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87-908: Frigg ( / f r ɪ ɡ / ; Old Norse : [ˈfriɡː] ) is a goddess , one of the Æsir , in Germanic mythology . In Norse mythology , the source of most surviving information about her, she is associated with marriage, prophecy, clairvoyance and motherhood, and dwells in the wetland halls of Fensalir . In wider Germanic mythology, she is known in Old High German as Frīja , in Langobardic as Frēa , in Old English as Frīg , in Old Frisian as Frīa , and in Old Saxon as Frī , all ultimately stemming from

174-458: A cave named Þökk (Old Norse 'thanks'), described as perhaps Loki in disguise. Frigg is mentioned several times in the Prose Edda section Skáldskaparmál . The first mention occurs at the beginning of the section, where the Æsir and Ásynjur are said to have once held a banquet in a hall in a land of gods, Asgard . Frigg is one of the twelve ásynjur in attendance. In Ynglinga saga ,

261-727: A change known as Holtzmann's law . An epenthetic vowel became popular by 1200 in Old Danish, 1250 in Old Swedish and Old Norwegian, and 1300 in Old Icelandic. An unstressed vowel was used which varied by dialect. Old Norwegian exhibited all three: /u/ was used in West Norwegian south of Bergen , as in aftur , aftor (older aptr ); North of Bergen, /i/ appeared in aftir , after ; and East Norwegian used /a/ , after , aftær . Old Norse

348-470: A common entity from the Proto-Germanic period. Regarding a Freyja-Frigg common origin hypothesis, scholar Stephan Grundy comments that "the problem of whether Frigg or Freyja may have been a single goddess originally is a difficult one, made more so by the scantiness of pre- Viking Age references to Germanic goddesses , and the diverse quality of the sources. The best that can be done is to survey

435-417: A female raven or a male crow. All neuter words have identical nominative and accusative forms, and all feminine words have identical nominative and accusative plurals. The gender of some words' plurals does not agree with that of their singulars, such as lim and mund . Some words, such as hungr , have multiple genders, evidenced by their determiners being declined in different genders within

522-412: A front vowel to be split into a semivowel-vowel sequence before a back vowel in the following syllable. While West Norse only broke /e/ , East Norse also broke /i/ . The change was blocked by a /w/ , /l/ , or /ʀ/ preceding the potentially-broken vowel. Some /ja/ or /jɔ/ and /jaː/ or /jɔː/ result from breaking of /e/ and /eː/ respectively. When a noun, pronoun, adjective, or verb has

609-409: A given sentence. Nouns, adjectives, and pronouns were declined in four grammatical cases – nominative , accusative , genitive , and dative  – in singular and plural numbers. Adjectives and pronouns were additionally declined in three grammatical genders. Some pronouns (first and second person) could have dual number in addition to singular and plural. The genitive

696-637: A large cat appears on a wall in the Schleswig Cathedral in Schleswig-Holstein , Northern Germany . Beside her is similarly a cloaked yet otherwise nude woman riding a distaff . Due to iconographic similarities to the literary record, these figures have been theorized as depictions of Freyja and Frigg respectively. Due to numerous similarities, some scholars have proposed that the Old Norse goddesses Frigg and Freyja descend from

783-584: A long vowel or diphthong in the accented syllable and its stem ends in a single l , n , or s , the r (or the elder r - or z -variant ʀ ) in an ending is assimilated. When the accented vowel is short, the ending is dropped. The nominative of the strong masculine declension and some i-stem feminine nouns uses one such -r (ʀ). Óðin-r ( Óðin-ʀ ) becomes Óðinn instead of * Óðinr ( * Óðinʀ ). The verb blása ('to blow'), has third person present tense blæss ('[he] blows') rather than * blæsr ( * blæsʀ ). Similarly,

870-469: A narrative about the fate of Frigg's son Baldr is told. According to High, Baldr once started to have dreams indicating that his life was in danger. When Baldr told his fellow Æsir about his dreams, the gods met together for a thing and decided that they should "request immunity for Baldr from all kinds of danger." Frigg subsequently receives promises from the elements, the environment, diseases, animals, and stones, amongst other things. The request successful,

957-474: A noun must mirror the gender of that noun , so that one says, " heill maðr! " but, " heilt barn! ". As in other languages, the grammatical gender of an impersonal noun is generally unrelated to an expected natural gender of that noun. While indeed karl , "man" is masculine, kona , "woman", is feminine, and hús , "house", is neuter, so also are hrafn and kráka , for "raven" and "crow", masculine and feminine respectively, even in reference to

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1044-448: A shoot of a tree to the west of Val-hall . It is called mistletoe . It seemed young to me to demand the oath from." Loki immediately disappears. Now armed with mistletoe, Loki arrives at the thing where the Æsir are assembled and tricks the blind Höðr , Baldr's brother, into shooting Baldr with a mistletoe projectile. To the horror of the assembled gods, the mistletoe goes directly through Baldr, killing him. Standing in horror and shock,

1131-428: A short while afterwards, [Odin] returned and took possession of his wife again. In Völsunga saga , the great king Rerir and his wife (unnamed) are unable to conceive a child; "that lack displeased them both, and they fervently implored the gods that they might have a child. It is said that Frigg heard their prayers and told Odin what they asked." A 12th century depiction of a cloaked but otherwise nude woman riding

1218-476: A similar development influenced by Middle Low German . Various languages unrelated to Old Norse and others not closely related have been heavily influenced by Norse, particularly the Norman language ; to a lesser extent, Finnish and Estonian . Russian, Ukrainian , Belarusian , Lithuanian and Latvian also have a few Norse loanwords. The words Rus and Russia , according to one theory, may be named after

1305-608: A voiced velar fricative [ɣ] in all cases, and others have that realisation only in the middle of words and between vowels (with it otherwise being realised [ɡ] ). The Old East Norse /ʀ/ was an apical consonant , with its precise position unknown; it is reconstructed as a palatal sibilant . It descended from Proto-Germanic /z/ and eventually developed into /r/ , as had already occurred in Old West Norse. The consonant digraphs ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ occurred word-initially. It

1392-404: A vowel or semivowel of a different vowel backness . In the case of i-umlaut and ʀ-umlaut , this entails a fronting of back vowels, with retention of lip rounding. In the case of u-umlaut , this entails labialization of unrounded vowels. Umlaut is phonemic and in many situations grammatically significant as a side effect of losing the Proto-Germanic morphological suffixes whose vowels created

1479-458: A wizard who seeks him should harm him, and that he would know this wizard by the refusal of dogs, no matter how ferocious, to attack the stranger. While it was not true that Geirröðr was inhospitable with his guests, Geirröðr did as instructed and had the wizard arrested. Upon being questioned, the wizard, wearing a blue cloak, said no more than that his name is Grímnir . Geirröðr has Grímnir tortured and sits him between two fires for 8 nights. Upon

1566-448: A word. Strong verbs ablaut the lemma 's nucleus to derive the past forms of the verb. This parallels English conjugation, where, e.g., the nucleus of sing becomes sang in the past tense and sung in the past participle. Some verbs are derived by ablaut, as the present-in-past verbs do by consequence of being derived from the past tense forms of strong verbs. Umlaut or mutation is an assimilatory process acting on vowels preceding

1653-585: Is cited by other writers on Germanic paganism inside and outside academia, for example as Grundy by Jenny Blain in her discussion of the social role of seiðr in Iceland, also as Grundy by Julia Bolton Holloway on pagan priestesses, and by Charlotte Hardman and Graham Harvey in their survey of neo-paganism for editing Our Troth as well as having "clarified the group's objection to fascism and racism". He died in Shinrone , County Offaly , Ireland , where he

1740-544: Is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden . In what is present-day Denmark and Sweden, most speakers spoke Old East Norse. Though Old Gutnish is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations, it developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. The 12th-century Icelandic Gray Goose Laws state that Swedes , Norwegians , Icelanders , and Danes spoke

1827-556: Is cognate with Old Frisian Frīadei (≈ Fri(g)endei ), Middle Dutch Vridach (≈ Vriendach ), Middle Low German Vrīdach (≈ Vrīgedach ), and Old High German Frîatac . The Old Norse Frjádagr was borrowed from a West Germanic language. All of these terms derive from Late Proto-Germanic * Frijjōdag ('Day of Frijjō'), a calque of Latin Veneris dies ('Day of Venus '; cf. modern Italian venerdì , French vendredi , Spanish viernes ). The Germanic goddess' name has substituted for

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1914-465: Is expected to exist, such as in the male names Ragnarr , Steinarr (supposedly * Ragnarʀ , * Steinarʀ ), the result is apparently always /rː/ rather than */rʀ/ or */ʀː/ . This is observable in the Runic corpus. In Old Norse, i/j adjacent to i , e , their u-umlauts, and æ was not possible, nor u/v adjacent to u , o , their i-umlauts, and ǫ . At

2001-403: Is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects : Old West Norse (Old West Nordic, often referred to as Old Norse ), Old East Norse (Old East Nordic), and Old Gutnish . Old West Norse and Old East Norse formed a dialect continuum , with no clear geographical boundary between them. Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway , although Old Norwegian

2088-577: Is married to Odin and that the Æsir are descended from the couple, and adds that "the earth [ Jörðin ] was [Odin's] daughter and his wife." According to High, the two had many sons, the first of which was the mighty god Thor . Later in Gylfaginning , Gangleri asks about the ásynjur , a term for Norse goddesses. High says that "highest" among them is Frigg and that only Freyja "is highest in rank next to her." Frigg dwells in Fensalir "and it

2175-584: Is more common in Old West Norse in both phonemic and allophonic positions, while it only occurs sparsely in post-runic Old East Norse and even in runic Old East Norse. This is still a major difference between Swedish and Faroese and Icelandic today. Plurals of neuters do not have u-umlaut at all in Swedish, but in Faroese and Icelandic they do, for example the Faroese and Icelandic plurals of the word land , lond and lönd respectively, in contrast to

2262-560: Is now Merseburg , Germany, features an invocation known as the Second Merseburg Incantation . The incantation calls upon various continental Germanic gods, including Old High German Frija and a goddess associated with her— Volla , to assist in healing a horse: In the Poetic Edda , compiled during the 13th century from earlier traditional material, Frigg is mentioned in the poems Völuspá , Vafþrúðnismál ,

2349-459: Is that the nonphonemic difference between the voiced and the voiceless dental fricative is marked. The oldest texts and runic inscriptions use þ exclusively. Long vowels are denoted with acutes . Most other letters are written with the same glyph as the IPA phoneme, except as shown in the table below. Ablaut patterns are groups of vowels which are swapped, or ablauted, in the nucleus of

2436-557: Is unclear whether they were sequences of two consonants (with the first element realised as /h/ or perhaps /x/ ) or as single voiceless sonorants /l̥/ , /r̥/ and /n̥/ respectively. In Old Norwegian, Old Danish and later Old Swedish, the groups ⟨hl⟩ , ⟨hr⟩ , and ⟨hn⟩ were reduced to plain ⟨l⟩ , ⟨r⟩ , ⟨n⟩ , which suggests that they had most likely already been pronounced as voiceless sonorants by Old Norse times. The pronunciation of ⟨hv⟩

2523-563: Is unclear, but it may have been /xʷ/ (the Proto-Germanic pronunciation), /hʷ/ or the similar phoneme /ʍ/ . Unlike the three other digraphs, it was retained much longer in all dialects. Without ever developing into a voiceless sonorant in Icelandic, it instead underwent fortition to a plosive /kv/ , which suggests that instead of being a voiceless sonorant, it retained a stronger frication. Primary stress in Old Norse falls on

2610-493: Is very splendid." In this section of Gylfaginning , Frigg is also mentioned in connection to other ásynjur : Fulla carries Frigg's ashen box, "looks after her footwear and shares her secrets;" Lofn is given special permission by Frigg and Odin to "arrange unions" among men and women; Hlín is charged by Frigg to protect those that Frigg deem worthy of keeping from danger; and Gná is sent by Frigg "into various worlds to carry out her business." In section 49 of Gylfaginning ,

2697-713: The Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic at the University of Cambridge with a dissertation on the Norse god Odin : "The Cult of Óðinn: God of Death?". His entire catalog of works was given to The Three Little Sisters, who has spent the last few years, redoing all of his previously published and unpublished work with consent of his widow Melodi Grundy. Before publishing his first novel, Grundy published, as Kveldulf Gundarsson, two books on Germanic neopaganism and Germanic magic . He served as Lore Warden and Master of

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2784-535: The Latin alphabet , there was no standardized orthography in use in the Middle Ages. A modified version of the letter wynn called vend was used briefly for the sounds /u/ , /v/ , and /w/ . Long vowels were sometimes marked with acutes but also sometimes left unmarked or geminated. The standardized Old Norse spelling was created in the 19th century and is, for the most part, phonemic. The most notable deviation

2871-471: The Proto-Germanic theonym * Frijjō . Nearly all sources portray her as the wife of the god Odin . In Old High German and Old Norse sources, she is specifically connected with Fulla , but she is also associated with the goddesses Lofn , Hlín , Gná , and ambiguously with the Earth, otherwise personified as an apparently separate entity Jörð (Old Norse: 'Earth'). The children of Frigg and Odin include

2958-478: The Proto-Indo-European stem * priH-o- , denoting 'one's own, beloved'. The Proto-Germanic verb *frijōnan ('to love'), as well as the nouns * frijōndz ('friend') and * frijađwō ('friendship, peace'), are also related. An -a suffix has been sometimes applied by modern editors to denote femininity, resulting in the form Frigga . This spelling also serves the purpose of distancing the goddess from

3045-667: The Rus' people , a Norse tribe, probably from present-day east-central Sweden. The current Finnish and Estonian words for Sweden are Ruotsi and Rootsi , respectively. A number of loanwords have been introduced into Irish , many associated with fishing and sailing. A similar influence is found in Scottish Gaelic , with over one hundred loanwords estimated to be in the language, many of which are related to fishing and sailing. Old Norse vowel phonemes mostly come in pairs of long and short. The standardized orthography marks

3132-669: The University of St Andrews , Scotland, where he spent one year as an exchange student . He also spent a year as an exchange student in Bonn , Germany – virtually at the foot of the Drachenfels - spending some of his time on research for his novel (which also led him all across Scandinavia ). Rhinegold – a retelling of the entire Sigurð cycle dedicated to, among others, Richard Wagner and J. R. R. Tolkien – came out in 1994, and quickly developed into an international best-seller . Terri Windling identified Rhinegold as one of

3219-455: The Vanir , the name Freyja is not attested outside of Scandinavia . This is in contrast to the name of the goddess Frigg , who is also attested as a goddess among West Germanic peoples. Evidence is lacking for the existence of a common Germanic goddess from which Old Norse Freyja descends, but scholars have commented that this may simply be due to the scarcity of surviving sources. Regarding

3306-562: The Viking Age , the Christianization of Scandinavia , and the consolidation of Scandinavian kingdoms from about the 8th to the 15th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse

3393-668: The word stem , so that hyrjar would be pronounced /ˈhyr.jar/ . In compound words, secondary stress falls on the second stem (e.g. lærisveinn , /ˈlɛːɾ.iˌswɛinː/ ). Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark , runic Old Norse was originally written with the Younger Futhark , which had only 16 letters. Because of the limited number of runes, several runes were used for different sounds, and long and short vowels were not distinguished in writing. Medieval runes came into use some time later. As for

3480-557: The 11th century in most of Old East Norse. However, the distinction still holds in Dalecarlian dialects . The dots in the following vowel table separate the oral from nasal phonemes. Note: The open or open-mid vowels may be transcribed differently: Sometime around the 13th century, /ɔ/ (spelled ⟨ǫ⟩ ) merged with /ø/ or /o/ in most dialects except Old Danish , and Icelandic where /ɔ/ ( ǫ ) merged with /ø/ . This can be determined by their distinction within

3567-979: The 12th-century First Grammatical Treatise but not within the early 13th-century Prose Edda . The nasal vowels, also noted in the First Grammatical Treatise, are assumed to have been lost in most dialects by this time (but notably they are retained in Elfdalian and other dialects of Ovansiljan ). See Old Icelandic for the mergers of /øː/ (spelled ⟨œ⟩ ) with /ɛː/ (spelled ⟨æ⟩ ) and /ɛ/ (spelled ⟨ę⟩ ) with /e/ (spelled ⟨e⟩ ). Old Norse had three diphthong phonemes: /ɛi/ , /ɔu/ , /øy ~ ɛy/ (spelled ⟨ei⟩ , ⟨au⟩ , ⟨ey⟩ respectively). In East Norse these would monophthongize and merge with /eː/ and /øː/ , whereas in West Norse and its descendants

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3654-668: The 13th century there. The age of the Swedish-speaking population of Finland is strongly contested, but Swedish settlement had spread the language into the region by the time of the Second Swedish Crusade in the 13th century at the latest. The modern descendants of the Old West Norse dialect are the West Scandinavian languages of Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , and the extinct Norn language of Orkney and Shetland , although Norwegian

3741-418: The 9th night, Grímnir is brought a full drinking horn by Geirröðr's son, Agnar (so named after Geirröðr's brother), and the poem continues without further mention or involvement of Frigg. In the poem Lokasenna , where Loki accuses nearly every female in attendance of promiscuity and/or unfaithfulness, an aggressive exchange occurs between the god Loki and the goddess Frigg (and thereafter between Loki and

3828-539: The Clouds , painting, c. 1900), Emil Doepler ( Wodan und Frea am Himmelsfenster , painting, 1901), and H. Thoma ( Fricka , drawing, date not provided). Old Norse Old Norse , also referred to as Old Nordic , or Old Scandinavian , was a stage of development of North Germanic dialects before their final divergence into separate Nordic languages. Old Norse was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements and chronologically coincides with

3915-787: The Deacon 's 8th-century Historia Langobardorum derived from it, recount a founding myth of the Langobards , a Germanic people who ruled a region of what is now Italy (see Lombardy ). According to this legend, a "small people" known as the Winnili were ruled by a woman named Gambara who had two sons, Ybor and Agio . The Vandals , ruled by Ambri and Assi , came to the Winnili with their army and demanded that they pay them tribute or prepare for war. Ybor, Agio, and their mother Gambara rejected their demands for tribute. Ambra and Assi then asked

4002-619: The Elder Training Program for the Ring of Troth (now The Troth ) and carried on the organization's tradition of being based in scholarship, started by Edred Thorsson . Mattias Gardell also regards him as important in the organization's move to the left and development of a "strict antiracist and antisexist ideology." He edited and co-wrote both editions of The Troth's handbook, Our Troth , and has written other works on ancient and modern Germanic paganism and Germanic culture. He

4089-550: The English word frig . Several place names refer to Frigg in what are now Norway and Sweden, although her name is altogether absent in recorded place names in Denmark. The connection with and possible earlier identification of the goddess Freyja with Frigg in the Proto-Germanic period is a matter of scholarly debate (see Frigg and Freyja common origin hypothesis ). Like the name of the group of gods to which Freyja belongs,

4176-572: The Faroe Islands, Faroese has also been influenced by Danish. Both Middle English (especially northern English dialects within the area of the Danelaw ) and Early Scots (including Lowland Scots ) were strongly influenced by Norse and contained many Old Norse loanwords . Consequently, Modern English (including Scottish English ), inherited a significant proportion of its vocabulary directly from Norse. The development of Norman French

4263-591: The Freyja–Frigg common origin hypothesis, scholar Stephan Grundy writes that "the problem of whether Frigg or Freyja may have been a single goddess originally is a difficult one, made more so by the scantiness of pre- Viking Age references to Germanic goddesses , and the diverse quality of the sources. The best that can be done is to survey the arguments for and against their identity, and to see how well each can be supported." The English weekday name Friday comes from Old English Frīġedæġ , meaning 'day of Frig'. It

4350-521: The Norse gods is provided. The author describes Frigg as the wife of Odin, and, in a case of folk etymology , the author attempts to associate the name Frigg with the Latin-influenced form Frigida . The Prologue adds that both Frigg and Odin "had the gift of prophecy." In the next section of the Prose Edda , Gylfaginning , High tells Gangleri (the king Gylfi in disguise) that Frigg, daughter of Fjörgynn (Old Norse Fjörgynsdóttir )

4437-578: The Roman name of a comparable deity, a practice known as interpretatio germanica . Although the Old English theonym Frīg is only found in the name of the weekday, it is also attested as a common noun in frīg ('love, affections [plural], embraces [in poetry]'). The Old Norse weekday Freyjudagr , a rare synonym of Frjádagr , saw the replacement of the first element with the genitive of Freyja . The 7th-century Origo Gentis Langobardorum , and Paul

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4524-473: The Swedish plural land and numerous other examples. That also applies to almost all feminine nouns, for example the largest feminine noun group, the o-stem nouns (except the Swedish noun jord mentioned above), and even i-stem nouns and root nouns , such as Old West Norse mǫrk ( mörk in Icelandic) in comparison with Modern and Old Swedish mark . Vowel breaking, or fracture, caused

4611-401: The Winnili, including their whiskered women, and asked "who are those Long-beards?" Frea responded to Godan, "As you have given them a name, give them also the victory". Godan did so, "so that they should defend themselves according to his counsel and obtain the victory". Thenceforth the Winnili were known as the Langobards ( Langobardic "long-beards"). A 10th-century manuscript found in what

4698-493: The arguments for and against their identity, and to see how well each can be supported." Unlike Frigg but like the name of the group of gods to which Freyja belongs, the Vanir , the name Freyja is not attested outside of Scandinavia , as opposed to the name of the goddess Frigg , who is attested as a goddess common among the Germanic peoples, and whose name is reconstructed as Proto-Germanic * Frijjō . Similar proof for

4785-541: The beginning of words, this manifested as a dropping of the initial /j/ (which was general, independent of the following vowel) or /v/ . Compare ON orð , úlfr , ár with English word, wolf, year . In inflections, this manifested as the dropping of the inflectional vowels. Thus, klæði + dat -i remains klæði , and sjáum in Icelandic progressed to sjǫ́um > sjǫ́m > sjám . The * jj and * ww of Proto-Germanic became ggj and ggv respectively in Old Norse,

4872-459: The best fantasy debuts of 1994, describing it as "both scholarly and entertaining". Two years later, 1996, Grundy completed Attila's Treasure , focused less on Attila the Hun than on Grundy's favorite legendary figure, Hagen . This novel, too, was an international success, but to a lesser degree than the forerunner novel Rhinegold. This was followed in 1999 by Gilgamesh, a modern adaptation of

4959-550: The boat and a breeze came. The boat returned to the harbor of their father. Geirröðr, forward in the ship, jumped to shore and pushed the boat, containing his brother, out and said "go where an evil spirit may get thee." Away went the ship and Geirröðr walked to a house, where he was greeted with joy; while the boys were gone, their father had died, and now Geirröðr was king. He "became a splendid man." The scene switches to Odin and Frigg sitting in Hliðskjálf , "look[ing] into all

5046-411: The cluster */Crʀ/ cannot be realized as /Crː/ , nor as */Crʀ/ , nor as */Cʀː/ . The same shortening as in vetr also occurs in lax = laks ('salmon') (as opposed to * lakss , * laksʀ ), botn ('bottom') (as opposed to * botnn , * botnʀ ), and jarl (as opposed to * jarll , * jarlʀ ). Furthermore, wherever the cluster */rʀ/

5133-449: The diphthongs remained. Old Norse has six plosive phonemes, /p/ being rare word-initially and /d/ and /b/ pronounced as voiced fricative allophones between vowels except in compound words (e.g. veðrabati ), already in the Proto-Germanic language (e.g. * b *[β] > [v] between vowels). The /ɡ/ phoneme was pronounced as [ɡ] after an /n/ or another /ɡ/ and as [k] before /s/ and /t/ . Some accounts have it

5220-672: The existence of a common Germanic goddess from which Freyja descends does not exist, but scholars have commented that this may simply be due to the scarcity of evidence outside of the North Germanic record. Frigg is referenced in art and literature into the modern period. In the 18th century, Gustav III of Sweden , king of Sweden, composed Friggja , a play, so named after the goddess, and H. F. Block and Hans Friedrich Blunck 's Frau Frigg und Doktor Faust in 1937. Other examples include fine art works by K. Ehrenberg ( Frigg, Freyja , drawing, 1883), John Charles Dollman ( Frigga Spinning

5307-428: The first book of Heimskringla , a Euhemerized account of the origin of the gods is provided. Frigg is mentioned once. According to the saga, while Odin was away, Odin's brothers Vili and Vé oversaw Odin's holdings. Once, while Odin was gone for an extended period, the Æsir concluded that he was not coming back. His brothers started to divvy up Odin's inheritance, "but his wife Frigg they shared between them. However,

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5394-457: The funeral, Nanna dies of grief and is placed in the funeral pyre with Baldr, her dead husband. Hermóðr locates Baldr and Nanna in Hel. Hermodr secures an agreement for the return of Baldr and with Hermóðr Nanna sends gifts to Frigg (a linen robe) and Fulla (a finger-ring). Hermóðr rides back to the Æsir and tells them what has happened. However, the agreement fails due to the sabotage of a jötunn in

5481-656: The gleaming god Baldr . The English weekday name Friday (ultimately meaning 'Frigg's Day') bears her name. After Christianization , the mention of Frigg continued to occur in Scandinavian folklore . During modern times, Frigg has appeared in popular culture, has been the subject of art and receives veneration in Germanic Neopaganism . The theonyms Frigg (Old Norse), Frīja ( Old High German ), Frīg ( Old English ), Frīa ( Old Frisian ), and Frī ( Old Saxon ) are cognates (linguistic siblings from

5568-622: The god Godan for victory over the Winnili, to which Godan responded (in the longer version in the Origo ): "Whom I shall first see when at sunrise, to them will I give the victory." Meanwhile, Ybor and Agio called upon Frea, Godan's wife. Frea counseled them that "at sunrise the Winnil[i] should come, and that their women, with their hair let down around the face in the likeness of a beard should also come with their husbands". At sunrise, Frea turned Godan's bed around to face east and woke him. Godan saw

5655-469: The goddess Freyja about Frigg). A prose introduction to the poem describes that numerous gods and goddesses attended a banquet held by Ægir . These gods and goddesses include Odin and, "his wife", Frigg. Frigg is mentioned throughout the Prose Edda , compiled in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson . Frigg is first mentioned in the Prose Edda Prologue , wherein a euhemerized account of

5742-516: The gods are initially only able to weep due to their grief. Frigg speaks up and asks "who there was among the Æsir who wished to earn all her love and favour and was willing to ride the road to Hel and try if he could find Baldr, and offer Hel a ransom if she would let Baldr go back to Asgard." Hermóðr , Baldr's brother, accepts Frigg's request and rides to Hel. Meanwhile, Baldr is given a grand funeral attended by many beings—foremost mentioned of which are his mother and father, Frigg and Odin. During

5829-399: The long vowels with an acute accent. In medieval manuscripts, it is often unmarked but sometimes marked with an accent or through gemination . Old Norse had nasalized versions of all ten vowel places. These occurred as allophones of the vowels before nasal consonants and in places where a nasal had followed it in an older form of the word, before it was absorbed into a neighboring sound. If

5916-730: The most conservative language, such that in present-day Iceland, schoolchildren are able to read the 12th-century Icelandic sagas in the original language (in editions with normalised spelling). Old Icelandic was very close to Old Norwegian , and together they formed Old West Norse , which was also spoken in Norse settlements in Greenland , the Faroes , Ireland , Scotland , the Isle of Man , northwest England, and in Normandy . Old East Norse

6003-514: The nasal was absorbed by a stressed vowel, it would also lengthen the vowel. This nasalization also occurred in the other Germanic languages, but were not retained long. They were noted in the First Grammatical Treatise , and otherwise might have remained unknown. The First Grammarian marked these with a dot above the letter. This notation did not catch on, and would soon be obsolete. Nasal and oral vowels probably merged around

6090-460: The ocean and, during the darkness of night, their boat wrecked. The brothers went ashore, where they met a crofter . They stayed on the croft for one winter, during which the couple separately fostered the two children: the old woman fostered Agnar and the old man fostered Geirröðr. Upon the arrival of spring, the old man brought them a ship. The old couple took the boys to the shore, and the old man took Geirröðr aside and spoke to him. The boys entered

6177-641: The other North Germanic languages. Faroese retains many similarities but is influenced by Danish, Norwegian, and Gaelic ( Scottish and/or Irish ). Although Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have diverged the most, they still retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Speakers of modern Swedish, Norwegian and Danish can mostly understand each other without studying their neighboring languages, particularly if speaking slowly. The languages are also sufficiently similar in writing that they can mostly be understood across borders. This could be because these languages have been mutually affected by each other, as well as having

6264-419: The prose of Grímnismál , Lokasenna , and Oddrúnargrátr . Frigg receives three mentions in the Poetic Edda poem Völuspá . In the first mention the poem recounts that Frigg wept for the death of her son Baldr in Fensalir . Later in the poem, when the future death of Odin is foretold, Odin is referred to as the "beloved of Frigg" and his future death is referred to as the "second grief of Frigg". Like

6351-489: The reference to Frigg weeping in Fensalir earlier in the poem, the implied "first grief" is a reference to the grief she felt upon the death of her son, Baldr . Frigg plays a prominent role in the prose introduction to the poem, Grímnismál . The introduction recounts that two sons of king Hrauðungr , Agnar (age 10) and Geirröðr (age 8), once sailed out with a trailing line to catch small fish, but wind drove them out into

6438-536: The root vowel, ǫ , is short. The clusters */Clʀ, Csʀ, Cnʀ, Crʀ/ cannot yield */Clː, Csː, Cnː, Crː/ respectively, instead /Cl, Cs, Cn, Cr/ . The effect of this shortening can result in the lack of distinction between some forms of the noun. In the case of vetr ('winter'), the nominative and accusative singular and plural forms are identical. The nominative singular and nominative and accusative plural would otherwise have been OWN * vetrr , OEN * wintrʀ . These forms are impossible because

6525-441: The same language, dǫnsk tunga ("Danish tongue"; speakers of Old East Norse would have said dansk tunga ). Another term was norrœnt mál ("northern speech"). Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic , Faroese , Norwegian , Danish , Swedish , and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility . Icelandic remains

6612-523: The same origin). They stem from the Proto-Germanic feminine noun * Frijjō , which emerged as a substantivized form of the adjective * frijaz ('free') via Holtzmann's law . In a clan-based societal system, the meaning 'free' arose from the meaning 'related'. The name is indeed etymologically close to the Sanskrit priyā and the Avestan fryā ('own, dear, beloved'), all ultimately descending from

6699-497: The umlaut allophones . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , /ɛ/ , /ɛː/ , /øy/ , and all /ɛi/ were obtained by i-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /o/ , /oː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , /au/ , and /ai/ respectively. Others were formed via ʀ-umlaut from /u/ , /uː/ , /a/ , /aː/ , and /au/ . Some /y/ , /yː/ , /ø/ , /øː/ , and all /ɔ/ , /ɔː/ were obtained by u-umlaut from /i/ , /iː/ , /e/ , /eː/ , and /a/ , /aː/ respectively. See Old Icelandic for information on /ɔː/ . /œ/

6786-482: The verb skína ('to shine') had present tense third person skínn (rather than * skínr , * skínʀ ); while kala ('to cool down') had present tense third person kell (rather than * kelr , * kelʀ ). The rule is not absolute, with certain counter-examples such as vinr ('friend'), which has the synonym vin , yet retains the unabsorbed version, and jǫtunn (' giant '), where assimilation takes place even though

6873-447: The worlds ." Odin says: "'Seest thou Agnar, thy foster-son, where he is getting children a giantess [Old Norse gȳgi ] in a cave? while Geirröd, my foster son, is a king residing in his country.' Frigg answered, 'He is so inhospitable that he tortures his guests, if he thinks that too many come.'" Odin replied that this was a great untruth and so the two made a wager. Frigg sent her "waiting-maid" Fulla to warn Geirröðr to be wary, lest

6960-615: The Æsir make sport of Baldr's newfound invincibility; shot or struck, Baldr remained unharmed. However, Loki discovers this and is not pleased by this turn of events, so, in the form of a woman, he goes to Frigg in Fensalir. There, Frigg asks this female visitor what the Æsir are up to assembled at the thing . The woman says that all of the Æsir are shooting at Baldr and yet he remains unharmed. Frigg explains that "Weapons and wood will not hurt Baldr. I have received oaths from them all." The woman asks Frigg if all things have sworn not to hurt Baldr, to which Frigg notes one exception; "there grows

7047-404: Was a moderately inflected language with high levels of nominal and verbal inflection. Most of the fused morphemes are retained in modern Icelandic, especially in regard to noun case declensions, whereas modern Norwegian in comparison has moved towards more analytical word structures. Old Norse had three grammatical genders – masculine, feminine, and neuter. Adjectives or pronouns referring to

7134-400: Was also influenced by Norse. Through Norman, to a smaller extent, so was modern French. Written modern Icelandic derives from the Old Norse phonemic writing system. Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in

7221-583: Was heavily influenced by the East dialect, and is today more similar to East Scandinavian (Danish and Swedish) than to Icelandic and Faroese. The descendants of the Old East Norse dialect are the East Scandinavian languages of Danish and Swedish . Among these, the grammar of Icelandic and Faroese have changed the least from Old Norse in the last thousand years, though their pronunciations both have changed considerably from Old Norse. With Danish rule of

7308-535: Was obtained through a simultaneous u- and i-umlaut of /a/ . It appears in words like gøra ( gjǫra , geyra ), from Proto-Germanic *garwijaną , and commonly in verbs with a velar consonant before the suffix like søkkva < *sankwijaną . OEN often preserves the original value of the vowel directly preceding runic ʀ while OWN receives ʀ-umlaut. Compare runic OEN glaʀ, haʀi, hrauʀ with OWN gler, heri (later héri ), hrøyrr/hreyrr ("glass", "hare", "pile of rocks"). U-umlaut

7395-711: Was spoken in Denmark, Sweden, Kievan Rus' , eastern England, and Danish settlements in Normandy. The Old Gutnish dialect was spoken in Gotland and in various settlements in the East. In the 11th century, Old Norse was the most widely spoken European language , ranging from Vinland in the West to the Volga River in the East. In Kievan Rus' , it survived the longest in Veliky Novgorod , probably lasting into

7482-515: Was studying medicine. Grundy began working on his first complete novel during his freshman year at Southern Methodist University. Originally, the novel was intended to be based on the Anglo-Saxon epic poem Beowulf , but Grundy was convinced by his professor that the Nibelung legend would be a more appropriate basis for a first novel. Grundy wrote most of the novel in a dormitory at

7569-575: Was used partitively and in compounds and kennings (e.g., Urðarbrunnr , the well of Urðr; Lokasenna , the gibing of Loki). There were several classes of nouns within each gender. The following is an example of the "strong" inflectional paradigms : Stephan Grundy Grundy was born in New York and grew up in Dallas , where he studied English and German philology at Southern Methodist University . In 1995, he received his PhD from

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