Work Text:
Disclaimer: The gods and goddesses of the north belong to themselves. I ask their forgiveness for any part of this story they disapprove of.
Warning: mentions of canon incest.
I am Freya of the red-gold tears, who weeps for her wandering husband. Also Od’s girl, who longs for his embrace. I am the many-named goddess who wanders the world in search of mysterious Odr.
It is an easy escape. Better, here in the halls of the gods of victory, to be thought of as lustful and loving than weak. Better to be Od’s girl than Odin’s hostage.
The Aesir are happy enough to forget my origins. To make my father and brother Aesir and myself Asynjur. To see us each wed to others and forget that the joining between sister-wife and brother-husband is sacred to the Vanir. They are happy to fight the giants’ attempts to steal one of their women, happy to use my powers and magics for their own gain. They are even capable of kindness in a rough way.
When my tears start to fall, Frigg and the other Asynjur seek to comfort me as women do and Odin himself orders Heimdall to let me cross Bifrost to search for my wandering husband. They will entertain the tears of a wife for her husband, even though they call me faithless for welcoming them and others into my bed. Only Loki brings it to my ears honestly. His honesty is ever to be found in cruelty.
They would not so willing entertain the tears of a woman for her homeland. I may be a prisoner, but I would not be treated as one. I will not willingly remind them that I am a hostage, not a kinswoman.
So my tears fall for Odr. My only husband the Aesir are willing to acknowledge, the father of my beautiful daughters. I leave Asgard only to search for him, not to escape this place. Who could ever wish to leave the glorious home of the gods of war?
It pleases me well enough to search for Odr. There is true ecstasy in his bed; he, of all I have met outside Vanaheimr, understands the link between sex and death. His joy, his madness, are beautiful and wonderfully terrifying. The pleasure I find in the bed of others is no match. Not even my brother-husband, who knows me as well as himself, matches Odr’s passion. It is a sacred joining between my husband and myself and not something I could bear to have every night.
There is a pattern to my searches for my husband. Lust is easily slaked and does not play a part. Nor is it my wish to portray a “faithful” wife as the Aesir, who keep their gods and goddesses in separate halls, understand faithfulness.
I search for my husband in the many worlds when my thoughts catch up to me.
I think: here I stand, where Gullveig was stabbed and burnt; where brave warriors cowered in fear from a woman’s magic and power and tortured her. Where war was begun and not where it was ended. Here I stand, hostage to these warriors, and they fall before my beauty and Odin himself learns magic from my teachings.
And I search for my husband.
I watch: my father, forbidden my mother’s bed by Aesir law as I am forbidden my brother’s, turn to a giantess. My mother’s name usurped and lost, and my father driven near mad by his new wife’s insistence on living far from his soul’s place at the sea. His loneliness as he parts with his bride and returns alone to his hall.
And I search for my husband.
I ride: to Folkvangr, the warrior’s field, where sits my hall Sessrumnir. I bring with me those dead I care to choose for myself; warriors who will not mourn when they do not join Odin’s army against the giants; women with valiant spirits; and those wives that would not be separated from their husbands even in death. It is the Vanir way I keep in my hall, but Folkvangr is not Vanaheimr. At times, the differences tighten around my neck as if to choke me.
And I search for my husband.
I see such visions of the future as sometimes come to Vanir-born: My brother-husband, Freyr whose best power is in the sweetest rain, has given away his sword for love of a giant-girl; his death at the twilight hour may yet be lain at her feet. From his death is Surt’s fire changed and the terrible destruction of the flame brings life to the dark world and the Plains of Ida grow green and fresh as I have never seen them. Whose power brings such joy beside my twin’s sweet mystery? I see this; he will not walk the world he helps make.
And I search for my husband.
I hear: Loki, that perverted trickster, call me a whore. That man-thing, who has born children as if he were a woman, chides me for laying with my brother. As if it could be a wrongness to take another part of myself into my body, to make my other half momentarily one with me again.
And I search for my husband.
He is mysterious, my husband, my Odr. Never came he to Vanaheimr but I do not think he can be Aesir. He understands me too well.
I am goddess of love and battle. To the Aesir, only one of these is honorable. They have no special disdain for sex; it is a pleasant diversion, but they would rather be smashing someone’s head in with a hammer or reciting poetry praising men of valor and moments of victory.
The Aesir understand the value of fertile fields, but they believe that the renewal of that fertility comes from the blood of the slaughtered. They do not see the power of man’s seed spilled to make the soil breathe with life.
Odin, first among the Aesir, takes the secrets of magic, takes the wisdom of the Vanir, and makes it his own. He understands the ties of sacrifice to power as few men or gods I have met. And still he is Aesir and cannot shape himself different. He will die in the Wolf’s belly because he is Aesir and his sons will succeed him and they will be Aesir.
And I am Lady of the Vanir. When Ragnarok comes I will not join the battle as I have so many others. I will leave Folkvangr, leave Asgard, leave brave Heimdall at his bridge, leave sweet Freyr and his death, leave my searching for Odr, and finally, finally, return home to Vanaheimr.