Freyja

In Old Norse sources Freyja is presented as a member of the Vanir, daughter of the god Njörðr by his sister, and twin to the Vanir god Freyr. She is married to the god Óðr, whose frequent absences in the texts provoke her weeping and searching; the sources report that she bears daughters named Hnoss and Gersemi. Freyja's name is an Old Norse term meaning "lady, mistress," derived from Proto-Germanic *frawjōn, and is etymologically paired with Freyr ('lord'); scholarship recorded in the sources suggests that 'Freyja' may represent an epithet that replaced an older personal name. She is attested in the Poetic Edda and Prose Edda, in skaldic poetry, and in later Scandinavian folklore, indicating both literary and popular continuity.

Primary attestations emphasize Freyja's attributes rather than a single standardized bodily description. Textual sources identify her as the owner of the famed necklace Brísingamen, the rider of a chariot drawn by two cats, and the mistress of a boar named Hildisvíni. She possesses a cloak of falcon feathers that enables her to assume a falcon hamr (changed guise), and this cloak is sometimes lent to other figures in mythic episodes. These emblematic possessions (necklace, cats, boar, feathered cloak) function as her principal identifying signs in poems and prose accounts.

Freyja is associated with seiðr, a form of Norse magic concerned with seeing and influencing the future; this locates her among practitioners of prophetic and manipulative arts in the mythic corpus. She can shape-change by means of a feathered cloak into a falcon form, and mythic narratives show her lending the cloak to others. In the martial and eschatological order she receives half of those slain in battle into her field, Fólkvangr, and entertains them in her hall Sessrúmnir, a function that overlaps with valkyrie roles. Literary sources also portray her as invoked in matters of love and fertility, pursued by jötnar who desire her, and grieving for her absent husband Óðr, for whom she sheds tears of red gold.