The Saga of Vanadís, Völva and Valkyrja

Freyja – the first
3. Remembering Vanadís
Freyja á mörg nöfn, en sú er sök til þess, at hon gaf sér ýmis heiti, er hon fór með ókunnum
þjóðum að leita Óðs. Hon heitir Mardöll ok Hörn, Gefn, Sýr. Freyja átti Brísingamen. Hon er ok
kölluð Vanadís.” (Snorra Edda, Gylfaginning, ch. 35)
Freyja has many names, and the reason is that she referred to herself in different ways, when she
traveled among foreign peoples, looking for [her husband] Óður. She is called Mardöll –‘Shining
Sea’ and Hörn –‘flax’, Gefn –‘Giving One’ and Sýr –‘Sow’. Freyja owns Brísingamen. She is also
called Vanadís.
Vanadís is the dís of the Vanir. She is also called Vana goð and Vanabrúður
(Snorra Edda, Skáldskaparmál, ch. 28 and 44). She is their priestess or holy bride, when
they are referred to as a tribe of this world, she is a goddess when they are mentioned as
beings of another realm. The Vanir are goð of ár og friður (prosperity and peace); goð of
love, sexuality, wealth and the womanly wisdom called seiður. They are goð of the sea
and earth, although their realm surely touches the sky, the wind and rain, the moon and
the stars and whereas the sun obtained a more central place in the Indo-European culture,
these old cultures did not neglect to deify the sun 64 .
The Vanadís is best known to us as Freyja, but she has many names and titles, as
Snorri mentions, and appears in various forms. Freyja may be derived from the root
*fraujan- meaning ‘lord’ or ‘lady’, related to Old Indian pravaná (leaning forward), Old
Slavic pruvu (the first) and Greek pró (early). In Islandic we find other words of the same
root, such as the prefix for- meaning ‘pre-’ (as in pre-fix), and frum- meaning ‘first’ or
‘original’, and fram (forward) (Ásgeir B. Magnússon, 1989). If this is so, Freyja means
simply ‘the first one’ or ‘the Goddess’.
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