Freyja
She rides into battle and claims half the slain. She weeps gold. She is the most beautiful and the most dangerous thing in the Nine Worlds.
She gets first choice.
Freyja is the Vanir goddess of love, beauty, fertility, gold, war, and death. The Prose Edda names her the most glorious of all goddesses — and she is far more than ornament. When warriors fall in battle, Freyja receives half of the slain before Odin takes the rest. Her hall Fólkvangr — Field of the People — holds more honored dead than Valhalla.
She drives a chariot pulled by two great cats. Her cloak of falcon feathers grants the power of flight to whoever wears it. Her boar Hildisvíni accompanies her into battle. Freyja is the one the giants wanted. The one the dwarves would only give Brisingamen to at great personal cost. The one even Odin could not resist.
She is grief and desire made divine. When her husband Óðr vanished and she wept, her tears fell as gold. She searched the worlds for him disguised as other names. That search has never fully ended.
The necklace worth everything.
Freyja desired the Brisingamen — the greatest necklace ever made, forged by four dwarves in the deep places of the earth. It was a thing of impossible beauty. The dwarves would not sell it. They would not barter gold for it. They demanded four nights, one with each smith.
Freyja agreed. She wore what she paid for and never looked away. The Brisingamen became her most distinctive symbol — power obtained through desire, desire that does not apologize for itself. Loki stole it once. He brought it back. Even theft could not keep it from her.
The necklace represents the principle that what you are willing to sacrifice determines what you are able to possess.
She taught Odin magic.
Freyja is the mistress of seiðr — the most powerful and complex form of Norse sorcery. It involves the manipulation of fate itself, seeing what will be and bending what must happen. Snorri tells us plainly: Freyja introduced seiðr to the Aesir. She taught Odin. The most powerful god in the Nine Worlds learned his most potent art from her.
She is also the first practitioner of galdr — the magic of spoken incantation, of words with power in them. The Völur, the wandering seeresses of Norse tradition, are her spiritual daughters. Every prophecy ever spoken in the Nine Worlds traces its lineage back to Freyja's knowledge.
"Freyja is the most glorious of the goddesses. She has a dwelling in the heavens called Fólkvangr, and wherever she rides into battle, she has half the slain."— GYLFAGINNING · PROSE EDDA
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