In Norse mythology, Freyr (sometimes translated into English as Frey, a word that comes from frawjaz, ‘lord’) was the son of Njörðr and the brother of Freyja.

He was the god of rain, the rising sun and fertility. He is one of the Vanir, who live in Vanaheim. Lord of vegetation, Freyr possessed the summarbrander (the “sword of summer”, which could move and fight alone in the air), but he abandoned it to conquer Gerda, a virgin giantess. He owns the golden boar Gullinbursti, a gift from the dwarves Sindri and Brokk, which pulls a chariot as fast as a galloping horse, and whose glow illuminates the night; also the ship Skíðblaðnir, and a horse that ignores all obstacles. He is the favorite god of the elves.

He is one of the most important gods of Norse paganism. Freyr was associated with sacred kingship, virility and prosperity, with the sun and good weather, and was depicted as a phallic fertility god, who “bestows peace and pleasure on mortals”. Freyr, sometimes referred to as Yngvi-Freyr or Ingunar-Freyr, is especially associated with Sweden and regarded as a mythological ancestor of the kings of the Swedish royal house.

King of Sweden

Frey (b. 235) is mentioned in Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla as the first king of the House of Yngling, a dynasty supported by legend, protohistory and the earliest historical monarchs of Scandinavia up to the Viking Age. His successor was Fjölnir, the fruit of Frey’s relationship with his consort Gerð.

Place names

Archaeological record

In 1904, a Viking Age statuette identified as a depiction of Freyr was discovered at Rällinge Farm in the parish of Lunda, Södermanland in the province of Södermanland, Sweden. The depiction features a bearded man seated cross-legged with an erect penis. He wears a pointed cap or helmet and strokes his triangular beard. The statue is seven centimeters tall and is on display at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities.

A part of the Swedish Skog tapestry shows three figures that have been interpreted as allusions to Odin, Thor and Freyr, but also as the three Scandinavian holy kings Canute, Eric and Olaf. The figures match 11th-century descriptions of statue arrangements recorded by Adam of Bremen in the Uppsala Temple and written accounts of the gods during the late Viking Age. The tapestry originated in Hälsingland, Sweden, but is now in the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities.
Small pieces of gold foil with engravings dating from the Migration Period to the early Viking Age (known as gullgubber) have been discovered at several locations in Scandinavia, at one site nearly 2,500. The aluminum pieces have been found largely on building sites, only rarely in graves. The figures are sometimes solitary, sometimes an animal, sometimes a man and a woman with a leafy branch between them, looking at each other or embracing. The human figures are almost always clothed and sometimes depicted with bent knees. Scholar Hilda Ellis Davidson says that it has been suggested that the figures are participating in a dance, and that they may have been connected with weddings, as well as linked to the Vanir group of gods, representing the notion of a divine marriage, as in Poetic Edda’s poem Skírnismál; the union of Gerðr and Freyr.

The part of the Skog church tapestry possibly depicts Odin, Thor and Freyr.

An example of the small pieces of foil that may represent Gerðr and Freyr.

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