Freya

Freya is the goddess of love, fertility, beauty and war - and it should say something about the Viking's society that their goddess of love is also the goddess of war. Wearing a cloak of falcon feathers and crying tears of gold for the men who died in combat, Freya is the leader of the Valkyries and the most beautiful of the goddesses. She determines who will have babies, who will fall in love with whom, and who will die gloriously in battle. After a battle is over, she takes all the dead Odin leaves behind and brings them to her palace, called Sessrumnir. Her father is Njord, and her mother is unknown but it could possibly be Nerthus. Freyr is her brother. Freya is famous for her fondness of love, fertility, beauty, and fine material possessions – and, because of these predilections, she’s considered to be something of the “party girl”. In one of the Eddic poems, for example, Loki accuses Freya (probably accurately) of having slept with all of the gods and elves, including her brother. She’s certainly a passionate seeker after pleasures and thrills, but she’s a lot more than only that. Freya is the archetype of the völva, a professional or semi professional practitioner of seidr, the most organized form of Norse magic. It was she who first brought this art to the gods, and, by extension, to mortals as well. Given her expertise in controlling and manipulating the desires, health, and prosperity of others, she’s a being whose knowledge and power are almost without equal.