Freya’s Necklace: The Brisingamen

Freyja was the goddess of beauty and love, and the sister of Frey. Frey had been made king of the light elves, and he spent most of his days teaching and ruling them in their bright land of Alfheim. But Freyja stayed behind in Asgard, the city of the gods, where she had a palace of her own called Folkvang.

Inside Folkvang was a lovely hall named Sessrymnir, which means “the hall with room for many seats.” Freyja was never short of visitors. Everyone wanted to gaze at her lovely face and hear her play, for nobody in Asgard made music as sweetly as she did.

Freyja also had a husband she adored. His name was Odur. He belonged to the family of the immortals, and he had travelled from a faraway place just to marry her. Freyja was rather proud of that, and she often mentioned it to Frigga, Odin’s wife, and to the other ladies of Asgard. Some of them told her how lucky she was. A few of them felt a little jealous. And Frigga, who was wise and serious, warned her not to grow vain about her happiness, in case sorrow crept up on her when she least expected it.

For a long time, though, nothing went wrong. Freyja lived a merry, golden life, and wherever she went she brought joy with her.

Then came an unlucky day. A great feast was to be held in Valhalla, Odin’s hall, on the following evening. Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, would be there, and so would Ægir, the lord of the sea. Niörd was coming with his new wife Skadi, who was the daughter of a giant. All the lords and ladies of Asgard were invited, and Freyja and Odur too.

“Everyone will be wearing their finest clothes,” Freyja sighed, “and I don’t have one single jewel to put on.”

“But you are lovelier than anyone, Freyja,” said Odur. “You were born in the wide home of the winds.”

“Not everyone thinks the way you do, Odur,” she replied. “If I walk into Valhalla with nothing to wear, they will all look down their noses at me.”

So Freyja set out alone, walking from Asgard toward Alfheim. She meant to find her kind brother Frey and ask him for a favor. Surely he could give her a garland of flowers, at the very least.

But somehow she could not find Frey anywhere. She believed she was walking through Alfheim, but her mind was not on the path. All the while she was planning her dress and wondering what she might wear, and without noticing it her feet carried her downhill, down and down, away from the elf-land and into a cave where four dwarfs lived.

At last the daylight was gone. Freyja found herself wandering between high walls of stone, under a solid roof of rock.

“Where am I?” she said to herself. “This must be Svartheim, the dark home of the dwarfs. And yet it isn’t unpleasant here, and it isn’t really dark, even though the sun can’t reach it.”

She was right. Far ahead of her, in the winding hollows of the cave, there were crowds of little men. Each one wore a lantern on his cap and carried a pickaxe, and they were all digging busily for diamonds. They heaped the stones up against the walls and hung them from the roof in sparkling crowns of white and pink, so that the whole cave glittered.

Four clever dwarf chiefs were in charge of the work. The moment they saw Freyja, they sat down together in the middle of the cave and bent over something they were holding between them. They chattered and pulled strange faces. Freyja longed to know what it was, but the blaze of the lanterns and diamonds dazzled her, and she had to come close to see. So she tiptoed up behind the four dwarfs and peeped over their shoulders.

Oh, it was dazzling! It was more finely made than anything she had ever seen!

Freyja stepped back, half blinded, for she had just set eyes on the necklace called Brisingamen. In that very moment a fierce longing filled her heart. She wanted it for her own. She wanted to wear it to Valhalla, and to wear it around her neck forever.

“Without Brisingamen,” Freyja said, “my life is not worth living.”

The dwarfs held the necklace out to her. But as they did, they gave one another a sly look, and they burst out laughing. Their laughter boomed around the stone halls, bouncing from wall to wall, from dwarf to dwarf, and from one deep hollow to the next.

Freyja hardly noticed. She tilted her head, reached out her small hand, closed her fingers around the necklace, and ran out of the cave as fast as she could, up into the light and onto the green hillside. There she sat down and fastened the shining necklace about her throat. She looked a little shyly at her reflection in a quiet pool nearby, and then she set off home with a proud, happy heart.

She felt sure that everything was well. But everything was not well. In fact, things had gone very badly wrong.

When Freyja reached her palace of Folkvang, she hurried to her own rooms, hoping to find Odur alone so that she could show him her beautiful Brisingamen and hear him praise it. But Odur was not there.

She looked in every room and every hall of the palace. She paced up and down among the many seats of her great hall. She peered sadly into the face of every guest, but the one face she wanted to see was nowhere to be found.

Odur was gone. He had left for the faraway home of the immortals, and he would not come back. Brisingamen and Odur could not live together under the roof of Folkvang. But Freyja did not understand this. She did not know why Odur had gone or where he had gone. She only knew he was not there. She wrung her hands, and her warm, salty tears fell onto her jewels.

While she sat weeping in the doorway of her palace, all the ladies of Asgard came past on their way to the feast in Valhalla, and they stared at her. Some said one thing and some said another, but nobody said anything helpful or kind. Frigga came last of all. She lifted her head with a stern little shake and murmured something about beauty, and pride, and paying the price.

Her words sank so deep into Freyja’s sad heart that the young goddess stood up, made up her mind, and went straight to Odin, the father of the gods, where he sat on his high throne.

“Father of the gods,” she said, “listen to my sorrow, and don’t turn away from me with a frown. I have looked everywhere in my palace and in every corner of Asgard, but Odur is nowhere to be found. Please, Father Odin, let me go and look for him, near and far, over the earth, through the air and across the sea, even to the edge of Jotunheim, the land of the giants.”

“Go, Freyja,” Odin answered, “and may good luck go with you.”

So Freyja leapt into her swift chariot, which rolled along softly behind two cats. She waved her hand as it rose high over the city, and then she was gone.

About this story

This story is retold from The Heroes of Asgard by the sisters Annie and Eliza Keary, a book of Norse myths for young readers first published in 1857. It follows the first part of their chapter “The Wanderings of Freyja,” called “The Necklace Brisingamen.”

This is the Kearys’ literary adaptation for children, with its own moral emphasis on vanity and loss. It should not be treated as a complete account of every older Brisingamen tradition. The chapter continues beyond the departure presented here.

Read the original: A. & E. Keary, The Heroes of Asgard (Project Gutenberg #41283)

Suggested for ages 9–12 with an adult: includes abandonment, grief and an exaggerated declaration that life is worthless without a jewel.

The cost is never explained to Freyja

Freyja worries that the other guests will judge her appearance. The dwarfs’ laughter gives the reader a warning, but they do not state a price she knowingly agrees to pay. The narrator says the necklace and Odur cannot remain together; Freyja herself is left without an explanation.

Frigga’s reproach offers judgment rather than help. Freyja’s decision to search is the first action that responds to the loss directly, and this excerpt ends before that search is resolved.

Separate knowledge from guesses

Make columns for Freyja, the dwarfs and the reader. Add what each knows when the necklace changes hands. Which conclusions about Odur’s departure are stated by the narrator, and which motives remain unstated?

Talk about it

• Why did Freyja want a jewel so badly before the feast?
• Why do you think the dwarfs laughed when they gave her the necklace?
• Do you think Freyja would trade Brisingamen to have Odur back? Why?

Related stories

• The Theft of Thor’s Hammer (Thrymskvida) — Freyja and her famous necklace turn up in this funny myth
• The Death of Baldur — another myth about the gods of Asgard and a great loss
• East of the Sun and West of the Moon — a girl who must travel the world to find the one she lost