Question: Why doesn't Freya have War? It certainly seems like mythology paints her as a War Goddess, even an equal to Odin himself in that she gets the other half of the warriors who fall in battle.
I'm with you on this one, because in the past I've flippantly said that Freya ought to have War more than once. Unfortunately, that was before we actually did our deep-level research project into the Norse gods and discovered that she really oughtn't after all.
While I'm sure that Freya is very badass - she is not a lady I'd like to meet on the battlefield myself, that's for goddamn sure - she probably doesn't have the Avatar of War. She doesn't lead armies, nor is she famous for her exploits on the battlefield; while I definitely share the image of Freya as an awesome warrior woman cleaving away, there's nothing in any of our sources to suggest that she has any firm link with war other than a throwaway line or two that mention her riding into battle sometimes (and, I mean, are there any Aesir who don't ride into battle sometimes?). In fact, when it comes to the biggest battlefield of them all, Ragnarok, she's conspicuously absent.
The only thing that connects her to war at all is, as you note above, the fact that she takes half the slain warriors of the battlefield to her own personal afterlife, Folkvangr, where they presumably frolic about and congratulate each other on a job well done. However, since we couldn't find anything that really linked Freya herself to warfare, and since we do have sources that note that people other than warriors can get to Folkvangr, we found that it made more sense to give her Death because of her close links to the final disposition of the dead, and leave the War to Odin.
It's likely that Freya has quite a few War boons in her arsenal. She's not a full-blown goddess of war, but that doesn't mean she can't probably bust out the Colossus Armor and go to town if need be.
No comments:
Post a Comment