Tag: white birch

Frigga: A short sketch

February 24, 2017
Grey Heron. Photo: Manfred Schulenburg.

Then said Gangleri: “Which are the Asynjur?” Harr said: “Frigg is the foremost: she has that estate which is called Fensalir, and it is most glorious.”
— The Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson, translated Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur.

Deities tend to become conflated over time, particularly female deities. When a major goddess enters the historical record in an obscure manner, the situation becomes more pronounced. Such is the case with Frigga, possibly at one time the most widely worshipped of the Germanic gods. Often confused with the beautiful and loving Frejya, Frigga is very much a goddess of her own realm.

The term “Asynjur” mentioned above means “goddess” in this case, though it can refer specifically to the branch of Germanic deities known as the Aesir. Marija Gimbutas classifies the two branches as a conjoining of Old European and invading Indo-European pantheons: “The Vanir represent the indigenous, Old European deities, fertile and life giving. In contrast, the Aesir embody the Indo-European warrior deities of a patriarchal people.”(1) I view this assessment, and Frigga’s place in it, not as false but as overly facile. The Vanir was undoubtedly drawn into the Aesir, with the Aesir All-Father Odin the dominant deity of the new pantheon, but the more populated Aesir had probably absorbed other pantheons at an earlier time. I believe Frigga was a central goddess of a matriarchal culture who was absorbed into Odin’s cult by “marriage,” a time-honored way of combining pantheons. Frigga’s marriage to the head of the patriarchal pantheon signals her importance. Her cult seems never to have been entirely subdued, because she retains her own sphere and is more than a match for Odin. In two stories she outwits the All-Father.

While Germanic deities have their own personalities, their individuation is expressed less with symbols and functions, which often overlap, than with territory. Frigga’s place is the slow-moving, marshy river and her glorious estate of Fensalir is an island within the freshwater marshland. The Grey Heron dominates this type of landscape, and Frigga is said to wear a crown of heron feathers. She has also been mentioned as owning hawks, which might be a conflation with Frejya, but could allude to another bird of this landscape, the osprey. I think of her as the great fish eater. She harvests souls swimming in the water of life and so rules over fate.

Frigga’s tree is the European White Birch, which grows well in wet soil along rivers. No doubt her house — or nest — is birch. (For more on this association see my post Frigga and the Birch.) She is the goddess of spinning, with the stars her distaff, which makes her the goddess of the year. Frigga’s status as sun goddess is revealed by her function as goddess of time and her association with gold. If twelve other goddesses mentioned in the Prose Edda are Frigga’s handmaidens, as Diana Paxson maintains(2), this further support the conjecture that she is a sun goddess.

As mother goddess Frigga rules that other fishy place, a woman’s vulva. The sexual connotations of the word “frigg” are derived from her name. (For those who don’t know what frigging is, I explain it here in this video.) Christianity has successfully divided the mother from the sexual being in our minds, thus encouraging the distinction of Frigga as mother goddess as opposed to Frejya as love goddess, yet earlier Pagans knew no such separation.

Frigga is described in the literature as the goddess who knows the future but seldom speaks of it. Herons also walk silently in the still waters, typically quiet except in the rookery. Frigga gives the child her destiny at birth. Her mastery of divination can be traced to her death-goddess huntress aspect or to her spindle which commands time. Birch bark as writing medium ties Frigga to the runes and their association with divination and spells.

While Frejya and Odin divide the heroic who die in battle between them, those good souls who lead a humbler life go to Fensalir after death. This gentle, loving goddess did not rise to prominence in a warrior culture.

I associate Frigga with the smell of fishy water, which I love, and quiet ponds teeming with dragonflies, frogs, and vegetation. She is the stately heron stalking the water’s edge. She is also the beautiful composed matron, the mistress of a rich but comfortable house. She is wise beyond measure, and though we hang on her words she listens more than she speaks.

The fate of all does Frigg know well,
Though herself she says it not
— The Poetic Edda, translated by Henry Addams Bellows

 

Notes

1. Marija Gimbutas, The Living Goddesses (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), p. 191.

2. Diana L. Paxson, “Beloved: On Frigg and Her Handmaidens,” at Hrafnar: Twenty Years of Re-Inventing Heathenry

Frigga and the Birch

September 7, 2012

White Birch tree. Photo Willow.

The birch was discussed a few months ago in the series on the witch’s broom, but a whole book could be written about this magical tree. This week we turn to the relationship between the birch tree and the Germanic goddess Frigga.

Trees going by the common name of “birch” belong to the family betula, which abounds in northern climates, though the various species differ in appearance, habitat, and other characteristics. The two species prevalent in North America are the Paper Birch, which produces the material for the lightweight birch bark canoes that were once the predominant mode of travel in the north, and the Yellow Birch, which is known for its highly aromatic leaf buds. Neither of these characteristics are shared by the White Birch or Silver Birch, the two species Germanic sacred lore is based upon. The White Birch is the most northern growing Eurasian hardwood and the only tree found in Iceland. The Silver Birch has the whitest bark of any betula. In some cases it is impossible to distinguish which tree is being referenced, but fortunately the two are very similar, their chief difference being growing habitat. The following discussion will apply to the White and Silver Birch, but one or more of the magical characteristics of these trees can be found in other birches native to North America.

The birch is an attractive tree, often quite tall, that buds early in spring. Deer are dependent on birch twigs during periods of heavy snow, and the inner bark of the tree is edible for humans as well. Birch produces abundant sap that was once used for sweetening beverages. Twigs are traditional material for thatching houses or weaving baskets, and the bark is used for smoking meat or tanning hides. The fragrant wood burns even when wet. Birch is the preferred wood for constructing drums due to its resonance.
The rune Boerc.


The birch tree is believed to dispel evil, which is why participants leaving the traditional Nordic sauna are gently flogged with birch twigs. The household broom was once constructed with birch twigs and witches still prefer birch for their brooms. In Germanic provinces in medieval times, young men would decorate birch trees for the May rites in homage to their lady love. Birch was the favored wood for the Maypole.

Birch bark was often a medium for runic script, and the rune Boerc corresponds to the birch tree. D. Jason Cooper calls this rune one of “healing, regeneration, and the atonement of past deeds” and it is used magically for increasing fertility and aiding childbirth. In divination, Boerc means abundance, possible marriage, stability, and purification.

Boerc is Frigga’s rune. The prose Edda says of Frigga that “she knows the fates of all men, though she speaks no prophecy.” Frigga is known for her propensity for silence, which is another way of saying that she holds the mystery, mistress of truths that are hard to penetrate. She rules the hidden realms, including the realm of the dead.
Silver Birch. Photo Speifensender.


In Germanic lore the most popular death scenario is that half the heroes slain in battle go to Valhalla, the hall of the god Odin, while the other half go to the hall of the goddess Frejya, all feasting in merriment while awaiting the final battle. Those who die of sickness, old age, or other inglorious means, on the other hand, go to the cold inhospitable realms of the goddess Hel. In a competing and less celebrated scenario, the dead go to Fensalir, the hall of Frigga located on a distant sea-island, where they feast in abundance and harmony forever. Frigga is a pre-patriarchal, pre-Indo-European goddess whose inevitable marriage to the chief Teutonic god Odin reflects not only her power and high status, but her rulership of the death realms that Odin penetrated to achieve his status as a shamanic deity.

Cooper asserts that “Little is positively known of Frigga’s worship in pagan times, since the Christians were harder on the goddesses than the gods of the north.” What little has been positively discerned has been pieced together from fleeting references in the many texts penned in Christian times. Other things can be inferred about Frigga, however, from her association with gold, spinning and weaving, and the birch tree. Being goddess of death and goddess of sustenance seems contradictory, but it mirrors the generosity of the birch in winter and summer. The spinning wheel is a common metaphor for the cyclic nature of the seasons, and spinning goddesses are almost invariably spider, snake, or sun goddesses. The gold thread that Frigga spins and the golden tears she cries suggests she is linked to the sun. The qualities of the birch, taken together, are also reflective of the sun. Birch leaves turn striking gold (Silver Birch) or a dark red (White Birch) in fall, and the white branches of the tree are awakened early by the rays of the sun. Remember, too, that birch wood burns unseasoned and when wet, suggesting that the tree stores or contains the sun’s fire.
Silver Birch. Photo Alexey Novitsky.


Frigga ia an important goddess, one that deserves more attention, and every reference to her, tangential as it may be, is filled with messages. I have limited discussion of her here to the places her story intersects with the birch, but feel free to add more in the comments.


Sources

Blount, Martin. “Lady of the Woods – The Birch.” White Dragon.

Cooper, D. Jason. Using the Runes. Wellingborough, UK: The Aquarian Press, 1986.

Gimbutas, Marija. The Living Goddesses. Berekeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999.

The Gylfaginning at Sacred Texts.

Hamilton, Edith. Mythology. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1940.

Monaghan, Patricia. The Books of Goddesses and Heroines. St. Paul, MN: Llewellyn, 1990.

Sacred Earth. “Birch (betula sp.) – History and Uses”.