commit suicide after her brother was killed, and declared ‘I shall take no food until I sup with Freyja’. In Grimnismal it is even stated that Freyja receives some of those who die in battle; she has half the slain who fall each day, while half go to Odin. Like Frigg she is pictured as a weeping goddess, and her tears are said to be of gold, a favourite image of the early poets. Why she weeps is not very clear. Snorri says that she searches for her lost husband Od, but gives no details. One would expect that this is a memory of the goddess seeking for the slain god of fertility, discussed earlier.
According to Snorri, Freyja had many names. Gefn, as we saw, expresses her character as a giver, and links her with the Danish Gefion. Another name, Mardoll, suggests a connexion with the sea (marr). Syr, ‘sow’, reminds us that the boar symbol belonged to her as well as to Freyr. Horn is another of her names which occurs in place- names in east Sweden, and may be connected with horr, ‘flax’, indicating a special local variant of the cult of the vegetation goddess. Another possible name used in poetry is Skialf, a name of an early queen of Sweden, married to King Agni, who had a boar-helmet and was presumably a worshipper of the Vanir. Skialf is said to have killed him with the aid of a necklace, and this story is one of those which have been thought to imply a tradition of sacrificial death among the early kings of Sweden.
A necklace is the ornament connected with Freyja, if we are right in assuming that her most cherished possession, the Brisingamen, was worn round the neck. It has been suggested that it was a girdle, and again that it was a piece of amber, but the word men is in general used of a woman’s ornament worn at the neck, and what we hear about it in the later sources fits in with this interpretation. There appears to be some connexion also with a treasure called the Brosingamene mentioned in the Old English Beowulf, which is assumed to have been a kind of necklace or collar. The meaning of the name has not been explained, and we do not know whether it was based on a family or tribal name, ‘the necklace of the Brisings’, or whether the reference is to the brightness of the ornament, from a rare form brisingr, ‘fire’. A necklace is something which is associated with the mother goddess from very early times. Figurines wearing necklaces found in the Mediterranean area date back as far as 3000 B.C., and small female figures wearing them have survived from the Bronze Age in Denmark and are thought to represent a fertility deity.1
We are told also that Freyja possessed a ‘feather’ or ‘falcon’ shape. This is mentioned several times in the myths, and is once attributed to Frigg also. Although in Snorri and in ?rymskvi?a it is represented as a kind of flying costume which Loki borrows, there can be little doubt that the original conception was a serious one: Freyja was believed to take on the form of a bird and to travel over vast distances, as Odin and Loki were also able to do.
Freyja’s name is specifically linked by Snorri with a special kind of witchcraft known as sei?r, for he states that she was a priestess of the Vanir who first taught this knowledge to the Aesir. We know a good deal about sei?r from prose sources, and it forms an interesting clue to the nature of her cult. The essentials for performing it were the erection of a platform or lofty seat on which the leading practitioner sat, the singing of spells, and the falling into a state of ecstasy by this leader, who is generally a woman, and is called a volva. Sometimes the volva was supported by a large company, who acted as a choir and provided the music. At the close of the ceremony, the worker of sei?r was able to answer questions put to her by those present, and it is implied that she received her information while she was in a state of trance. The accounts show that questions put to her were concerned for the most part with the coming season and the hope of plenty, and with the destinies of young men and women in the audience. Sometimes the term sei?r is used to refer to harmful magic, directed against a victim, but in the majority of accounts it appears to be a divination rite. The term volva is found in the poetry and sagas to denote someone with special mantic gifts, a seeress or soothsayer.
We are told more than once that seeresses of this kind used to travel about the land to visit the farms and be present at feasts, and that they would give replies to those who inquired of them. The best-known account of the visit of such a woman to a farm is given in Eiriks Saga Rau?a (4), and is said to have taken place in the Icelandic settlement in Greenland. It has been questioned whether such practices did in fact take place in Greenland at so late a date, but the account of the costume, equipment, and behaviour of the volva has in any case aroused great interest, because it offers so detailed and remarkable a parallel to that of shamans and shamankas of recent times who have been observed and described by travellers and anthropologists in north-eastern Europe and Asia.1 This resemblance helps us to understand better the nature of these ceremonies, while it also strengthens the case for the reliability of saga evidence for rites and customs.
As practised in northern Europe and Asia, shamanism is the practice of divination by a professional class of highly trained seers, both men and women. The shaman acts as intermediary between the world of men and the gods, and has the power to descend into the realms of the dead. His spirit is believed to journey forth from his body, which remains in a state of trance. Sometimes the long journey which it takes is described by him in a chant. Sometimes he induces the condition of ecstasy by beating his drum or by an elaborate and exciting dance. His actions and his costume symbolize the inner meaning of the ceremonies in which he takes part. The costume is usually made of animal skins, birds’ feathers, and metal likenesses of creatures of the animal world, and sometimes is modelled on some particular creature, such as a bear or a bird. While in his trance, the shaman is believed to be helped or hindered by animal spirits, and may imitate the voices of these creatures with great effect. Sometimes his ascent of the heavens is symbolized by the climbing of a ladder or a tree, and sometimes he is said to ride up to the sky on the back of a goose. The purpose of the ceremony is usually to find the answer to some question of importance for the community, such as the reason for a dearth of food, or an epidemic. Alternatively it may be to heal some sick person, in which case it may be necessary for the shaman’s spirit to pursue the soul of the sick man down into the underworld and to overcome by his superior powers the hostile spirits trying to prevent it from returning to the body. The shaman may also reply to individual questions put to him by members of the audience.
We are told in the account of Eiriks Saga that the volva wore a costume of animal skins, including boots of calfskin and gloves of catskin, and also that a sacrificial meal was prepared for her from the hearts of all living creatures obtainable. She sat on a kind of platform high above the audience, upon a cushion stuffed with hen’s feathers. She asked that someone should be found to sing the spell necessary for the ceremony, and after some search a young Christian woman admitted that she learned it when a child, and was persuaded to sing it. The volva told her afterwards that her singing was so successful that many spirits thronged to hear, and thus she learned from them the hidden things which men wished to know. After the main ceremony was over, she replied to the most important question, which was whether the famine afflicting the community would soon end. She also predicted the destiny of the girl who sang the spell, and told her what her fortunes in marriage would be. Finally men and women went up to put individual queries to her, and received wise answers; in fact ‘little that she said went unfulfilled’.
In this account, and in a number of less detailed ones scattered through the sagas, there is much in common with accounts of shamanistic ceremonies described by modern anthropologists. The journey of the shaman’s spirit may not be a feature mentioned in the saga narratives, but on the other hand it seems to be implied in the poems. Some poems, like Voluspa (literally, ‘Soothsaying of the Volva’) are presented as the utterances of a seeress, revealing what is hidden from men. There are also a number of descriptions of supernatural journeyings through terrible cold and darkness and barriers of fire into the ‘other world’, and these are in accordance with the fearful experiences of the shaman’s spirit described elsewhere. It seems established that some form of shamanistic practice was so widespread in the heathen north as to have left a considerable impact on the literature.1
All this is relevant to a study of the cult of Freyja. As we have seen, she is said to have been an expert on sei?r, and to have introduced it. She could take on bird-form, which meant that she could journey far in some shape other than human. As goddess of the Vanir, the prosperity of the community and marriages of young people were within her province, and these were precisely the subjects on which the volva used to be consulted. The volva too was accustomed to journey round the countryside and be present at feasts just as Freyja’s brother, Freyr, was said to do. Like Freyr,
