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Much was uncertain about the identities of Freya and Odr. It was likely that Freya was another version of Frigg (Odin’s wife), and as such it appears that Odr may have actually been Odin. The deities’ various names and identities reflected linguistic, cultural, and mythological differences among the Germanic groups that told stories of these gods and goddesses. The Norse mythology that reemerged in modern times was not canonical in the sense that an authoritative version of it did not exist. Rather, separate traditions existed simultaneously, and mythic sources such as the Poetic Edda often transposed these different traditions onto one another. Family Tree 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 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. [7] [8] Daisy Meadows is the pseudonym used for the four writers of the Rainbow Magic children's series: Narinder Dhami, Sue Bentley, Linda Chapman, and Sue Mongredien. Rainbow Magic features differing groups of fairies as main characters, including the Jewel fairies, Weather fairies, Pet fairies, Petal fairies, and Sporty fairies. Narinder Dhami was born in Wolverhampton, England on November 15, 1958. She received a degree in English from Birmingham University in 1980. After having taught in primary and secondary schools for several years she began to write full-time. Dhami has published many retellings of popular Disney stories and wrote the Animal Stars and Babes series, the latter about young British girls of Asian origin. She lives in Cambridge, England with her husband and cats. Linda Chapman has written over 50 children's fiction books, including the following series: My Secret Unicorn, Stardust, Not Quite a Mermaid, and Unicorn School. She lives in Leicestershire with her husband and daughters.
One of the principal deities of the Norse pantheon, the lovely and enchanting Freya was a goddess of blessings, love, lust, and fertility. A member of the Vanir tribe of deities, Freya shared her people’s penchant for the magical arts of divination. It was Freya who introduced the gods to seidr, a form of magic that allowed practitioners to know and change the future. A leader of the Vanir gods, Freya was recognized as the archetypal völva, a practitioner of seidr whose art and ritual could see events before they happened. The volva could then attempt to alter these events, leading enemies to their doom and delivering friends from impending disaster.
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Sturluson, Snorri. “Ynglinga Saga.” Heimskringla. Translated by Samuel Laing. Internet Sacred Text Archive. https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/heim/02ynglga.htm. See, for example: Grimm, Jacob. 1882. Teutonic Mythology, Volume 1. Translated by James Steven Stallybrass. p. 302.
As with most Norse gods and goddesses, little was known of Freya’s childhood and early development. In the Ynglinga Saga, a book of the Heimskringla by Snorri Sturluson, Freya was presented as a leading deity of the Vanir and a player in the Aesir-Vanir War. She was the wife of Odr, with whom she had the daughters Hnoss and Gersemi, who “were so very beautiful, that afterwards the most precious jewels were called by their names.” [3] Thea's favorite thing to do on Thursday mornings is to teach young fairies how to dance a fairy jig.
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Sturluson, Snorri. “Gylfaginning.” Prose Edda. Translated by Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur. Internet Sacred Text Archive. https://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/pre/pre04.htm. 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 word Frau, 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. [19]“Frigg,” meanwhile, comes from an ancient root that means “beloved.” [20] Frigg’s name therefore links her to love and desire, precisely the areas of life over which Freya presides. 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. In later life, Freya took Odr as her husband. Odr was a mysterious god whose name meant “furious and passionate,” as well as “mind and sense.” He would often be away on long journeys, and it was said that his frequent absence caused Freya to weep tears of gold. With Odr, Freya had two daughters: Hnoss and Gersemi, whose names meant “treasure.”
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