TEUTONIC MYTHOLOGY. - Centrostudirpinia.it

212
FRO.
211 a . I shall come back to this mysterious combination of two
mythical names, when I come to speak of the hero Ingo.
The ON.
skalds append this freyr to other names and to common nouns, e.g.,
in Kormakssaga, pp. 104 122, fiornis freyr, myMfreyr mean no
more than hero or man in the heightened general sense which we
noticed in the words irmin, tir and t^r.
In the same way
the fern.
freyja means frau, woman, lady, Kormakss. p. 317.
All that I have made out thus far on the name and idea of the
god, will receive new light and confirmation when we come to ex
amine his divine sister Freyja. The brother and sister are made
alike in all their attributes, and each can stand for the other.
Fro does not appear in the series of gods of the week, because
there was no room for him there ; if we must translate him by a
Koman name, it can scarcely be any other than that of Liber, whose
association with Libera is extremely like that of Fro with Frowa
(Freyr with Freyja). As Liber and Libera are devoted to the
service of Ceres or Demeter, Fro and Frowa stand in close union
with Nerthus. Fro s godhead seems to hold a middle place between
the notion of the supreme lord and that of a being who brings about
love and fruitfulness. He has Wuotan s creative quality, but
performs no deeds of war ; horse and sword he gives away, when
consumed with longing for the fair GerSr, as is sung in one of the
most glorious lays of the Edda. Snorri says, rain and sunshine are
in the gift of Freyr (as elsewhere of Wuotan and Donar, pp. 157.
175) ; he is invoked for fertility of the soil and for peace (til
drs oc
fri&ar, Sn. 28 ; conf. Yngl. saga cap. 12). The Swedes revered
him as one of their chief gods, and Adam of Bremen says that at
Upsal his statue stood by those of Thor and Wodan (see Suppl.).
Also in Saem. 85 b he is named next to OSinn and Thorr (asabragr)
as the third god. Adam calls him Fricco, 1 which is precisely parallel
to the frequent confusion of the two goddesses Freyja and Frigg,
which I shall deal with at a future time. But he paints him as a
god of peace and love : Tertius est Fricco, pacem voluptatemque
laro-iens mortalibus, cujus etiam simulachrum finguut inycnti
1 Which occurs elsewhere as a man s iiame, e.g., Friccheo in Scliannat, Trad,
fuld. 386.