Winifred Hodge Rose
Freya is a Goddess involved in just about everything! She’s a warrior and hosts the souls of warriors in her Hall, Folkvang. She also hosts people who aren’t warriors, like Egil Skallagrimson’s daughter Thorgerd who tricked her suicidal father into eating, saying she would join him in his fasting until she died and went to “sup with Freya” (Egil’s Saga, pp. 203-4). Freya is the ultimate seiðkona, expert in many forms of witchcraft and magic. She’s much involved in romance and sexuality, in conception, gestation, and childbirth. As the Vanadis, she shares the Vanic involvement in the fertility of Nature and agriculture, as well. She inspires music and poetry that focuses on romance and beauty, as well as lasciviousness. And she’s considered the mildest of the Deities, the easiest to approach and to pray to (Gylfaginning p. 24 in Sturluson). Many years ago, my husband prayed for her assistance and blessing during our time of courtship and betrothal, and indeed everything went amazingly smoothly for us: Freya has great skill!
Much has been written about these and other gifts of Freya, and I am not going to focus on them here. I want to expand on her greatest treasure, her necklace or girdle Brisingamen, and suggest that with her help we can develop our own shadow or echo of Brisingamen as a means of growing and consolidating our personal power, as Brisingamen does for Freya.
What is Brisingamen?
Brisingamen is one of our Heathen mysteries; we don’t know a lot about it, not even whether it is a necklace or a belt / girdle. It’s generally portrayed as a necklace, but sometimes mentioned as a belt or girdle. We don’t know much about its powers, nor what it looks like or is made of, though we know it is most precious. Quite likely it has multiple strands, as can be seen in this pendant of mine, a replica of an ancient amulet of Freya. Four strands can be counted around her neck, but possibly a belt is shown as well, though it’s not very clear. Does Brisingamen include jewels? Is it gold, or amber, or both? We don’t know, based on information from the lore, but we can explore our own impressions of Brisingamen as I describe further on.
For a good review of what is known or speculated about Brisingamen, including scholarship as well as insights contributed by modern Heathens, see Waggoner vol. 2, pp 284-5 and 288-293. In this text he includes speculation that Brisingamen did include amber as well as possibly a large seed-pod that drifts on the sea from the Caribbean to the shores of Scandinavia and Britain, which was used in Scandinavian folk-magic to help in childbirth. Amber, as well, has many magical uses. Gold is associated with Freya: she is said to weep tears of gold, and poetic kennings are used for Freya’s tears to refer to gold in the old poetry. Thus, gold and amber are likely possibilities, perhaps including the seed-pod as well.
I discuss my idea that an old Norwegian spell mentions something like Brisingamen in my article “The Kindly Gods God Wandering,” in the section on “Norns and Others Bind the Fylgja.” There, three maidens: ‘the Sun, the Moon, and (originally) Freya’ use ‘gold and silver bands’ to fasten a baby’s spirit into the womb to prevent it from wandering and perhaps causing miscarriage when the baby is left without the spirit. I think these gold and silver bands are a folkloric memory of Brisingamen; this offers one example of the powerful magic that Freya wields through it.
My own comment on all this debate about what Freya’s necklace consists of is that it presumably is not a material item at all! It’s like trying to figure out what the carving is on Heimdall’s Gjallarhorn, or the kind of fastening that holds the point of Odin’s spear Gungnir to its shaft. Or the weight of Thor’s Hammer, or the wood Bragi’s harp is made from. These material traits have symbolic meaning, indeed, that is worth discussing and meditating on. But it doesn’t make sense to get too hung up over ‘what is Brisingamen really made of?’ Instead, later in this article we can talk about what your Brisingamen version and my Brisingamen version might be like, whether it is material substance or spiritual image.
Forging Brisingamen
We are told in Sorla Tháttr from the Flateyarbók that Freya sees four Dwarves forging a necklace and desires to have it. Their price is one night of love for each of them, which Freya agrees to, and obtains the necklace. Of course this choice is much criticized by the authors of these old tales, having been Christianized and being willing to mock the old Gods. In fact Odin is offended by Freya’s actions as well, even though he does the same thing in order to obtain the Mead of Poetry from the giantess Gunnloð and her kin. (See Waggoner vol. 2 p. 284.)
Some modern Heathens who work with Freya have a very different take on this tale. Waggoner quotes Alice Karlsdóttir, who suggests that the Dwarves did not make the necklace until after Freya had slept with them, because they needed the inspiration she gave them in order to make the necklace. Karlsdóttir sees Freya’s power as “the infusing of the physical world with the spiritual,” and Freya’s relations with the Dwarves were an expression of that power. (Waggoner vol. 2, p. 285.)
I’m going to follow up on that idea here and relate it to what I wrote about the Dwarves’ power in my article “Dwarves and their Powers.” I explained there that ‘mod’ and its complement ‘mægen’ are kinds of power that exist in nature and within living beings, and together create the ‘virtue’ that is expressed by the special qualities of things like herbs, potions, magical items, etc. ‘Mod and mægen’ together were used to translate Latin virtus in the old Germanic languages (Meyer p. 14-15). I discuss this further with respect to Thor’s sons Moði and Magni (derived from ‘mod and mægen’) in my article “Thoughts on Thor and his Children.”
In this view, ‘virtue’ is really ‘strength, power, excellence’ which makes sense: the root of this word comes from Latin vir, meaning ‘man’ (male person, not ‘human being’), related to Anglo-Saxon wer with the same meaning. The original meaning of ‘virtue’ was ‘manliness’ in all the best senses of the word: courage, honor, excellence, valor, steadfastness, loyalty, responsibility, and so forth. This original meaning was based on virtue as the ‘essence of manhood and its power.’ From there, ‘virtue’ transformed into meaning the ‘essence, power, and excellence’ of anything that it might apply to, including religious faith and moral power. It’s a weird quirk that Christian usage turned this word into something often used to describe women’s ‘virtuous behavior,’ particularly with respect to sexual behavior according to Christian morals—a long way from its original meaning!
Getting back to Brisingamen and the Dwarves: clearly, mod, mægen, ‘virtue,’ power, excellence are things that Brisingamen must contain and embody in some form. I wrote in “Dwarves and their Powers” that Dwarves are champion ‘mod-condensers,’ able to absorb ambient mod-power and concentrate it to power their magical crafts. They have both the power and the skill to craft outstanding virtue-imbued magical items for the Gods and Goddesses: they created Thor’s Hammer, Sif’s golden hair, Frey’s ship that folds up into a napkin, as well as his tireless flying golden boar Gullinborsti who pulls his wain, and other mighty crafts.
Given that Dwarves are able to extract and use such great mod-power, why would intercourse with Freya be required in order to forge Brisingamen? Wouldn’t the Dwarves’ craft and power be enough?
There is something else about mod-power that we need to understand here: mod-power does not flow unchanged from nature outside and within us, and through us into our works. ‘Mod’ is the root of our word ‘mood,’ and this is a key understanding. The original mod-energy comes from many sources within and around us, but once we—or the Dwarves, or any conscious being—begin to channel it with intent, this channeled mod becomes ‘flavored’ by the mood of our intent. This is true whether our ‘mood’ is conscious and deliberate, or subconscious.
Let me explain this a little more, with some examples; this process is complex and interactive, and I think it is key to understanding the power of Brisingamen. Our ‘subconscious moods’ are influenced by a great many things around and within us, including the moods of the weather, the energetic nature of the food we consume or the lack of it, the moods of people around us, moods influenced by news media, influencers, books, games, films, and other activities, and it goes on. All of these things influence our moods, but we may not be fully aware of it and thus have little control over their impacts. These subconscious influences affect our intentions and motivations without being very clear or obvious to us, and may not be what we really want to express or to do.
What I call ‘conscious moods’ are the moods where we are aware of these subconscious influences but choose to accept, resist, or modify them. Thus, we deliberately choose the mood through which to express ourselves and take action in the world. Much the same as a good artist, actor, musician, or dance performer will express the intended mood of their art or performance, regardless of whatever might be going on in the background of their lives. ‘Mood’ here becomes an intentional expression of our will, our vision, our Self, rather than something we fall into or are dragged into willy-nilly, though it still includes subconscious as well as conscious elements of ourselves. But here the conscious self takes the lead and expects the subconscious self to support rather than sabotage it. In this way, ‘mood’ segues into ‘Mod,’ one of our true souls in my understanding, and a very powerful and characteristic one, as I discuss in my books and articles on Heathen soul lore.
With this understanding now, think about the ‘mood of the Dwarves.’ Even if we don’t know that much about Dwarves, we can imagine this reasonably well. They have a reputation for being grouchy, avaricious, short-tempered, clannish, selfish, vengeful, and so forth. In my experience, they have a number of good and admirable qualities as well, such as a love of beauty (as expressed in precious substances and craftwork), stout-heartedness and courage, loyalty to their own, their own version of honor which is somewhat different from ours, and others. But all of these values of theirs are rather dour, we might say—sober, ingrown, strong but dark. They were able to make treasures of the Gods because those treasures were not harmed by the ‘mood of the Dwarves,’ and indeed were enhanced when it came to the great weapons they forged. Even Sif’s hair expressed their love of the beauty of gold.
What of Freya’s powers and her ‘moods’? Can we envision Dwarves concentrating and channeling ambient mod into the ‘mood of Freya’? Not really; it makes me laugh to think of it! The Dwarves needed a focal lens through which to channel their gathering of ambient mod into the creation of Brisingamen. That lens had to come from Freya, because it was simply not within the Dwarves’ power to shape something that could resonate with the ‘moods of Freya’ and enhance her power thereby. This brings us right back to the insight of Alice Karlsdóttir, that Freya ‘infuses the spiritual into the physical’. I see the supposed ‘sexual intercourse’ of Freya with the Dwarves as a metaphor for this sharing—and even implantation—of her spiritual energy into the Dwarves who were working on Brisingamen.
The Mood of Fire
There is a link between characteristics of the Dwarves and of Freya, and that link is expressed by fire and its symbols in Norse lore. Gold is considered poetically as a form of fire, shown in many examples of poetic kennings, and both Freya and the Dwarves love gold. They both understand the fire that is expressed by war and battle, and the fire of creativity. Freya channels the fires of life, passion, and desire, and though the Dwarves express these very differently, they too know these fires well. Freya has a hot temper, too, but is generally more careful about how she directs it than the Dwarves are.
The very name ‘Brisinga-men’ means something like ‘the fiery necklace,’ or ‘the necklace made by the fiery ones’ (Waggoner p. 288). The suffix ‘-men’ refers to a necklace, torc, or jewel, and shows up in other names such as Menglöd, meaning ‘necklace / jewel-glad,’ ‘the one who takes pleasure in jewels,’ and in Menja, the ‘wearer of the necklace’ (Simek p. 210-11). The prefix may come from brisa, ‘to shine’ (Simek p. 44).
We can understand this ‘fire’ connection between the Dwarves and Freya as a subconscious mood that they share, a substrate of commonality, that is nevertheless expressed extremely differently when it comes to conscious mood, attitude, behavior and action. But it gives them a place to meet so that the necessary mod-energy can be transferred.
This ‘sharing in the mod / mood of fire’ is, I believe, the real transaction between Freya and the Dwarves, enabling the melding of their powers, mods, and moods to produce Brisingamen. It is expressed in the tales as sexual intercourse—which can also be an expression of fire. If one conceives of the Deities in very physical terms then that is the direction one’s thoughts might take. If one conceives of them in more spiritual terms, then one can picture a godly gift to the Dwarves, an infusion of fiery divine power, mod, and ‘virtue,’ that gives them temporary access to Freya’s mood and the ability to express that mood into their crafting of Brisingamen.
Echoes of Brisingamen
So there we are: Freya has her Brisingamen, her powers are enhanced, and her many adventures continue. Now I suggest this: that we can create an echo of Brisingamen for ourselves, with Freya’s help and input. Here is how I do this myself; all of what I offer here are simply suggestions for you to consider. You and Freya might make your own Brisingamen quite differently from mine, but this will at least give you some ideas.
My Brisingamen is non-material at this point in time, though that may change, but you can certainly make or buy a material one. It could be made of knots in a cord that you wear around your neck, waist, or wrist, with the knots representing jewels. Or you could craft or buy something more like jewelry. One advantage of the non-material necklace that I create in my imagination is that I can make it out of anything I want, no matter how rare and expensive!
To begin with, I take the ‘four Dwarves’ as significant, and I envision my Brisingamen to have four jewels on it, one made by each of the Dwarves. It could also be envisioned as made of four strands lying across the chest, one below the other, as shown on the Freya medallion replica earlier in this article. But I like the jewel image and find it simpler to work with in my imagination, so that’s what I choose.
Then there’s the big question: to which aspects of Freya do I want my Brisingamen-jewels to resonate? Which of her powers do I feel are most important? There are many to choose from, and here is where we all might differ in our choices. I want to say a bit about my choices because I think these aspects are important and much needed in today’s world; I believe they are disregarded and not valued highly enough. My four choices are Vitality or Life-Energy, Beauty, Joy, and Self-Possession, and I’ll discuss them here one by one.
Vitality, Life-Energy
Freya is full to overflowing with vitality, with the energy of life. It lies at the root of all her other aspects, attributes, and gifts. Her beauty, joy and delight, her warrior and lover aspects, her facility with magic, her many gifts to humankind and her involvement with us—all arise from the overflowing Vanic vitality that she shares with her brother Frey. Among other things, this overflowing vitality, energy, and mood of Freya is expressed in the birth of her daughters Hnoss and Gersemi, whose names both mean ‘treasure, precious thing’. These daughters are very much worth working with as well, as we design and empower our own treasured Brisingamen.
I could use some of the vitality that Freya channels myself, for sure! So I am working with her to empower a vitality-jewel for my Brisingamen. I gave this article the title ‘living jewels of Brisingamen’ because of this foundational vitality, this life-energy, that Freya brings to everything she is involved with, including her Brisingamen and her powers that can help us create our own echo of hers.
Beauty
Freya is famed for her beauty and her love of beauty. She is an inspiration to artists, poets and musicians who seek to capture her beauty and express her delight in it. If we stop to think about it, we realize that beauty is really the expression of so many other good things entwined together: inner health and haleness. A sharing of the spirit between ourselves and whatever we perceive as beautiful. Goodness, love, generosity: these things are beautiful. Nature is beautiful, and the beings of nature. Creativity and inspiration are beautiful. Each of us has our own unique beauty, and the more clearly we perceive that in ourselves and in others, the richer our world becomes. The experience of beauty taps into something very deep within us. This is why religions use great art and music in many forms to draw our attention toward that which is holy in its beauty, and beautiful in its holiness. The jewel that is filling with beauty in my Brisingamen is gradually becoming a symbol and a reminder to look for and appreciate the beauty around me, and to pour whatever gifts of beauty I can gather back into the world.
Joy, Delight
Joy and delight may seem so naïve to us, even selfish. What is there to be joyful about, most of the time? The world is a rough place, no question, full of stress, distress, and wrongness; if we don’t happen to have too much of those stresses in our own life at the moment, we can just look around us and see how many others are suffering and how many things are going wrong in the world. I feel that way a lot of the time, myself.
Nevertheless—there is a big ‘nevertheless’ here! People on many religious paths find true delight through their connection with their Deities. People who love nature, who have many loving connections with other people, other things they care about, pets, hobbies and avocations they love: these people can find occasions of joy in among all the hassle and distress if they approach the things they love in the right spirit. As with any worthwhile pursuit, including love and religious devotion, the ‘practice of joy’ involves just that: practice, being open to joy, even in the littlest, most fleeting things and moments; valuing true joy and seeking it throughout our days.
Freya is a Deity who takes joy in life, in Being, in beauty, in her relationships including human ones, in the exercise of her many powers, aims and purposes. Her daughters are expressions and condensations of her joy, beauty and vitality. We can turn to them and to Freya for lessons in joy, which she can impart in a great many ways, unique to the relationship she has with each of us who turn to her. I feel that I am connected to Freya through a thread of joy. When I tune in to her, I feel a bubble of happiness in my chest that lightens my perspective on the world. I’ve always had the habit of looking for beauty and joy around me, even in the tiniest things and moments, but this tendency of mine has become greatly enhanced and enlarged since I’ve been working with Freya and my Brisingamen-jewel of joy.
Joy is a gift and a grace, to ourselves and to everyone around us; it is a gift that we receive and one that we can give and share with others. It comes in many ‘flavors’ and intensities, from mild to overwhelming; it nourishes us and all that we can do and give. The jewel of joy in my Brisingamen is something I am working to fill and empower through my connection with Freya, with the other Deities, and with the world around me.
Self-Possession
Freya is herself. She knows who she is and what she wants. Others sometimes seek to exploit her, and sometimes it takes some effort for her to get out of these difficult situations. But she does; in the end she gets what she wants, goes where she wants, and does what she wants. She owns herself; she’s not owned by others. She doesn’t have to prove that through wild gestures, though sometimes she chooses to do that. Like the time she was so angry her neck swelled up and she burst Brisingamen apart, when it was suggested that she should wed the giant Thrym so Thor could get his stolen Hammer back. This put a rapid end to such suggestions! But then she calmed down and graciously agreed to loan Brisingamen to Thor (presumably after it was repaired) so he could impersonate her and get his Hammer back. (Thrymskvida or the Tale of Thrym in the Poetic Edda.) I would suggest that Thor’s impersonation was successful in spite of its difficulty (and hilarity!) in part because Brisingamen itself was imparting its power to Thor.
This deep knowledge of—and trust in—who we are, what we are about, where we’re going, what we’re doing, is something that each of us needs to develop in life. All of our Deities are characterized by this self-possession, each in their own unique ways. Freya (and Iðunn as well) have additional challenges, though, because her qualities—what she represents—are things that others want to ‘own’ and control: her beauty, her treasures, her sexuality, her magical powers, her own expressions of divinity, her Brisingamen. The Jotnar want to claim her, and the Dwarves, and so do some of the Æsir. Maybe humans, too. She must always resist being claimed and used by others, and that requires a strong sense of self-possession. Freya is very often helpful and sharing, but she does it based on her own will, not as someone who is coerced or manipulated, except when her Brisingamen is stolen.
This self-possession of Freya’s is something that we all need as well. This modern world has become so intrusive into our personal space, we are influenced in so many directions, we are tempted, lured, threatened, manipulated, and seduced in ways intended to benefit others but not ourselves—not in the long run, not in the deep ways. We are constantly at risk of being blown off course, not least because we’re often not clear about what our ‘course’ is, what it should be, what we want it to be. And I might add that these pernicious influences are not only exerted by humans; otherworldly beings influence us as well, and not all of them are benign.
The self-possession jewel on my Brisingamen is one that I try to keep polished and shining, imbued with Freya’s—and my own—powers of self-possession and all the qualities of character that support it. My work with Syn, discussed in my article “Syn: The ‘Just Say No’ Goddess,” feeds into this jewel, as well.
So, these are my choices for my Brisingamen jewels or strands: vitality, beauty, joy, and self-possession. There are many others that could be chosen, and of course we’re not required to have exactly four of them. I hope this discussion gives you some ideas for your own Brisingamen if you haven’t already developed one. Work with Freya and see what kinds of magnificent and powerful results you can produce! Here are a few ways you might pursue this.
Working with your Brisingamen
Hold the stone / jewel / strand / knot of your Brisingamen that corresponds to the aspect of her that you’ve chosen to work with right now, whether you are holding a material item or one that you imagine. Use your memory and imagination to fill, imprint, or empower that part of your Brisingamen with your experiences and desires that relate to that aspect. For example, my own jewel of beauty: I remember so many beautiful places, sensory and emotional experiences, insights and perceptions in my life, and I can imagine more of them. I slowly go through these beautiful things a few at a time in my memory and imagination, savoring them, recreating and re-living them, and ‘load’ all of this into my jewel of beauty. It’s a form of meditation, and also good practice for strengthening memory, concentration, and developing our imaginative ‘muscles.’
Depending on which aspects of Freya you choose to string on your Brisingamen, this practice will help you focus on positive things in your life, in your memory and your imagination, not only on stressful and negative things. You want those jewels to be pure and beautiful, not contaminated with negativity. Of course, if you are focusing on Freya’s battle aspects the approach is a bit different, but you still want to focus on positive things like courage, strength, determination, endurance, dedication, rather than on the many negative aspects of fighting and the resulting suffering.
This infusion of power and meaning into your Brisingamen is a much better way to spend your energy than fretting, stressing out, and other negative time- and energy-wasters! Your Brisingamen will grow in power over time as you continue this practice, loading new experiences and insights into it. This practice will help you be alert to, and focus on, the treasures of life that you want to save in your Brisingamen, instead of focusing on negativities and things that you don’t actually want to strengthen and empower as parts of your life-experience. Work with Freya, Hnoss and Gersemi to see what secret treasures you can forge out of the complexities of your life, and distill them into your own beautiful Brisingamen!
Note: This article is included in my book, Wandering on Heathen Ways: Writings on Heathen Holy Ones, Wights, and Spiritual Practice.
Book-Hoard
Egil’s Saga, transl. Hermann Pálsson and Paul Edwards. London: Penguin Classics, 1976.
Lafayllve, Patricia M. Freyja, Lady, Vanadis: An Introduction to the Goddess. Denver: Outskirts Press, 2006.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014.
Meyer, Elisabeth Marie. Die Bedeutungsentwicklung von Germanischen *moda-. Halle, Germany: Buchdruckerei des Waisenhauses, 1926.
Rose, Winifred Hodge. Wandering on Heathen Ways: Writings on Heathen Holy Ones, Wights, and Spiritual Practice. Wordfruma Press, 2023.
Simek, Rudolf, Dictionary of Northern Mythology, D.S. Brewer, 1993.
Sturlason, Snorri. Edda. Transl. Anthony Faulkes. Everyman, Charles E. Tuttle, Vermont. 1995.
Waggoner, Ben, et al. Our Troth, 3rd Edition, Volume 2: Heathen Gods. Philadelphia: The Troth, 2021.