The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

or a hybrid bull/man, sometimes a man with bull’s head and horns. Might the sons of
Gefjun have been such anthropomorphic creatures, since the poet says that they carried
four heads and eight moon-horns?
From other sources we learn that Gefjun has a death wielder function. She
receives those who die as maidens, as she is a maiden herself (Gylfaginning, ch.35). This
little detail could disturb our thesis of Gefjun being one of Freyja’s images, but we know
that both Freyja and Gefjun are lovers and mothers, although Gefjun holds that role more
clearly, as the ancestress of the Sköldungar. On the other hand, myth is paradox and one
of Freyja’s/Gefjun’s images is surely the maiden, just as Kore, Demeter and Hekate are
one.
In Crete, Catal Hüyük and Malta, as well as numerous other places of Old Europe
and beyond, from the 7 th to the 2 nd century BCE, the bull’s horns and head, the
bucranium, is a sacred Goddess symbol, related to regeneration (Gimbutas, 2001, pp.33-
36). Dorothy Cameron’s discovery of the likeness between the bucranium and the uterus
with the phallopian tubes, when she was working with the images of Mellaart’s finds in
Çatal Hüyük (1981), was a major “golden tablet”. As mentioned above, the development
of the bull to a patriarchal war or thunder god symbol, does not take away the fertility
aspect, so obviously displayed in the myths of Gefjun and Inanna. The heads of bulls
found in old shrines in the above places are all associated with the Goddess’ function as
regenerator of life.
In Catal Hüyük’s temples we find the bucranium both in the shrines of life and
death. Some are connected to the birth giving frog goddesses, like the one in Shrine EV1
(Cameron, 1981, pp. 8-9), which seems to be giving birth to three or four bulls, three
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