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S1 E10 Overview of the Pagan Holidays

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This week’s episode: A short overview of the Pagan Holidays (and a few goodies along the way)

Freyja

Title

  • Nordic goddess of fertility, sex, cats, magic, writing, death, war, love, the moon, and the sea

Description

  • The most beautiful goddess, with a cloak of falcon feathers, a necklace of gold, and in a chariot pulled by two cats

Duties

  • She was the leader of the valkyrie, got half of the dead from the battlefield 

Lineage

  • Daughter of Njordr and his sister along with her twin brother Freyr
  • Wife to Odr (possible that he’s Odin due to similarities)
  • Had two daughters Hnoss and Gersemi

    • Stories

    • One day Freyja passed by a cave in which four dwarves were working. They were almost finished with the most beautiful gold necklace that Freyja had ever seen.
  • Freyja offered the dwarves gold and silver, the dwarves refused saying that they had all the wealth they could need.
  • The dwarves made a counter offer. If Freyja would spend one night each with the four dwarves she could have the necklace.
  • She did spend a night with each one, and so became the keeper of the necklace. Possibly being her famous gold necklace the Brisingamen.
  • Loki finds out and tells Odin who is furious ( some stories have Freyja as Odins concubine).
  • Odin tells Loki to take the gold necklace from Freyja. 
  • It takes some serious shape-shifting on Loki's part who has to turn into a fly to find a hole big enough to get through to Freyja’s room. 
  • Loki then turns into a flea, bites Freyja on the cheek so that she turns over and Loki can finally get to the clasp.
  • Freyja wakes up with her room’s door open, her necklace gone, and  immediately guesses what happened. She storms up to Odin and asks for her necklace back. 
  • There’s a few conflicting endings, but I like the one where Odin tells Freya she must always wear the necklace.

    • Interesting Facts

    • Cries tears of red-gold for her far ranging husband
  • Many Scandinavian plants were named after her and later replaced
  • Freyja actually means “lady, mistress” 
  • She went by many names searching for her husband including Gefn, Horn, Mardoll, Valfreya, and Vanadis
  • Friday gets its name from Freyja

    • Symbols

    • Falcon feathers, cats, sea water, gold, poems, and gold necklaces.

    Exciting news, we’ve decided to add superstitions and wives tales to our podcasts. If you have any that you’re curious about why not let us know and we’ll see about looking into them. Here’s our first one that seemed appropriate to the season.

     

    Superstitions- black cat

    Bad luck

    Dark Ages (Folklore)

    Father and son seen throwing stones at a BC. Which then subsequently ran into an old woman’s home. Next day the old woman was seen emerging from the home limping and bruised - apparently after having shapeshifted back into human form from being the BC. Thus the old woman was deemed a witch and the BC association occurred. 

     

    Middle Ages 1500’s

    • Witches were seen as being able to shapeshift into BCs and then spy on people. Carried over to the States and eventually became part of the Salem witch tri
    ...more
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    Powered By MagicBy Tatjana Riedel, Sylvia Short
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