Freya

Lady of Love

The Holy Twins

 by Gudrun of Mimirsbrunnr

Twins were a common sacred theme in ancient Indo-European mythology. They are found throughout the paths of those peoples, from Greece (Artemis and Apollo, Helen and Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux), from the Celts (the twins of Macha, left over from a number of IE “horse twins”), from India (the Ashvinis), the Lithuanians (the Asvieniai), the Latvians (the Dieva Deli), the Romans (Romulus and Remus), and the proto-Germanic peoples (the Alcis, or twins of the sacred grove).[1] It seems that the concept of two children born at once from a single womb was a sacred event, a sign of abundance and an omen that the Gods had blessed the people.

While there is technically no mention of the Norse Gods Frey and Freyja being twins, it would be contrary to the entirety of the Indo-European culture that bore them into this world if they were not. They function very much as sacred twins in this cosmology, the way that Artemis and Apollo function in the Greek pantheon—and, like them, they are both associated with light-bringing. However, where the Greek twins are celestial, the Norse twins are very earthy and associated with fertility and love. Their names—which are really titles, Lord and Lady—are somewhat difficult to etymologize, but their seem to be two likely possibilities, much debated. One is that the term comes from the IE word *per, meaning first or forward, which became the Proto-Germanic *frawan, or chief.[2] Another possibility is that the word comes from the Proto-Indo-European *Pieheh, which means “beloved”. this word was the root for the names of several love deities and “love concepts”, including the Sanskrit Priya and Prajapati, the Hittite Purulli, the Albanian Perendi, the Bohemian Priye, the Persian Peri (elf), and the Greek Priapos which was Latinized to Priapus. At some point, a whole host of P-words were slurred into F-words by the Germanic branch of the IE languages, which is why we have father instead of pater, fish instead of pisces, and Frey/Freyja instead of Priapos or Priya.[3]

As children of an Earth Mother and a Sea Father, they are manifestations of food abundance on both land and sea—very important for a culture developed in a place of many coastlines and not much fertile land. Njord’s fish were as important as Nerthus’s crops, and by creating Divine Twins between them, it was assured that both food sources would function as a bountiful and interdependent whole. The attributes of both fertility and being saviors at sea are part of the repeating characteristics of IE sacred twins.[4] While both twins were probably invoked at various times of the year, Freyja seems to be more associated with springtime while Frey with his Sacrificial Corn King aspect appears later in the year. This would posit them at opposite ends of the harvest process, with Freyja inspiring the seed and flower, and Frey embodying the cutting-down.

Another set of repeating characteristics among twins is association with the Sun—sometimes through a solar/lunar pair, sometimes through twin brothers who are siblings of the Sun Maiden or Dawn Goddess. In the case of the Norse twins there is no lunar theme, but a sort of slurring of the Sun Maiden/Dawn Goddess with a brother … and again, I emphasize “of a sort”. Neither Frey nor Freyja are direct solar embodiments per se, that role being taken by Sunna, but they are both generally conceived of as “golden” deities and are associated with amber and honey, both solar substances. The gold of the Sun and the gold of the grainfields reflect each other, in many historical cultures. The Norse Twins are not the Sun in the sky, but the sunlight that touches the leaves of food plants, which can be conceived of as a separate connection.

In some divine twin mythemes, the twins actually have separate paternities (even though they are born at the same time) which determine their separate fates. This is reflected in the myth of Castor and Pollux, where the divine son of Zeus remains in the heavenly realm while the mortal son dies and must be rescued by his brother. While Njord seems to be firmly the father of both the Vanic twins, Frey dies and is returned to the earth each year, while Freyja does not, echoing the Dioscuri theme. In a sense, one twin ascends while the other descends. On the other hand, Frey is happily married (after a tumultuous courtship) while Freyja is either portrayed as belonging to no one or recently widowed. Her fruitless search for her lost husband may be seen as her own turn at the underworld journey, where Frey rules above with his bride.

One of the most difficult and uncomfortable themes between the Vanic siblings (for modern people, anyway) is the idea that they are sexual with each other. In the Lokasenna, Loki accuses Frey and Freyja of having sex together in public where the other gods could see, and makes scatological references to Freyja’s behavior. Njord speaks up for his children and defends their practice as being no shame at all, which may be the echo of an old myth of divine incest coming up against the newer Christian thought, which saw such things as literal and shameful. Western deities frequently marry, fornicate or breed brother to sister—Zeus and Hera, Demeter and Poseidon, Cronos and Rhea, even the Egyptian Isis and Osiris. (While it is not ancient per se, this incest is also echoed in Wagner’s Die Walkure, where Siegmund and Sieglinde fall in love and breed the hero Siegfried.) In most of these cases (the Egyptian nobility being an anomalous example), it is very much understood by the mortal worshipers that this kind of incest was not for mortals, and would result in disaster if this divine privilege was stolen. Only the Gods could carry off such behavior … and, really, in creation myths where there are only a handful of children born of a creator deity, who are they to marry except for each other? At any rate, it seems that Frey and Freyja may well have been invoked as a sexual sister-brother pair for purposes of divine fertility.

Another interesting correlation between the Divine Twins is that they are both associated with boars. While modern Heathens tend to concentrate on Freyja’s “cat totem”, she has a magical boar—Hildesvini—that matches Gullinbursti, her brother’s steed. In the saga Hyndluljóð, Freyja turns her protégé Ottar into a boar in order to sneak him past Hyndla. Beyond this, on Yule Even the greatest boar was sacrificed to Frey as the sonargoltr, the “atonement boar”, to persuade the god to grant a good year, and it is on the head and bristles of this sacred animal that King Heidrek (in Heidrek’s Saga) and his followers placed their hands and took their most solemn oaths.[5]

The boar is one of the few animals that is reflected in both a wild and a domestic (pig) form; the two are not that far apart genetically, and feral pigs tend to back-breed to boars fairly quickly. The boar/pig is a liminal figure; as a wild creature it is hunted for food and can be tamed to become domestic food, but it always retains its wildness. It is the only domestic food creature that has been known to eat its young. It is associated in many cultures with death goddesses because of this, but not the sort of “deathrealm” goddess that Hel might be. Rather, swine were the provenance of the devouring Earth Mother (Demeter among the Greeks, Cerridwen among the Celts); their colours of white, red and black, their lunar horns, and their fertility (bearing litters of up to ten piglets) show them to be her children. Thus, the pig brings the Twins back to their Mother, Nerthus. One wonders if there is an echo here, with this sacrifice-devouring mother, of the fact that pig flesh has a taste and consistency very like human flesh, due to their omnivorous diet and muscle-to-fat ratio. The pig is the almost-human, between tame and wild, the replacement sacrifice.

All research aside, how do I see the Frey/Freyja relationship at the end of the day? As a Freyjaswoman, I know that she has the kind of almost-telepathic deep merging with her brother that many twins have, or are rumored to have. They know when the other is hurting and instinctively reach out, even as they live generally separate lives. I believe that when Frey is in Asgard, away from his wife, Freyja is his solace and gives him special comfort at that time. I also see Frey as being Freyja’s anchor in many ways, as she is the more chameleonic of the two. When she is overwhelmed by woe—when she weeps tears of amber—it is often to Frey, the more “settled” twin, that she turns.

They love each other with a love that ranges from childlike and innocent to sexual, yet there is no possessiveness in it. After all, they are both Gods of love, and there is always more than enough love to go around between them. In a way, their relationship is a beautiful example of a loving and sometimes sexual relationship where the participants do not need to be married, or even partnered with each other romantically, for they look elsewhere for those needs. They are not each other’s mate, they are each other’s other half, which is a different situation. To learn about one is to learn about, and love, the other.

Artwork by Fenrisulven (Mariela Natalia Papa).

Photo by Bygul of Runatyr Kindred.

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