared in turn for a full night each, would satisfy the desire
of the dwarfs, whose inflamed lust for the goddess reflected Freyja’s
own covetous longing for the necklace. Horrified by this demand,
Freyja noticed for the first time the dark and ugly features of the
misshapen dwarfs; her disgust, however, was soon outweighed by
her desire, reckoning as she did that four nights in the foul embraces
of the dwarfs was little enough to pay to be clasped for an eternity
within the circlet of the most beautiful of treasures. Soon the deal
was struck, and soon enough the bargain fulfilled: four nights later,
the dwarfs fixed the necklace upon the goddess, and she departed,
alone and undetected – or so she thought.
As Freyja entered the chambers of Sessrúmnir well-pleased with
her new treasure, Loki, unseen by the goddess, continued on to the
hall of the All-father, where he was all too happy to inform Odin
that the object of the lust of the one-eyed god had sold herself to
foul and repugnant dwarfs for the price of a bauble. Loki’s mischiev-
ous joy turned quickly to cold fear in the face of the rage of Odin,
however, who cast the trickster from his hall with the command that
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Loki return with Freyja’s ill-gotten treasure or not at all. The hall of
Freyja is thought to be impassable to uninvited guests, but Loki was
desperately afraid of the wrath of Odin, and so, taking on the shape
of a fly, the Sly One searched high and low until he found a crack
just big enough for a creepy-crawly insect to worm itself through.
Once inside the hall, Loki silently found his way to the chamber of
the goddess, who, like all her household, was fast asleep. Loki reached
to take the necklace, but Freyja slept so that the clasp was covered.
Transforming himself into the semblance of a flea, the trickster flit-
ted about the body of the goddess, amusing himself upon her snowy
terrain of flesh, and finally settling upon her cheek; finding a tender
spot, the flea pierced Freyja’s lovely skin. With a moan, the goddess
turned in her sleep, exposing the clasp, and Loki, returned to his own
form, soon pilfered the treasure with nimble fingers and fled Freyja’s
hall upon silent feet. When the goddess woke, she discovered her loss
with a horror that soon turned to rage: only Loki might perform such
a bold and audacious theft, and even he would be too timid without
the express command of the Father of the Gods. Freyja stormed into
Odin’s presence to demand an apology, only to be confronted by his
knowledge of her own whoring disgrace with the four dwarfs. The
price of her necklace, Odin informed Freyja, was to be a recurring
cycle of strife, bloodshed and magical resurrection through the dark
forces of seid. The All-father commanded that Freyja bring two earthly
rulers to the battlefield, each with twenty sub-kings and their war-
riors; as the armies slaughtered one another, the goddess was to devise
incantations so that each bloody corpse might be brought back to life
to fight again. Having sold her own body to gain her necklace, Freyja
thought little of bartering the lives and bodies of warriors to regain
the treasure, and so she and Odin reached an accord.
Necklaces have been associated with fertility goddesses in the
Mediterranean from very early times, and there is evidence that this
relationship also existed in southern Scandinavia from at least as
early as the Bronze Age, as figures so adorned survive in Denmark
dating from that period. Necklaces are generally thought to be vaginal
symbols much like rings, and the Old Norse term men might be
rendered as ‘necklace’ or ‘girdle’, either of which one might very well
expect to be associated with fertility; indeed, it has been suggested
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that the key significance of this myth lies in its function as a study of
the association between sexual promiscuity and the development of
fertility. In this case, the goddess’s acquisition of the necklace illustrates
not only a facet of her character but both an adolescent coming-of-
age narrative and a metaphor for the reawakening of fecundity with
the coming of each new spring. Because of an analogous reference in
Beowulf, Brísinga is generally assumed to refer to a lost family name;
more provocatively, it is possible that the term is derived from brísingr,
an uncommon Old Norse term for fire. Brísingamen, the ‘necklace of
fire’, might then refer literally to the brightness of the treasure itself;
moreover, it would be tempting in that case to wonder if the name also
might connote metaphorically the burning lust so commonly associ-
ated with the goddess Freyja. It has also been suggested that such ‘fire’
refers to the sun, which clearly resonates with the function of Freyja
as a fertility goddess. Regardless, it is clear that we find in the myth
of Freyja’s acquisition of her necklace an intriguing inversion of the
myth of Frey’s loss of his sword, which he traded for a chance to wed
the giantess Gerd, with whom he was besotted: in both cases hidden
desires lead goddess and god to act upon the basest of motivations in
response to secret and transgressive glimpses of forbidden fruit, and
in both cases physical objects are imbued with nearly palpable sym-
bolism through their association with various incarnations of desire.
This myth also serves as a primer of sorts into several facets of
the character of Loki, the most enigmatic figure of the Norse pan-
theon. The catalyst for Odin’s reaction to Freyja’s whoring is, after
all, Loki’s predisposition to spy and to tattle, nasty attributes which
are fundamental aspects of his role as a troublemaker who brews
dissension for the sheer joy of mischief. When he finds that the fire
he has built to cook Freyja’s goose threatens to scorch him, Loki
saves himself with his skills as a shape-shifter and a thief. All of
these characteristics emphasize Loki’s demonic volatility. This myth
also illustrates that Freyja herself is a complex deity, and comprises
contending and paradoxical attributes: the easy virtue which submits
to the demands of the lustful dwarfs elucidates Freyja’s function as a
fertility goddess, of course, but she acquiesces with equal equanimity
to Odin’s command to sow carnage and death, much as a Valkyrie
does. This duality reflects the twin powers of fertility and destruction
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associated with Freyja, just as it reflects a similar duality concerning

the forbidden magic she practised; it is thus noteworthy that Freyja
has been convincingly linked with the figure of the sorceress thrice
burned by the Æsir and thrice reborn through the flames. Thus began
the first of all wars, in which seid, it should be remembered, was the
great weapon of the fertility gods.
It is doubtless in any case that in Freyja we find the powers of
life and death inextricably bound together; indeed, the terms Odin
demands for the return of Freyja’s necklace, a bargain which requires
a continuing cycle of slaughter that is fed by miraculous resurrection,
recalls both the spearing of and triple immolation of Gullveig, as
recounted in the Völuspá, and reinforces Freyja’s double identity. The
rejuvenation of dead warriors in this myth echoes the daily battles of
the einherjar, the dead warriors brought to Odin by the Valkyries to
swell the ranks of the Æsir, and, perhaps tellingly, is also reminiscent
of the warriors resurrected in the Cauldron of Plenty in the Welsh
Mabinogion. In any case, this recurring battle is only ended, we are told
in the late version of the story recorded in the Icelandic Flateyjarbók,
through Christian intervention. This cycle of combat, referred to
as Hjadningavíg, or the ‘Strife of Hedin’s men’ after one of the two
contending kings, thus provides a dark and gloomy counterpoint to
the daily battles of Odin’s heroes of Valhalla, who themselves, we
know from our knowledge of the coming doom of RagnarÖk, struggle
in vain. Indeed, the motivations of the gods involved in this myth
underscore their given functions and identities: Odin’s jealous pride
and seemingly needless bloodlust highlight and are highlighted by his
need to swell the ranks of his warriors, as well as his nature as a war
god; Loki’s scheming prying and self-serving thieving illustrate his
outsider status and his demonic nature as an enemy within the ranks of
the gods; most importantly, Freyja’s greedy materialism and overt and
unapologetic sexuality bring to the fore the attributes and appetites to
be associated with an ancient fertility goddess, while her association
with death and dying elucidate her new and growing role as a destroyer
goddess. Moreover, we can hardly attribute these characterizations as
the work of the single hand of the author who recorded this myth; the
sensibilities and actions resonate much too closely with the general
characters of these gods as we know them.
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Like her brother, Freyja is strongly linked with the boar, the
association of which with both fecundity and ferocity mirrors the
duality of the goddess herself. We learn in the eddic poem Hyndluljód,
or Lay of Hyndla, that Freyja’s familiar is Hildisvíni, ‘Battle-swine’,
whose very name reflects the appetite of his mistress for slaughter.
Freyja informs the giantess Hyndla that Hildisvíni is the creation
of the dwarfs Dáin and Nabbi, and her description of her boar as
glowing and golden-bristled offers a suggestive link to Frey’s familiar
Gullinbursti. Hyndla is not the first nor the last to accuse Freyja of
wantonness, but it is significant that in this poem, the giantess points
out that the battle-boar Freyja rides upon is in reality none other
than Freyja’s votary and lover Óttar the Simple, who has pleased his
goddess with ample blood sacrifices, and whose disguise may echo the
ritual use of boar masks in the cult of Freyja. The double entendre of
the great Syr, or ‘Sow’, mounted upon her lover the Battle-Swine is
hardly insignificant, and thus this amusing episode seemingly con-
cerned primarily with the lineage of Óttar might also offer glimpses
of various faces of the goddess and rites of her worship.
The goddess shows herself in a darker mask in the stories sur-
rounding the fate of the most beautiful of the gods: Baldr, the brightest
and most beloved of the gods, was slain at the hand of his blind brother
Höd, who cast a seemingly harmless dart of mistletoe at his ‘invul-
nerable’ sibling, instigated and guided by the cunning and duplicity
of the malicious trickster Loki. Baldr’s wife, the goddess Nanna, was
completely overcome with grief at the death of her beloved. In fact,
her desolation was so complete that, as the gods settled Baldr among
the grave goods atop the pyre on board the ship, Nanna’s heart burst
from grief, and so the Æsir set wife next to husband for the journey
to Hel. The archetypal Dying God and his consort clearly seem to
represent ancient fertility figures, and if Baldr is the sleeping seed
planted within the grave of apparently desolate earth, Nanna is the
dormant power of increase which languishes with that seed. Moreover,
scholars have long suggested a link between this mythic episode
and sati practices, or the ritual sacrifice of consorts at the funerals of
powerful men. Sati is a specifically Indian practice, but scholars of
Norse and Germanic literature have long noted similarities between
sati and episodes like this one in Norse texts. Such similarities are all
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the more provocative when one takes note of the ancient relation-
ship between the Nordic and Indian mythologies. According to the
alternative version of the story of the death of the Baldr figure related
by Saxo, however, Nanna’s beauty was a motive force behind the death
of Balderus, and thus in this iteration the ancient duality of the ter-
rible beauty of the goddess is highlighted. In Saxo’s account, Nanna
is a Norwegian princess who is married to Balderus’s adversary and
killer Hotherus, who is cognate with the Höd of the more familiar
myth. In Saxo’s version, it is jealousy concerning Nanna that leads
to the death of the Danish king Balderus, who is stabbed by a magic
sword (which pierces his invulnerability) by his rival.
In addition, tradition has long attempted to link the Norse Nanna
with her ancient Sumerian sister Inanna (also known as Nannar, or
Nana), known to the Babylonians as Ishtar. The Phrygian Attis was
the son of the eastern Nanna, whose consort was Baal, a figure from
the ancient Near East who has sometimes himself been linked with
Baldr. Although we must be extremely cautious in asserting that
these relationships prove a definitive link across thousands of miles
and years, the similarities of names and mythic archetypes certainly
are, on their faces, suggestive of the possibility of common echoes of
ancient fertility rites.
Our surmises concerning ritual sati practices in the northern
world are not confined to the myth of Baldr’s funeral, however;
indeed, references to Scandinavian ship burials are not limited to
accounts from Norse and Anglo-Saxon literature. In fact, the most
vibrant and complete account is that of a Middle Eastern observer.
In the early tenth century, an Arab named Ahmad ibn Fadlan gave
an account of a ship burial among the Rus’, or eastern Vikings; the
events he recounted took place along the banks of the Volga river. The
account of Ibn Fadlan is preserved in two sources: an eleventh-century
copy of the Risala, Ibn Fadlan’s record of his travels, and the Persian
geographer Amin Razi’s late sixteenth-century version of the same
text, which is thought to have been based on early manuscripts. This
account has some elements in common with the Old Norse mythic
description of Baldr’s funeral, as well as with the ceremony described
at the end of the Old English epic Beowulf. Moreover, archaeological
excavations at sites such as Oseberg in Norway and Sutton Hoo in
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 The iconic Sutton Hoo helmet was wrought of iron and tinned copper-alloy with
some silver inlay, gold and garnets; it was probably made in Sweden in the early
7th century and subsequently was deposited in the most famous ship burial in
England. Its animal and warrior motifs hearken back to Odin and his Valkyries,
although the very presence of such elaborate grave goods in a cenotaph – or empty
tomb – also underscores the shifting mythologies and ritual practices of the Age of
Conversion, as the battle goddess Valkyries became replaced by or transformed into
Anglo-Saxon virgin warrior saints.
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East Anglia, England, corroborate some details concerning the prac-

tice of sending significant persons on their voyage to the otherworld
well endowed with valuable and useful goods. Ibn Fadlan relates
that poor men were placed in small boats and burned without much
ado, while rich men had their estates divided into thirds: one-third
provided an inheritance for the family, one-third was spent on grave
clothes and related goods, and one-third was dedicated to purchasing
an intoxicating beverage with which the mourners drank themselves
oblivious for the length of time it took to prepare the funeral, which
in the particular case he describes was some ten days.
The body of the deceased was kept in a temporary grave until the
ceremony was prepared, and according to this Arab observer, the corpse
he saw was well preserved and little worse for the delay because of the
cold of the country, except for the fact that the skin blackened from
the frost. On the day of the funeral the body was exhumed, dressed in
finery, placed on a pavilion on board a ship and surrounded by valuable
goods, food and weapons. The ship itself had been placed on scaffold-
ing that would serve as a great pyre. A number of animal sacrifices
comprised an important aspect of the funeral: Ibn Fadlan mentions
cows, a dog and hens. In addition to the description of the ship and
pyre themselves, Ibn Fadlan’s account of the sacrifice of a pair of horses
is especially evocative of the story of Baldr’s funeral. Furthermore,
the theory of travel to the underworld, which is foundational to the
ceremony recorded in this account, maintains that all the treasure,
animals and persons consumed by the flames will be transported to
the otherworld; indeed, a bystander commented to Ibn Fadlan upon
the stiff wind fanning the blaze of the pyre – to this witness it seemed
that the god wished his follower to join him all the sooner. After the
ashes of the ship burial had cooled, our chronicler relates, the mourners
erected a mound upon the spot. There are several references to funeral
pyres in Beowulf, most notably the description of the hero’s cremation
at the very end of the epic. The Beowulf poet goes into more detail than
Ibn Fadlan about the mound raised over the ashes of Beowulf and the
treasure dedicated to him. We are told that the chosen spot was on a
prominent headland, and that the walls were high and broad enough
so that the tomb was visible from far out at sea; furthermore, the very
best masonry work was dedicated to this monument.
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According to Ibn Fadlan, an important aspect of the funeral

ceremony he witnessed, for an important male personage, was the
sacrifice of a female slave who volunteered to become her master’s wife
in death. Upon the occasion of the master’s death, the female slaves
were assembled and given the opportunity to join the dead man in a
sort of posthumous marriage. One of the slave girls volunteered, and we
are told that seldom had a victim to be compelled; Ibn Fadlan further
notes that once the commitment was made, it could not be broken.
For the time remaining until the funeral, the slave girl was bedecked
in finery, sang and danced, drank her fill of the intoxicating beverage
and performed ritual sex acts with the male kinsmen of her master
(this the kinsmen did, so they claimed, out of loyalty and obligation to
her lord). As the time for the ceremony approached, a ritual doorframe
was erected, and the slave girl was hoisted to look over this frame to
see into the next world. She was lifted three times: the first time she
reported seeing her parents, the second time she claimed to see the
host of her dead relations and the third time she cried out that she
had seen her master awaiting her in a verdant paradise. She thus called
out to be taken to her master, and she was brought on board the ship,
where an old woman called the Angel of Death orchestrated another
series of ritual sex acts, culminating in the sacrifice of the willing slave
girl by strangulation and stabbing; meanwhile, the men outside the
ship raised such a clamour that a slave girl witnessing the ceremony
could not hear the sounds on the ship, and therefore would not fear
to join her own master when the time came.
In the context of this account, the story of Nanna’s heart bursting
with despair at Baldr’s funeral and ultimately sharing her husband’s
pyre aboard Hringhorni is rendered more than a little troubling; what
at first blush seems in the myth a poignant description of spousal grief
takes on sinister undertones in light of the Arab emissary’s descrip-
tion of the ritual rape and human sacrifice of a slave bride aboard a
ship burial. The evidence of language is also suggestive on this point:
the Valkyries are referred to at least once, in Völuspá, as the nannas of
Odin, and thus it is possible that nanna could refer to a woman or
dedicated servant in general and not just to a particular individual
married to Baldr, an evocative linguistic possibility which might
link Nanna’s death with the ritual human sacrifice described by Ibn
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Fadlan. Furthermore, the fact that the slave girl was simultaneously
strangled and stabbed is suggestive of an identification with sacrificial
rites associated with Odin, whose victims and votaries were often
marked with a spear, and who is of course himself the Hanging God.
While hardly evidence of a definitive relationship, the resonance
between the two episodes in any case forces a thoughtful reader to
cast a somewhat critical eye over the death of Nanna in the myth of
Baldr’s funeral. Certainly the sacrifice of Baldr’s horse and harness
echoes the ritual described by Ibn Fadlan, as does the description of
grave goods and ship burning, and these parallels suggest that we must
closely examine the possible relationships between aspects of these
episodes. On the other hand, the death of Lit, an unfortunate dwarf
who ran under Thor’s feet during the funeral ceremony, and whom
the thunder god kicked onto the pyre to burn, has no clear parallel.
Although Lit is described in some sources as an enemy of the gods,
it would be difficult to prove that his death represents a traditional
funeral rite of some kind, although it has been suggested that his
dying contortions might hearken back to funereal cultic dancing. As
tempting as such a reading might be, we cannot substantiate such
an assertion with any confidence, and thus, more than in the case of
the description of the death of Nanna, Thor’s slaying of the dwarf
remains rather unintelligible; some might say that it takes on the
trappings of a comic interlude. The burning of Baldr’s ship, however,
remains a deadly serious affair, serving as it does as a foretaste of the
conflagration to come, that which concludes RagnarÖk.
Any discussion of death in general, or The Doom of the Gods
in particular, requires that we examine Hel, the death goddess of the
northern world. Snorri describes Niflheim as an abode for the dead
into which Odin cast Hel, the daughter of Loki, who thus became
queen of the underworld. Hel is described as being half white and
half black, half beautiful woman and half rotting corpse. An inversion
of the Apples of Idun emphasizes this duality: just as those golden
apples are the fruit of life, which offer eternal youth, so the Apples
of Hel are linked with death in Norse poetry. Hel thus exemplifies
another manifestation of the ‘terrible beauty’ of the northern god-
dess, wherein terror, death and destruction are often hand in glove
with beauty, life and creation, and some have compared Hel to the
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Indian goddess Kali in this respect. Hel holds sway over a realm
below and to the north, a direction which offers a possible clue to
ancient origins: north in the Germanic languages is related to the
Greek term nerteros, ‘regarding the nether-regions’. ‘North’ is generally
taken as ‘lower left’ in the ancient Scandinavian languages, relative
to one facing east and given the position of the noontime sun in the
northern sky. Hel’s domain is the home of those who die of disease
and old age, and is described as a dank, dark, unpleasant place: Hel’s
hall is known as Eljudnir, ‘Damp Spot’, where her manservant is
Ganglati, ‘Slow One’; her maidservant is Ganglot, ‘Lazy One’; Hel’s
bed is Kor, ‘Sickness’; and her table is set with ‘Hunger’.
Hel, whose name evokes the ‘hidden’, ‘concealed’ and ‘secret’
nature of the grave and thus of the nether regions in several Germanic
languages, represents a late, perhaps Christian-era, personification
of the underworld; a certain intensification of the concept of a dark
and dismal afterlife into a place of ‘hellish’ torment might well have
resulted through a Christian revision of the old myths. While the
term ‘Niflheim’ seems to come from Snorri, the related name Niflhel,
‘Dark Hell’ or ‘Misty Hell’, appears to have been used earlier. Snorri
uses these names almost interchangeably, however, and suggests
that both these terms refer to the ninth world, a ‘lower hell’ (as an
alternate reading of nifl might suggest) reserved for the truly evil
dead. Muspell (or Muspelheim), the land of fire, is generally not
counted among the nine worlds, but clearly was thought to have
existed before the Creation and was expected to consume the world
after the cataclysmic battle of RagnarÖk. The pagan Germanic con-
cept of a land of fire and its relationship with an apocalyptic end of
the world survived the conversion to Christianity, and related terms
and concepts reassert themselves in Old Saxon, Old High German
and Old English religious literature. Hel – along with her bastard
siblings Jörmundgandr, the World Serpent, and Fenrir, the great
wolf who will swallow Odin in the final battle – was spawned by
the demonic trickster Loki upon the loins of the giantess Angrboda,
‘Grief-bringer’, and all three of these siblings represent the forces of
evil, chaos and destruction that the Scandinavian gods try, ultimately
in vain, to keep at bay.

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This 6th-century Merovingian bird brooch calls to mind the associations between
various Celtic goddesses and birds.