The session:
Continued the topic of Odin and Frig in Germanic and Scandinavian mythology.
1/. Odin –
We covered the tale of The Lay of Grimnir in more detail. In this story Odin visited the world of men under one of his many disguise. Odin and his wife Frig were very competitive and Frig warned Gerrod, King of the Goths, to beware of a magician who would visit. This caused Gerrod to seem to break the rules of hospitality and lead to him coming to a bad end but as Gerrod was a cruel and tyrannical king that would have gone down well with the audience.
2/. Frig
Nerthus was venerated as the Earth Mother by the Germanic and Scandinavian peoples. Frig was originally the earth mother worshipped by the Angles and Saxons. Borne of the earth itself and married to the sky god so linked back to creation mythology.
Over time the fertility element moved over to Frey and Freya who started out as the children of the Earth Mother Nerthus. Frig became the goddess of marriage and married love.
The Legend of Baldur
Baldur was the favourite son of Odin and Frig. He was the best of gods, bright, beautiful and shining, kind and wise. He was very happy with his wife Nanna. Baldur had a twin brother called Holder who was the opposite of Baldur to look at; he was dark and blind. They loved each other.
Baldur could tell the future and started to have bad dreams full of dread, of a shadowy world.
Odin went to the Hall of Hel (the goddess who ruled in the Realm of the Dead) to find out what was going on. The Hall was set out for a special guest. Odin was told that Baldur would be killed by Holder.
Frig went to see each and every substance to gain its commitment not to harm Baldur, and this was agreed.
They decided to test Baldur’s new found invincibility and threw things at him, much fun was had and Baldur was unhurt.
Everyone was happy apart from Loki who was consumed with jealousy. He shapeshifted into the form of an old woman and visited Frig to see if there were any flaws in the plan. He checked that everything had been covered by asking lots of questions and identified it covered everything that grows out of the earth so it did not cover mistletoe.
Loki made a dart out of mistletoe, gave it to Holder to use, helped blind Holder sight up and the dart went right through Baldur and killed him.
Frig sent an emissary to Hel to negotiate a ransom for Baldur’s life. The condition of the ransom was that everything must weep for him. Everything wept apart from an old woman (Loki) so Baldur stayed in the hall of Hel.
This shows some evidence of the earlier role of Frig. Baldur has a lot of the characteristics of the spring god, but in this story he does not come back, reflecting that the fertility role had already been taken over by Frey/Freya and the concept of an inescapable fate.
3/. Frey/Freya
We touched very briefly on this and will take it further at the next session.
Last Updated on December 7, 2020