Chapter 10

As Dionysus stands outside the ring of the twelve Olympian gods, so Niörðr, Freyr and Freyja seem by rights not to have been reckoned among the Ases, though they are marshalled among them in Sn. 27-8. They were Vanir, and therefore, according to the view of the elder Edda, different from Ases; as these dwelt in Asgarð, so did the Vanir in Vanaheim, the Alfar in Alfheim, the Iötnar in Iötunheim. Freyr is called Vanîngi, Sæm. 86b. The Vanir were regarded as intelligent and wise, Sæm. 36ª; and they entered into intimate fellowship with the Ases, while the Alfs and Iötuns always remained opposed to them. Some have fancied that the Alfs and Iötuns stand for Celtic races, and the Vanir for Slav; and building chiefly on an attempt in Yngl. saga cap. 1 to find the name of the Tanais in Tanaqvîsl (or Vanaqvîsl !), they have drawn by inference an actual boundary-line between Aesir and Vanir = Germani and Slavi in the regions formerly occupied by them (see Suppl.). And sure enough a Russian is to this day called in Finnish Wenäiläinen, in Esth. Wennelane; even the name of the Wends might be dragged in, though the Vandili of Tacitus point the other way. Granting that there may be some foundation for these views, still to my mind the conceptions of Aesir, Vanir, Alfar in the Edda are sketched on a ground altogether too mythical for any historical meaning to be got out of them; as regards the contraxt between Ases and Vanir, I am aware of no essential difference in the cultus of the several gods; and, whatever stress it may be right to lay on the fact that Frouwa, Freyja answers to a Slavic goddess Priye, it does not at all follow that Frô, Frouwa and Nerthus were in a less degree Germanic deities than the rest. Tacitus is silent on the German Liber, as he is on our Jupiter, yet we are entitled to assume a universal veneration of Donar, even though the Gothic faírguni is better represented in Perkunas or Perûn; so also, to judge by what clues we have, Fráuja, Frô, Freyr appears so firmly established, that, considering the scanty information we have about our antiquities, no German race can be denied a share in him, though some nations may have worshipped him more than others; and even that is not easy to ascertain, except in Scandinavia. (12).

It is worthy of notice, that the AS. and ON. genealogies bring Freá into kinship with Wôden; some of them insert two more links, Friðuwulf and Friðuwald, so that the complete pedigree stands thus: Finn, Friðuwulf, Freálâf, Friðuwald, Wôden (or, in the place of Freálâf, our old acquaintance Freáwine). Here evidently Friðuwulf, Freálâf, Friðuwald are all the same thing, a mere expansion of the simple Freá. This follows even from a quite different ON. genealogy, Fornald. sög. 2, 12, which makes Burr (= Finn; conf. Rask, afh. 1, 107-8) the immediate progenitor of Oðinn, and him of Freyr, Niörðr and a second Freyr. The double Freyr corresponds to the AS. Friðuwulf and Friðuwald, as the words here expressing glad, free and fair are near of kin to one another. Lastly, when the same AS. genealogies by turns call Finn's father Godwulf and Folcwald, this last name is supported by the 'Fin Folcwalding' (-ing = son) of Cod. exon. 320, 10 and of Beow. 2172, where again the reference must be to Freá and his race, for the Edda (Sæm. 87ª, conf. 10ª) designates Freyr 'folcvaldi (al. folcvaldr) goða'. Now this folkvaldi means no other than dominator, princeps, i.e. the same as freá, frô, and seems, like it, to pass into a proper name. On the linking of Freyr and Niörðr with Oðinn, there will be more to say in ch. XV (see Suppl.). If Snorri's comparison of Niörðr with Kronos (Saturn) have any justification, evidently Poseidôn (Neptune) the son of Kronos would come nearer to our Teutonic sea-god; and Poseidîn might be referred to pÒsij (lord, Lith. pats, Sansk. patis, Goth. faþs), which means the same as Frô. Only then both Frô and Nirdu would again belong to the eldest race of gods.  
 



ENDNOTES:

12. Wh. Müller, Nibelungensage pp. 136-148, wishes to extend the Vanir gods only to the Sueves and Goths, not to the western Germans, and to draw a distinction between the worship of Freyr and that of Wuotan, which to me looks very doubtful. As little can I give up the point, that Niörðr and Nerthus were brother and sister, and joint parents of Freyr and Freyja; this is grounded not only on a later representation of Snorri in the Yngl. saga cap. 4, where yet the female Niörð is nowher named, as Tacitus conversely knows only a female Nerthus and no god of that name; but also on Sæm. 65ª: 'við systor thinni gaztu slîkan mög,' with thy sister begattest thou such brood, though here again the sister is left unnamed.  (back)