Like many goddesses, Freya is deeply misunderstood.
And like most misunderstandings, at bottom, it’s because instead of allowing Freya to be who she is, we insist on applying our own preconceived notions of what she ought to be. It’s so much easier when you encounter new things to pretend that they are just like the things you already know.
Freya, the Vanadis, is a goddess of love. That’s usually the first thing that people are told about her. And immediately we think we know what that looks like. Raised on Western European tropes, with their origins in ancient Greek and Roman cultural traditions, our minds immediately jump to Aphrodite or Venus. We picture a voluptuous woman, usually blonde, dressed in clothing that shows off her body, and posed seductively.
Depicting a goddess of love in such a way is problematic on a number of levels. There is, of course, the objectification — turning a goddess of love into an object of lust, suited to the male gaze. And love, in its realest form, involves partners who are equal and who connect on more than a physical level. Love goddesses are beautiful, of course, but that is only part of what they are or how they project.
But depicting Freya in this way has even more problems. Because Freya is not just a goddess of love. She is a goddess of magic and a goddess of the dead. One of…
