Frigg (sometimes anglicized as Frigga) is a major goddess in Norse paganism, a subset of Germanic paganism.She is said to be the wife of Odin, and is the "foremost among the goddesses" and the queen of Asgard.[1] Frigg appears primarily in Norse mythological stories as a wife and a mother. She is also described as having the power of prophecy yet she does not reveal what she knows.[2] Frigg is described as the only one other than Odin who is permitted to sit on his high seat Hlidskjalf and look out over the universe. The English term Friday derives from the Anglo-Saxon name for Frigg, Frige.[3]
Frigg is the mother of Baldr. Her stepchildren are Thor, Hermóðr, Heimdallr, Týr, Bragi, Víðarr, Váli, Skjöldur, andHöðr. Frigg's companion is Eir, a goddess associated with medical skills. Frigg's attendants are Hlín, Gná, andFulla.
In the Poetic Edda poem Lokasenna 26, Frigg is said to be Fjörgyns mær ("Fjörgynn's maiden"). The problem is that in Old Norse mær means both "daughter" and "wife," so it is not fully clear if Fjörgynn is Frigg's father or another name for her husband Odin, but Snorri Sturluson interprets the line as meaning Frigg is Fjörgynn's daughter (Skáldskaparmál 27), and most modern translators of the Poetic Edda follow Snorri. The original meaning[dubious ] of fjörgynn was the earth, cf. feminine version Fjorgyn, a byname for Jörð, the earth. The other piece of evidence lies with the goddess Fjorgyn, who is the mother of Thor, and whose name can be translated into Earth. Since Fjorgyn is not only the name of a goddess, but the feminine byname for Earth, it is relatively safe to assume that "mær", in this case, means "daughter".[4]
Etymology[edit]
Main article: Frigg and Freyja origin hypothesis
Old Norse Frigg (genitive Friggjar), Old Saxon Fri, and Old English Frig are derived from Common Germanic Frijjō.[5] Frigg is cognate with Sanskritprīyā́ which means 'wife; dear/beloved one'[5] which is the derivation of the word sapphire. The root also appears in Old Saxon fri which means "beloved lady", in Swedish as fria and Danish and Norwegian "fri" ("to propose for marriage") and in Icelandic as frjá which means "to love."[5] All of these names, as well as the words friend and affray are ultimately from the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root pri- meaning 'to love.'
Attributes[edit]
The asterism Orion's Belt was known as "Frigg's Distaff/spinning wheel" (Friggerock) or "Freyja's Distaff" (Frejerock).[6] Some have pointed out that the constellation is on the celestial equator and have suggested that the stars rotating in the night sky may have been associated with Frigg's spinning wheel.[7] The Norsename for the planet Venus was Friggjarstjarna 'Frigg's star'[citation needed].
Frigg's name means "love" or "beloved one" (Proto-Germanic *frijjō, cf. Sanskrit priyā "beloved") and was known among many northern European cultures with slight name variations over time: e.g. Friggja in Sweden, Frīg (genitive Frīge) in Old English, and Fricka in Richard Wagner's operatic cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen.[8]Modern English translations have sometimes altered Frigg to Frigga. It has been suggested that "Frau Holle" of German folklore is a survival of Frigg.[9]
Frigg's hall in Asgard is Fensalir, which means "Marsh Halls."[10] This may mean that marshy or boggy land was considered especially sacred to her but nothing definitive is known. The goddess Saga, who was described as drinking with Odin from golden cups in her hall "Sunken Benches," may be Frigg by a different name.[11]
Frigg was a goddess associated with married women. She was called up by women to assist in giving birth to children, and Scandinavians used the plant Lady's Bedstraw (Galium verum) as a sedative (they called itFrigg's grass).[6]
See also Friday.
Myths[edit]
Death of Baldr[edit]
Frigg plays a major role in stanza 49 of the 13th century Prose Eddasaga Gylfaginning recorded by Snorri Sturluson from the ancient oral records of the same saga, where a version of a saga relating the death of Baldr is recorded by Snorri. Baldr has had a series of ominous dreams. As Baldr was popular amongst the Æsir, after Baldr told the Æsir about his dreams, they met together at the thing and decided it wise to provide a safeguard for Baldr against all possible harms in the 9 realms that would maintain his safety. Frigg, Baldr's mother, takes an oath from all things, which includes disease, poisons, the elements, objects and all living beings, including plants (except mistletoe)that none of these aspects and inhabitants of the worlds will ever harm or kill Baldr.
After the oaths were taken, the Æsir, aware of Baldr's newly gained invincibility, had Baldr attend a gathering of their Æsir thing, or assembly. There, the Æsir tested Baldr with blows, spears, arrows, shot various objects at him, including stones and all types of weapons. Nothing could or would harm Baldr and everyone felt it was remarkable.
Loki witnessed this and was angered by Baldr's invulnerability. Loki changed himself into a woman and visited Frigg at her hall Fensalir. There, Frigg asked the woman if she knew what was happening at the thing. The woman told her that the Æsir were testing Baldr and yet he remained unharmed. Frigg responded that nothing could harm Baldr, as she had taken oaths from (almost) all things.
The woman asked Frigg if all things had indeed promised not to hurt Baldr, to which Frigg reveals that:
Immediately after Frigg revealed this, the woman (Loki) vanished. Loki then took hold of the mistletoe, broke it off and went to the thing.
There, Höðr, since he was blind, stood at the edge of the circle of people. Loki offered to help Höðr in honoring Baldr by shooting things at him. Höðr took the mistletoe forged spear from Loki and, following Loki's manipulative and intentional directions, threw the mistletoe forged spear at Baldr. The mistletoe went directly through Baldr's heart and he fell to the ground. Baldr's body was henceforth dead.
The Gods and Goddesses were devastated and sorrowful, unable to react due to their grief. After the Gods and Goddesses gathered their wits from the immense shock and grief of Baldr's death, Frigg asked the Æsir who amongst them wished "to gain all of her love and favor"[12] by riding the road to Hel (Helheim). Whoever agreed was to offer Hel a ransom in exchange for Baldr's return to Asgard. Hermóðr agrees to this and set off with Sleipnirto Helheim.
While Hermóðr rides to Helheim, Frigg arrives at the cremation of Baldr with Odin, Hugin and Munin, and the Valkyries. With them came various other Gods and beings during which a grand funeral for Baldr was held. After a long journey, Hermóðr arrives in Helheim, meets with Hel herself and pleads for the return of Baldr on behalf of Frigg. Hel gives the condition that all things must weep for Baldr if Baldr will be returned to Asgard. Nanna, the wife of Baldr (whose heart burst upon seeing the corpse of Baldr and was placed upon the pyre with Baldr), gives gifts to Hermóðr to return to Asgard with. "Along with other gifts,"[12] only two gifts are specifically mentioned: a white linen robe for Frigg and a golden ring for Fulla.
The Æsir then sent forth messengers to all things to have them weep for Baldr, so that he may return from Helheim to Asgard and to ultimately return fully to the world of the living. All things did but a giantess by the name of Þökk, regarding whom Snorri writes that "people believe that the giantess was Loki."[12] Afterwards, in sections 50 and 51, a series of events occur where the Gods take revenge upon Loki by binding him and thus furthering the onset of Ragnarök, though Frigg is not mentioned furtherFrigg (pronounced “FRIG;” Old Norse Frigg, “Beloved”[1]), sometimes Anglicized as “Frigga,” is the highest-ranking of the Aesirgoddesses. She’s the wife of Odin, the chief of the gods, and the mother of Baldur.
Strangely for a goddess of her high position, the surviving primarysources on Norse mythology give only sparse and casual accounts of anything related to her personality, deeds, or other attributes. The specifics they do discuss, however, are not unique to Frigg, but are instead shared by both her and Freya, a goddess who belongs to both the Aesir and theVanir tribes of deities. From these similarities, combined with the two goddesses’ mutual evolution from the earlier Germanic goddess Frija, we can see that Frigg and Freya were only nominally distinct figures by the late Viking Age, when our sources were recorded, and that these two figures, who had formerly been the same deity, were still practically the same personage in everything but name.
Frigg and Freya
Like Freya, Frigg is depicted as a völva, a Viking Age practitioner of the form of Norsemagic known as seidr. Seidr is concerned with discerning destiny and altering its course by re-weaving part of its web.[2] This power could potentially be put to any use imaginable, and examples that cover virtually the entire range of the human condition can be found in Old Norse literature. In the Old Norse poem Lokasenna, after Lokislanders Frigg, Freya warns him that Frigg knows the destiny of all beings, implying that she also has the power to alter them if she so chooses.[3] Frigg’s weaving activities are likely an allusion to this role as well. Freya owns falcon plumes that she and the other Aesir use for shapeshifting into that bird, and Frigg possesses her own set of falcon feathers that are used for the same purpose.[4]
In the Viking Age, the völva was an itinerant seeress and sorceress who traveled from town to town performing commissioned acts of seidr in exchange for lodging, food, and often other forms of compensation as well. Like other northern Eurasian shamans, her social status was highly ambiguous – she was by turns exalted, feared, longed for, propitiated, celebrated, and scorned.[5]
During the so-called Völkerwanderung or “Migration Period” – roughly 400-800 CE, and thus the period that immediately preceded the Viking Age – the figure who would later become the völva held a much more institutionally necessary and universally acclaimed role among the Germanic tribes. One of the core societal institutions of the period was the warband, a tightly organized military society presided over by a king or chieftain and his wife. The wife of the warband’s leader, according to the Roman historian Tacitus, held the title of veleda, and her role in the warband was to foretell the outcome of a suggested plan of action by means of divination and to influence that outcome by means of more active magic, as well as to serve a special cup of liquor that was a powerful symbol of both temporal and spiritual power in the warband’s periodic ritual feasts.[6][7]
This “politico-theological conception” was based on the mythological model provided by the divine pair Frija and Woðanaz, deities who later evolved into, respectively, Freya/Frigg and Odin. Woðanaz is the warband’s king or chieftain, and Frija is itsveleda.
Thus, in the Migration Period, the goddess who later became Freya (and Frigg) was the wife of the god who later became Odin. While somewhat veiled, this is ultimately still the case in Old Norse literature. Freya’s husband is named Óðr, a name which is virtually identical to that of Óðinn (the Old Norse form of “Odin”). Óðr means “ecstasy, inspiration, furor.” Óðinn is simply the word óðr with the masculine definite article (-inn) added onto the end. The two names come from the same word and have the same meaning. Óðr is an obscure and seldom-mentioned character in Old Norse literature. The one passage that tells us anything about his personality or deeds – anything beyond merely listing his name in connection with Freya – comes from the Prose Edda, which states that Óðr is often away on long journeys, and that Freya can often be found weeping tears of red gold over his absence.[10] Many of the surviving tales involving Odin have him traveling far and wide throughout the Nine Worlds, to the point that he’s probably more often away from Asgard than within it. Many of Odin’s numerous bynames allude to his wanderings or are names he assumed to disguise his identity while abroad. Thus, it’s hard to see Freya’s husband as anything but a hypostasis (a theological term that means “aspect” or “emanation”) of Odin.
Freyja and Frigg are similarly accused of infidelity to their (apparently common) husband. Alongside the several mentions of Freya’s loose sexual practices can be placed the words of the medieval Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus, who relates that Frigg slept with a slave on at least one occasion.[11] In Lokasenna and the Ynglinga Saga, Odin was once exiled from Asgard, leaving his brothers Vili and Vé in command. In addition to presiding over the realm, they also regularly slept with Frigg until Odin’s return.[12][13] Many scholars have tried to differentiate between Freya and Frigg by asserting that the former is more promiscuous and less steadfast than the latter,[14] but these tales suggests otherwise.
The word for “Friday” in Germanic languages (including English) is named after Frija,[15] the Proto-Germanic goddess who is the foremother of Freya and Frigg. None of the other Germanic peoples seem to have spoken of Frija as if she were two goddesses; this approach is unique to the Norse sources. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that in the Norse sources we find a confusion as to which goddess this day should have as its namesake. Both Freyjudagr (from Freyja) and Frjádagr (from Frigg) are used.
The names of the two goddesses are also particularly interesting in this regard. Freyja, “Lady,” is a title rather than a true name. It’s a cognate of the modern German wordFrau, which is used in much the same way as the English title “Mrs.” In the Viking Age, Scandinavian and Icelandic aristocratic women were sometimes called freyjur, the plural of freyja.[16] “Frigg,” meanwhile, comes from an ancient root that means “beloved.”[17] Frigg’s name therefore links her to love and desire, precisely the areas of life over which Freya presides (perhaps a more theologically correct wording would be “within which Freya manifests herself”). Here again we can discern the ultimate reducibility of both goddesses to one another: one’s name is identical to the other’s attributes, and the other name is a generic title rather than a unique name.
Clearly, then, the two are ultimately the same goddess. But this raises the question of why they’re portrayed as distinct goddesses in Old Norse literature.
Germanic mythology acquired its basic form during the Migration Period, and is, accordingly, a mythology especially suited to the socio-political institutions and prevailing ways of life that characterized that era. The cornerstone of this schema is the divine pair Frija and Woðanaz, the veleda and the *xarjanaz (“warband leader”) respectively. During the Viking Age, the formal warbands of earlier times gave way to informal, often leaderless groups of roving warriors – the vikings. Since the warband was no longer a feature of the lives of the Norse people, the mythological structures that had accompanied it lost much of their relevance. Now that Odin was no longer thought of as the leader of the warband of the gods, nor Freya/Frigg its veleda, the opportunity arose for their roles to be reinterpreted. For unknown reasons, part of this reinterpretation evidently involved splitting Frija into two goddesses, a process that appears to have never been fully completed, but was instead interrupted by the arrival and acceptance of Christianity.