Freyja and Freyr: Successors of the Sun
Freyja and Freyr: Successors of the Sun On the absence of the sun in Nordic saga literature Lan Wang Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies UNIVERSITETET I OSLO 28, 05, 2017 Freyja and Freyr: Successors of the Sun On the absence of the sun in Nordic saga literature Lan Wang Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies UNIVERSITETET I OSLO 28, 05, 2017 Summary Comparing the sagas and those two Eddas, there is a significant difference that the Sun is only regarded as a physical object in sagas, while many narrations of the goddess Sól exist in both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, though far less frequent than that of those main gods, such as Freyja, Freyr, Odin and so on. Here comes the question why the Sun is missing in Nordic saga literature, considering its vital role in the religious life in Bronze Age North. By investigating the sun worship in the Bronze Age, as well as those historical and legendary works, such as Germania, History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, Poetic Edda, Prose Edda, and Ynglings Saga, and so on, I conclude that there is a strong connection among the Sun, Nerthus-Njǫrðr, and Freyja-Freyr. Nerthus travels on her wagon and brings peace and good seasons to people, while Njǫrðr, the male counterpart of Nerthus, was worshiped as the protector of maritime. Both of these two features could have been derived from the course of the Sun through the sky during the day on the sun-chariot, and through the underworld at night, maybe on a ship, which can also be interpreted as a metaphor of the regeneration of plants and crops, and even connected with the journey from This World to the Other World.
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