Hello friends, my name is Arith Härger and today I'm going to talk about Frigg, the queen of Asgard and Odin's wife
By the way, I hope you enjoyed the introduction, that was me singing
most likely making your ears bleed
If you enjoyed it let me know in the comments below
I have in mind a couple of melodies for other introductions
but if you think it's just terrible, please stop me, otherwise I assume you enjoyed it.
Another thing, before we start this video
You know that I've made a couple of videos about cats in the spiritual and religious context of northern Europe
as a form of honouring my cat, Mr. Tico, who passed away early this year
Well, today this video is in honour of my grandmother who also passed away recently
Yes, this year is a total disgrace for me
Anyway, I hope you enjoy this video, let's get started
Frigg is the main goddess of the Aesir in Norse mythology
and her residence in Asgard is Fensalir
She is often known as being Odin's wife and not much is said about her and her attributes
in truth in the surviving sources little is said about her at all
other than being the queen of Asgard due to her marriage with Odin
But Frigg is the oldest continually known Germanic goddess, just like Freyja
In fact, the two goddesses are the same and only became two separated deities during the Viking Age
but on that point I will focus much more on the next video
but it's a fact that must be underlined
because the lack of information of Frigg is due to the fact of this deity being Freyja
and when the same goddess was divided in two
it was in a time too late to develop complex attributes to the goddess
and so Frigg remained a deity shrouded in mystery
Frigg in Old Norse means "Beloved
and indeed she is associated with love
To the old Saxons she was known as Frî
in Old high German Frîja
and thus by the contact the romans had with these Germanic peoples, the goddess was identified as Venus
the roman goddess of Love,
which is perfectly comprehensible because Frigg's name derives from the Proto-Germanic friyo, from the into-European priya, which means "beloved"
Frigg starts to be recorded as Odin's wife in sources daring from the 8th century onward
She wasn't Odin's wife before such mythological records
but both deities started to be linked to one another in the History of the Lombards
which is a 8th century myth explaining the foundations of the Lombard people
where Odin and Frigg appear as Godan and Frea
an both are engaged in a dispute over whom to favour in war
There were two tribes at war against each other,
the Winnili, who were Frigg's favourites, and the Vandals, Odin's favourites
The Winnili won, Frigg's favourites
These are the Lombards, or Longobards (long-beards)
This is an interesting account because these Lombards are the same Longobardi the romans came in contact with
a Germanic tribe devoted to the earth-goddess Nerthus
which has loads of similarities with the goddess Freyja
therefore, with the goddess Frigg
Both Nerthus and Freyja/Frigg, had the same similarities even in the cults to these deities:
priests of the opposite sex to that of the goddess, driving a cart across the country with the representation of the goddess
reaching the sacred groves or bogs to sacrifice people in the name of the goddess, for fertility and prosperity
A huge ceremonial procession, so important and with such proportions,
that it was impossible to pass unnoticed in the eyes of the Romans and they recorded it
Of course the name Nerthus is the Latin equivalent of Njordr, who is the Norse god father of both Freyja and Freyr
But no problem in that
This Germanic deity, Nerthus, is either a forgotten sister-wife of Njord
or Njord itself in central Europe was a deity with both genders
which isn't strange, there are many deities having both genders, hermaphroditic gods
But Nerthus and Njord may well be a divine pair just like their children, Freyja and Freyr
and indeed the Lombards worshipped this Nerthus
which to them wasn't called Nerthus, it was called Goden's wife Frea
which is the same thing as Odin's wife, Frigg
So we are talking about the same deity, only with different names in different cultures and also different names amongst Germanic tribes
Suffice it to say, Frigg in early Germanic religion was the equivalent of the mother earth
associated with both fertility and plenty
the sustaining force of the earth
but with a particular trait
she was a goddess who intervened in human affairs, and that's an important trait as you will see
In this story of the Lombards, the myth behind it,
it is said that Godan watches the occurrences of the world through his window, along with his wife Frea
Not just this account but the way they behave towards one another,
demonstrates that both Godan and Frea appear with the same recognizable attributes and personality traits of Odin and Frigg in later Icelandic sources
Odin watches the world through Hlidskjalf, Odin's throne
and the Icelandic accounts tell us of both Odin and Frigg being there together, watching over the world
in disputes, both standing on the opposite site of a dispute, waging, one taking one positon and the other the complete opposite one
just like in the account of the Lombards, Frigg for one tribe and Odin for another
In both sources, Odin and Frigg are depicted as a divine couple actively involved in human affairs
Odin grants victory to those he favours, but he and his wife disagree over their own favourites and Frigg ends up gaining the game
Today this might seem a little bit strange to our social thinking, unfortunately
How can the queen turn the king's mind?
or how can the wife of the chieftain be responsible for something greater than her own husband, the man
A woman with more power than a man, or outwit the king of the gods, a male power in heavens, that's indeed strange
Well . . .
It's not that strange at all because with the advent of Christianity we became used to a patriarchal society
God himself was male, Jesus was male, and the apostles were all dudes
In the bible the only woman who is praised his the Virgin Mary because she gave birth to the saviour, a male messiah
and she was just the vessel to carry god's son
The other women are either prostitutes who are stoned to death, or Eve who dun goofed and doomed us all
and other women who somehow become demons for thinking for themselves
or of course, Mary Magdalene who has been attested by the church as a prostitute for two thousand years
but she in fact, historically speaking, this is true,
she actually was a wealthy woman, great supporter of Jesus and his ideas
who actually supported his religious campaign with actual money, she was financing the entire thing
Well, this little critic just to tell you that it isn't abnormal the idea of a goddess either being on the same level as a god, a male god
or even being more powerful than him
For thousands of years people- before the coming of Christianity or other religious patriarchal systems
people, and our ancestors actually lived in matriarchal societies
During the Palaeolithic there were great cults to a cave mother
in the Neolithic an outstanding flourishing of earth goddesses
and the Chalcolithic the great Solar goddess
most Europeans stopped worshipping gods and for a couple of hundreds of years began to worship a single solar goddess
and many Germanic tribes were devoted to a mother goddess
such as the example I gave you of the Lombards
Germanic tribes such as the Longbardi, Anglii, Reudigni, Aviones, Varini, Eudoses, Suarines, Huitones, etc.
they all worshipped an earth goddess, a mother goddess
Let's not forget that amongst the Germanic tribes the wife of the chieftain also played an important role
mostly linked to magical affairs, but her role was to know the outcome of events through divination
and change the outcome with active magic, weaving the web of fate
And this is when it becomes interesting
Both Freyja and obviously Frigg, for the reasons I told you
are goddesses connected to Seidr,
which is a Norse magical practice concerned with discerning destiny and altering its course by re-weaving parts of it
Weaving and Spinning is what Seidr is all about
not just metaphorically, but physically doing it and through that act forcibly send out energy and the will of the practitioner towards something
Weaving and Spinning, the words, in Old Norse also refer to the act of attracting, pulling and pushing, as if working on cords,
spiritual interactions constructed, weaved to bend things to our will and our purposes
And one of the very few abilities of Frigg that Freyja doesn't have, is that Frigg spins the clouds, she weaves them
This is because Freyja was connected to Seidr, to magic, the act of Weaving and Spinning
but with Christianity that was absolutely outlawed, magical practices were condemned by the church, so was the Cult of Freyja
Freyja became Frigg, a goddess who was closer to the figure of the Virgin Mary
who lost all the magical attributes when Freyja was transformed into Frigg
But weaving and spinning remained because the Christians failed to see that that trade, that activity was in fact highly used for magical purposes
but it seemed such an innocent one, a woman's trade, not paying much attention to it
so why not the weaving and spinning remain linked to Frigg?
After all, Frigg is a goddess who became associated with domestic affairs
So it's seemed completely innocent letting Frigg remain linked to Weaving and Spinning
Christians unknowingly let this one pass and Frigg remained with an old magical activity when she was Freyja
Frigg is the goddess of marriage, she is the protector of the home and families, the goddess of the domestic activities,
childbirth, spinning and weaving
Many of her traits and attributes are the same as Freyja's, as I've said, it's the same goddess
Even though on the next video I will delve much more on that aspect,
I would like to say that, one of the reasons why the same goddess was divided in two, was because of the changes in old Germanic societies
Old Germanic peoples became more war-like with the passage of time
and the imagine of the earth goddess progressively became associated with other activities of the society which were no longer the main concerns
War was the activity through which wealth was acquired
new lands to farm and to settle, increasing of property and power, basically anything in a society was conquered by making war
So progressively Frigg, or Freyja, ceased to be that important in Germanic societies
and magic, fertility, prosperity, etc. for many didn't make much sense because it was to the gods of war people had to worship if they wanted to continue to thrive
Freyja, Frigg, was split into two goddesses
Freyja for magical practices, fertility, wealth, love, sorcery, everything she was already associated with
and Frigg became solely the domestic goddess
Because in times of war, which was almost the entire year and year after year,
people would go to war and leave behind their properties
If we take a look at Viking societies, which was precisely during that period that the same goddess started to be seen as two different deities
most properties were left in the care of women
Taking care of the house, giving birth, taking care of the children, the entire home industry and the importance of the family
all of this became associated with Frigg which on this line of thought became a domestic goddess
And this "conversion" was actually very easy, I think,
because Freyja herself was the most worshipped goddess in Scandinavia, so much that she was also included in domestic cults
and there are many names for her, many aspects of Freyja related to domestic cults
So Frigg was just another aspect of the same goddess but for household activities
Even knowing that Frigg and Freyja are the same goddess, I like to think that to our Norse ancestors these were two aspects of the same deity
because many deities had different aspects for different purposes
and with time such aspects became different gods
What happened with Freyja, being one goddess and then split in two
is the exact the opposite that happened with Odin when his cult was introduced in Northern Europe
Odin has many names, more than one hundred names
because the cult of different local deities, native deities of Northern Europe,
were syncretized into the cult of the same god, Odin
making him a god who ruled over all, who had the attributes of many local deities, thus, having different aspects
So I like to think that if the same goddess became two distinct ones
and Frigg became a total different goddess
maybe it's not a problem at all for modern pagans to worship Frigg as a unique deity and Freyja as another totally different goddess
So Frigg can often be called upon for protection of the family, for keeping family bonds strong and together
for safety in childbirth, and for protection of children
She can be worshipped to bless weddings and married women and to help married couples in general,
and of course, worshipped for a variety of domestic activities
Alright my dear friends I hope you have enjoyed this video
and as I've said in the beginning this video is also in honour of my grandmother who passed away recently
she lived to reach almost 100 years
she even met her great-grandchildren
one suprising thing, interesting
is that she was my grandmother from my father side but my mother had the idea to make a gathering of family members
in honour of my grandmother
so a lot of people came
we haven't seen eachother for more than 15 years
even people from other countries, from Germany, family members came...
and it was just incredible
so in a way- as I've said Frigg is a goddess that can be worshipped for keeping the family bounds strong and together
so in a way we have honoured both my grandmother and I think Frigg
so maybe my grandmother is with Frigga right now
which would be a good thing; old women's knowledge is always needed
So thank you so much for watching, see you on the next video and, as always...
tack för idag!
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