Frigg / Frige / Frigga

[mucgwyrt]

Frige/frigg

I want to connect with frige a bit better, can anyone point me in the direction of some good websites or books, or even passages pertaining to her in the sagas etc?

I'd love to paint her, so I'd be oh-so grateful for followers of Frige to describe how they see her, too

Thanks a lot,

xx

[Rick]

As always, http://northvegr.org is the best source for the Lore of all things heathen.

You might also be interested in this: http://www.friggasweb.org

[mothwench]

oooh, boy. long post, i hope my comp doesn't crash again.

anyway, the germanic goddesses page is a good place to find lore on specific goddesses. http://www.wyrdwords.vispa.com/godde...igg/index.html

when i go to visit frigga i go to this field at the edge of the woods where there are three large ponds. reeds grow everywhere and ducks and wild geese hang around there in spring and autumn.

local lore knows her as holda, frau holle, berchta or percht, though some people argue these figures are personifications of hel.
frau holle is a figure in a german fairy tale. you can read it online here: http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm024.html
as frau holle she is the guardian and rewarder of good children and punisher of naughty ones, and makes it snow by shaking out her pillows and blankets (goose feather downs), and for this reason strangley reminiscent of santa claus.

the berchta/percht story is more complex. the name means white one or shining one. in the raunächt or twelvenights berchta leads the wild hunt in southernly areas like bavaria and some parts of austria. (this is one of the things that point towards the fact that it is frigg, not hel, why should any woman but odin's wife lead the wild hunt in place of him?) riding with her are her "heimchen", the spirits of infants. i found an interesting reference to strawberries when i was looking for some english-language links to send you about this: i found this on an asatru-herbs page.

Strawberries were thought hallowed to Frige (Frigg), and folklore says she (in Germany it was Holda) concealed children that died as infants in strawberry fields in order to smuggle them into the afterlife. These were probably the souls of exposed infants that were thought to haunt this world, having no means to reach the great beyond. Perhaps they were members of the Perchtenjagd, which was made up of the souls of unbaptized children that made up Frau Holde's ground based variant of Woden's Wild Hunt.

on the days she is not hunting, berchta is said to be seen roaming the woods accompanied by two dogs and sometimes carrying a basket of apples. she will take on the guise of either a horrible hag with twigs in her hair or of a fair young girl in a white dress (this one gives points to the hel theory)
Johann Wilhelm Wolf sees her as an agriculteral goddess: "She is a patron of the growth of the earth and the plough is sacred to her. also she is a goddess of marriage, and the souls of the unborn abode with her. when she wanders she rides about as a tall, fine looking woman in a golden carriage akin to holda, with her spirit children following her, carrying her sacred plough, of which she is queen." -die deutsche goetterlehre, 1852 http://gutenberg.spiegel.de/wolf/dgo...n_dgoetter.htm
she is the goddess of spinning and weaving, and all wool which is not spun by the end of the year she will spoil. it was customary to eat a special dish in honor to her on her day, the perchtentag (6th of january but i don't know about this for sure). this was fish and oats or wheat, of which a portion was offered to her.

berchta never lost her prominence in the course of christianisation. she did undergo a bit of an alteration in meaning, tho, naturally the old hag aspect was the one the christians decided was worth keeping. so in these southern parts we still get the traditional processions which are now taking on a surprising new black metal festaval-ish twist. i might go to one this year, then i can tell you more than just the things i hear and read.
in a nutshell, it's all about scaring off the demons of winter, bla bla ... here's a slide show of one so you can get a basic idea... i don't think it has much in common with the way our ancestors worshipped berchta, but it sure looks fun! http://www.jufenalm.at/perchten.htm edited to add: you'll need java to view it.
i'll try and find out more details about what they actually do in those processions, and then come back to this thread.

[mucgwyrt]

wow, thanks mothwench
I spent today sketching her. I'm going to a three-part painting; one frame with her, one with an Alder Spirit to whom she speaks regarding Baldur's immunity, and one with a scroll with part of the Baldur story written in it I thought her asking the Alder Spirit would be an interesting snap-shot

In some of the tales you mentioned, she seems like a beautiful and caring godess; smuggling children into the afterlife (into Fensalir?) and being fair haired and white-dressed. In others she seems a bit spooky; wearing twigs in her hair and so forth For my painting I'm opting for the caring mother persona (wearing traditional anglo-saxon pagan costume and hair-styles etc )

xx

[mucgwyrt]

it was customary to eat a special dish in honor to her on her day, the perchtentag (6th of january but i don't know about this for sure). this was fish and oats or wheat, of which a portion was offered to her.

Would that be Old New Year?

[mucgwyrt]

Thanks for the frigga's web site Rick, that's pretty spangly

So I was doing some reading on her, and it seems she (as her incarnation as Berta) likes to have cereal-cakes and fish on 'her day', which is the last day of the Twelve-Nights.

Also, I was doing some pondering over runes, and a bit of meditation-slash-pondering on Frige. Whilst 'beorc'/berkana seems the obvious choice for 'her rune' if any, I instead feel drawn to eohl-secg - its sedge; marsh and fenland, and protection in the sense that she is a protective mother and cares for the unbaptised children etc etc - what are your thoughts on that?