Gerðr

• 1. Introduction

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  Gerðr, whose name means "fenced-in", is a jötunn and a goddess of Norse mythology, and the wife of the god Freyr. In the Prose Edda, written in the 13th century, the moment she enters the story is a single gesture at a door. A woman lifts her arms, and "light was shed from her arms over both sky and sea, and all worlds were made bright by her". The god who happened to be watching never recovered from the sight.

  The same woman looks very different in the Poetic Edda, where she is anything but a passive prize. Why does a god need a messenger to win her? What does she say when that messenger arrives? And what did medieval writers, and later scholars, think she really stood for?

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• 2. The High Seat

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  Hlidskjalf was a high seat from which a god could look into every world, and Freyr sat in it. In the poem Skírnismál, he spotted a beautiful girl walking from her father's hall to a storehouse, and he became heartsick on the spot. The Prose Edda sets the scene to the north, where a large and magnificent building stood far off. There, sitting in that holy seat is treated as an offence. Freyr walked away grieving, punished for what the text calls his "great presumption".

  Back home, Freyr neither slept nor drank, and no one dared to speak to him. His father Njörðr sent Freyr's servant Skírnir to learn what was wrong. In the verse telling, the goddess Skaði also urges Skírnir to find out. Freyr answered that he had seen a wondrous girl at the home of Gymir. He added that neither gods nor elves wished to see the two of them together. In the Prose Edda, he says plainly that he will soon die if he cannot have her.

  Skírnir agreed to go, but he named a price. He wanted Freyr's sword, a blade that fights jötnar by itself. In the poem he asked for a horse as well. Freyr handed them over, and Skírnir rode out toward Jötunheimr, the land of the giants.

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• 3. Gymir's Hall

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  Skírnir rode in darkness, over nations and across dew-covered mountains, until he reached the courts of Gymir. A wooden fence surrounded the hall of Gerðr, and ferocious dogs were tied in front of it. A herdsman sat on a mound nearby. When Skírnir asked how he might speak to the maiden beyond those dogs, the herdsman told him he never would.

  Inside, Gerðr heard a terrible noise. The earth trembled, she said, and all of Gymir's courts were shaking. Her father was Gymir, and her mother was the mountain jötunn Aurboða. A serving maid reported that a man had dismounted outside and let his horse graze. Gerðr told the maid to invite him in for some of their "famous mead". Yet she feared the stranger might be her "brother's slayer".

  She asked him whether he was of the elves, the Æsir, or the Vanir, and why he had come alone "over the wild fire". Skírnir said he belonged to none of those groups, and that he had sought her out on purpose. Then he began to bargain. His first offer was 11 golden apples, or apples of eternal life in a common emendation. Gerðr turned them down, whoever might be the giver. She added that she and Freyr would not be together as long as they lived.

  Next came a ring, here unnamed but understood to be Draupnir. It produced eight more gold rings every ninth night and "was burned with Odin's young son". Gerðr was unmoved. She shared her father's property, she said, and Gymir had no lack of gold. Skírnir still had the sword in his hand.

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• 4. The Threats

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  Skírnir's sword was no longer a gift for show. In the Poetic Edda, he told Gerðr he would cut her head from her neck unless she agreed. She did not flinch. She said she would not endure the coercion of any man, and that if her father met Skírnir, a battle could be expected. Skírnir replied that the same blade would bring Gymir to his doom.

  He then described a wand named Gambanteinn, which he said would tame her to his desires. He promised she would sit from early morning on an eagle's mound, facing Hel, and never again be seen by "the sons of men". Food would become more hateful to her than the shining serpent is to people. She would gape through the bars while everything stared, and her days would be filled with madness, howling and unbearable desire.

  The curse grew more specific. A thurs named Hrímgrímnir would own her below the gates of Nágrind, at the roots of the world. The finest drink she would be given there was the urine of goats. She would live with a three-headed thurs or have no man at all, and she would be as crushed as the thistle at the end of the harvest.

  Skírnir said that he had gone to a wood and found a "potent branch". He declared that Odin and Thor were angry with her and that Freyr would hate her. Then he carved the runic character thurisaz on her, along with three unnamed runes for lewdness, frenzy and unbearable desire. He remarked that he could rub them off as easily as he had carved them, if he wished.

  The Prose Edda mentions no threats at all. There, Skírnir asks for her hand and simply receives her promise.

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• 5. The Grove at Barri

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  After the carving, Gerðr's tone changed completely. She welcomed Skírnir and told him to take a crystal cup of ancient mead. She had thought, she said, that she would never love one of the Vanir. Skírnir pressed her for a time and place, and she named a spot they both knew. In Benjamin Thorpe's translation, it is "the grove of tranquil paths", called Barri. In nine nights, she said, she would grant Freyr her love.

  The Prose Edda gives the place as Barey, though the nine-night wait is the same. Skírnir rode home, where Freyr was standing outside and greeted him before he could dismount. Freyr asked for news, and Skírnir told him Gerðr would meet him at Barri.

  Freyr's reply is the last stanza of Skírnismál, and the Prose Edda quotes it to end its own telling. One night is long, he said, and two are longer. How could he bear three? A month, he recalled, had often felt shorter than half this waiting.

  One later voice in the Poetic Edda remembers the bargain very differently, and it belongs to Loki.

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• 6. Beyond Skírnismál

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  Loki, in the poem Lokasenna, accuses Freyr of buying Gymir's daughter with gold. In the process, he says, Freyr gave away his sword. Loki calls him a "wretch" and asks how he plans to fight when the Sons of Muspell ride over the wood Myrkviðr, an event of Ragnarök. Freyr's servant Byggvir interrupts, and the poem moves on.

  A stanza in the poem Hyndluljóð, which actually belongs to Völuspá hin skamma, records the marriage of Freyr and Gerðr. It names her parents as Gymir and Aurboða. It also ties the family to Þjazi, the father of the goddess and jötunn Skaði, without saying how they are related.

  In the Prose Edda book Skáldskaparmál, Gerðr is one of eight goddesses attending a feast hosted by Ægir on the island of Hlesey, now Læsø in Denmark. Chapter 57 lists her between Snotra and Gefjon. Chapter 19 offers a stranger mention. Among names for Frigg is a list of rivals, meaning partners of Frigg's husband Odin, and Gerðr appears in it. The jötunn Gríðr, mother of Odin's son Víðarr, was probably intended, and one manuscript corrects the name. Andy Orchard notes the slip could still be deliberate, given "Odin's notorious appetites".

  In Heimskringla, the same marriage is retold as history. Chapter 12 of Ynglinga saga says Freyr was a much loved king in what is now Sweden. His wife was Gerðr, and their son was Fjölnir. The saga does not say what became of her. After Freyr died, Fjölnir became king, and the Yngling line went on.

  One last trace sits in chapter 16 of Haralds saga Gráfeldar. A verse there calls a woman "Gerðr-of-gold-rings", using her name as a stand-in for any woman.

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• 7. Earth and Fertility

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  Almost 2,500 tiny pieces of engraved gold foil, known as gullgubber, have been found at a single site in Scandinavia. They date from the Migration Period into the early Viking Age. Most turn up at the sites of buildings, and only rarely in graves. Some show a lone figure or an animal. Others show a man and a woman facing or embracing, with a leafy bough between them. The figures are almost always clothed, and some have bent knees.

  Hilda Ellis Davidson reports a suggestion that the pair are dancing. She adds that they may be linked to weddings, and to the Vanir, as a picture of divine marriage. The union of Gerðr and Freyr in Skírnismál would be an example.

  John Lindow points out that Gerðr's name has been tied etymologically to the earth and to enclosures. For that reason, the wedding is commonly read as "the divine coupling of sky and earth or at least fertility god and representative of the soil". He adds that the story can also be read more simply, as gods getting what they want from the jötnar.

  Davidson sees a parallel with the Greek goddess Persephone. If Gerðr stayed below in the dark kingdom of the underworld, she writes, there would be "nothing to hope for but sterility and famine". But Gerðr is no bride of the underworld. Her wedding, in Davidson's words, is to take place in the upper world, when she agrees to meet Freyr at Barri.

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• 8. Afterlife in Art

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  In 1819, the Danish poet Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger published a series of poems that reference Gerðr in his collection Nordens Guder. Esaias Tegnér, who lived from 1782 to 1846, left an unfinished epic poem called Gerda that also draws on her. In 1883, an artist named K. Ehrenberg illustrated her in Freyr und Gerda, Skade und Niurd.

  The most pointed modern retelling comes from Iceland. The poet Gerður Kristný wrote Blóðhófnir, a feminist retelling of Skírnismál in free verse. It won the 2010 Icelandic Literature Award.

  Her name has even left the earth. A moon of Saturn is called Gerd.

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