From pagan customs to Christianity

She is a seeress, who knows all fates, though she seldom speaks of them. She has a handmaiden called Fulla and a messenger named Gna. Despite the likeness of names and the similar relationship to Odin, Frigga should not be confused with Freya, who shares none of her essential traits. In the heavenly realm of Asgard, Frigg lived in a magnificent palace called Fensal. She sometimes dressed in the plumage of falcons and hawks, and she could also travel in the form of these birds. She had 11 maidservants: They are sometimes considered to be various aspects of Frigg herself rather than distinct beings.

Frigga helps develop the ability to feel clearly to sense messages and information.

John Lindow

She is associated with Crystal healing and her stones are Actinolite, Aventurine, Chysocolla, and Emerald. Her crafts are cooking, housekeeping, and ointments. You are commenting using your WordPress. You are commenting using your Twitter account.


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You are commenting using your Facebook account. Notify me of new comments via email. Tags abc , Frigga , mythology , Norse. It relates how the goddess Frea , wife of Godan Wodan , tricked her husband into granting the Lombards victory over the Vandals.


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  7. The story shows that the divine pair, recognizable from Scandinavian sources as Odin and Frigg, was known to the Lombards at this early time. A rather similar story about this pair is told in a Scandinavian source. Paul used written sources available to him and seemed also to draw upon Lombard tradition in prose and verse. The lives of Irish and Anglo-Saxon missionaries who worked among Germanic peoples on the Continent e. The first detailed document touching upon the early religion of Scandinavia is the biography by St.

    Rembert or Rimbert of St. Ansgar was well received by the Swedes, but it was much later that they adopted Christianity. Some two centuries later, c. Learned sources, such as those just mentioned, may be supplemented by a few written in vernacular in continental Germany and England. Among the most interesting are two charms, the so-called Merseburg Charms, found in a manuscript of c. The charms appear to be of great antiquity, and the second, intended to cure sprains, contains the names of seven deities.

    Four of these are known from Scandinavian sources, viz. A manuscript of the 9th century contains a baptismal vow in the Saxon dialect , probably dating from the 8th century. Vernacular sources in Old English are rich, but reveal little about the pre-Christian religion. The poem Beowulf is based upon heroic traditions, ultimately of Scandinavian origin, but in spite of its rather thorough Christianization, it retains a number of striking Germanic elements in its symbolism and contents.

    The fight of Beowulf against the monsters from the dark is paralleled by the struggle of Scandinavian heroes against trolls. The same heroism and defiance of death that characterize Germanic warrior ethics are found in minor historical poems, such as the Battle of Brunanburh and the Battle of Maldon. Old English literature also includes numerous charms intended as safeguards against illnesses and misfortunes, but these can hardly be called religious.

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    In the 9th century Runic Poem, an old tradition about the god Ing has clearly been retained. The greater part of scholarly knowledge of Germanic religion comes from literary sources written in Scandinavia. These sources are mostly written in the Old Norse language , and they are nearly all preserved in manuscripts written in Iceland from the 12th to 14th century or in later copies of manuscripts written at that period.

    This implies a surviving tradition and an antiquarian revival in that distant outpost of Scandinavian culture. The oldest of the sources found in the Icelandic manuscripts are in verse. Although remembered and written down in Iceland, some of these verses originated elsewhere, some in Norway and a few in Denmark and Sweden. Some of them may well be older than the settlement of Iceland, which took place toward the end of the 9th century.

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    The Icelanders remained pagan until the year or The Icelandic manuscripts are written either in Eddic or in skaldic verse. The Eddic poetry is mostly composed in free alliterative measures, much like that of the Old English Beowulf. Much of it is preserved in a manuscript now called the Elder Edda, or Poetic Edda , written in Iceland c. The meaning of the name Edda is disputed; it was not originally applied to this book but to another mentioned below.

    The Elder Edda consists of a number of lays, which may be divided into two classes, the mythological and the heroic.


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    There is much controversy among scholars about the date and place of origin of several of the lays preserved in the Edda and minor collections. In spite of its clearly pagan theme, the poem reveals Christian influence in its imagery. The scenery described is that of Iceland, and it is commonly thought that it was composed in Iceland about the year , when Icelanders perceived the fall of their ancient gods and the approach of Christianity. It contains at least five separate sections, some of which definitely point to their origin in Norway in the Viking age 9th—10th century by their scenery and view of life.

    The poem, in the form of question and answer, tells of the cosmos, gods, giants, the beginning of the world, and its end. Many of the stories told there are also known from continental Germany and England, but the Norse sources preserve them in an older and purer form. They are of some interest for the study of religion because the gods often intervene in the lives of heroes.

    The Icelandic and, to a lesser extent, the Norwegian manuscripts of the 13th and 14th centuries contain a great bulk of poetry of a quite different kind. This is commonly, if unjustifiably, called skaldic poetry. The skaldic verse forms were perhaps devised in Norway in the 9th century. They differ fundamentally from the traditional Germanic and Eddic forms in that the syllables are strictly counted and the lines must end in a given form.

    The skalds also used a complicated system of alliteration , as well as internal rhyme and consonance. With all these constraints, their short, eight-line strophes, falling neatly into four-line half strophes, are often difficult to understand because of the complexity of the syntax and of an abstruse diction , making a very extensive use of periphrastic metaphors called kennings. Skaldic poetry is often composed in praise of chieftains of Norway and other Scandinavian lands. Its authors are frequently named, and their approximate date is known.

    After the Icelanders were converted to Christianity, much of their ancient poetry survived this religious change, as did traditions about pagan gods and their worship. The name chiefly associated with this revival is that of Snorri Sturluson — Snorri acquired great wealth and received the best education available.

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    He became a powerful man in Icelandic politics, and political intrigue led to his assassination in It is to this book that the title Edda, whatever its meaning, originally belonged. It is likely that Snorri wrote the various sections of this book in an order opposite to that which they now have. Snorri worked partly from Eddic and skaldic poetry still extant , but partly from sources that are now lost.

    Snorri used such written sources as were available; he also relied on skaldic poems, some of which were very old. Snorri visited Norway twice and Sweden once, and he probably used popular traditions that he heard in both countries. A good deal had already been written about these people in summary form by Ari the Learned c.

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    The reliability of family sagas as sources of history has long been debated and no simple answer can be given. Some of the authors were antiquarians and tried to relate faithfully the history of a district, a family, or a hero; others simply entertained by writing historical fiction. About the time when the first family sagas were written, the Dane Saxo Grammaticus , secretary of Absalon, archbishop of Lund, was compiling in Latin his great history of the Danes Gesta Danorum.

    The first nine books of this work deal with the prehistory of the Danes and are actually a history of the ancient gods and heroes.

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    Interpreting the old religion euhemeristically i. Some of his sources may have been Danish traditions and poetry now lost, but he derived much of his information from vagrant Icelanders, of whom he speaks with some respect. Sagas of this kind describe the adventures of heroes who lived, or were supposed to have lived, in Scandinavia or on the Continent before Iceland was peopled. The gods, and particularly Odin, are frequently said to take part in the affairs of men, but, since few of the heroic sagas were written before the 14th century and the aim of their authors was often entertainment rather than instruction, these sagas can be used as sources only with utmost discrimination.