Freyja, not Odin, claimed first pick of half the Norse battle dead
Valhalla gets the fame, but in Norse myth only half the warriors who fell in battle went to Odin. The other half went to Fólkvangr, the field ruled by Freyja, a goddess of love, beauty, gold, war and magic who drove a chariot pulled by two cats.
Her name simply means the Lady in Old Norse, from a Proto-Germanic word related to the modern German Frau, and her twin brother Freyr's name means lord. Scholars therefore think Freyja began as a title that replaced some older personal name now lost. She belongs to the Vanir, a family of gods, as daughter of Njord. Her possessions are memorable: the necklace Brísingamen, the boar Hildisvíni and a cloak of falcon feathers that lets her change shape. She practised seidr, magic for seeing and shaping the future.
The myths often show others trying to acquire her. In the Eddic poem Thrymskvida, the giant Thrym steals Thor's hammer and will return it only if Freyja becomes his bride. She is so furious at the suggestion that the gods' halls shake and her necklace bursts off. The gods' solution is farce: Thor goes instead, veiled as the bride, with Loki as his maid. Thrym is baffled by his fiancée's enormous appetite and fearsome eyes, and Loki explains she has been too excited to eat or sleep for eight days.
Freyja also has a sadder side. Her husband Ódr is constantly away, and she weeps tears of red gold while searching for him under other names. The main sources for her are the Poetic Edda, compiled in the thirteenth century, and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda and Heimskringla, along with sagas and skaldic poetry.
Her memory outlived conversion. Scandinavian plants once named for her, such as Freyja's hair, were renamed for the Virgin Mary during Christianisation, yet rural Scandinavians still acknowledged her as a supernatural being into the nineteenth century. Scholars continue to argue whether she and Frigg descend from a single Germanic goddess.
Source: Freyja
