Freyja and the Brisingamen Necklace

A necklace of pure gold, crafted so finely that light seemed to linger on every tiny link. It glittered as if someone had gathered up a whole sunset and beaten it thin into a chain to wear around the neck. The necklace was called Brisingamen, the most beautiful treasure there ever was in Asgard. But it was also the treasure that carried the saddest story.

Its owner was the goddess Freyja, the most beautiful of all the goddesses. She lived in a shining palace with her husband, the god Odur, and their little daughter, Hnossa. Day after day, Freyja looked after her home. She waited for Odur to come back, then called his name through every room, in a voice as warm as if it had never known sorrow.

Then one day, the god Loki brought strange treasures into Asgard, things no one had ever seen. There was the golden hair of the goddess Sif, fine as silk thread. There was the wild boar of the god Frey, whose bristles shone with their own light whenever it flew across the night sky. A whole corner of the courtyard in Asgard suddenly blazed, as if a sunset had lingered there. Freyja stood looking at these things for a long time, and a strange longing she had never felt before rose in her heart. Every night she dreamed of a shining treasure of her own, and by day the thought would not let her go.

Freyja said not a single word to Odur about what was stirring in her heart. She told herself that no one would tell him. And if she went to find something beautiful for herself, what difference would it make? With that thought, she quietly left the palace alone, without a word of farewell. She went to a faraway mountain where the Three Giant Women lived.

The Three Giant Women were unlike anyone in Asgard. They sat among gray slabs of stone, surrounded by treasures that no god had ever laid eyes on. One of them, named Gulveig, spoke up. She asked Freyja, the wife of Odur, what she had come looking for in such a place. Freyja stood still. Then she said softly that, now she had come this far, she knew she should ask them for nothing.

The third of the Three Giant Women said nothing at all. She simply held up a necklace of gold between her two hands. It was more finely crafted than anything Freyja had ever seen in her life. Freyja reached out and took it, her hands trembling a little. It was so beautiful that she believed nothing lovelier had ever been made. With her own hands she fastened the necklace around her neck.

Freyja left the mountain and hurried back to Asgard, her heart as joyful as a child who has just been given a long-awaited gift. She walked quickly toward her palace, picturing as she went how surprised Odur would be to see the necklace sparkling at her throat.

But when Freyja stepped into the palace and called out as she did every day, no one answered. She called again, and again, going from one room to the next. Odur was no longer there. The palace that had once shone so brightly now felt strangely empty. Only her own voice echoed back from the golden walls.

Freyja ran to find the goddess Frigga and asked where her husband was. Frigga looked at her with eyes full of pity and heavy with sorrow, then said slowly that Odur would not come back here again. He had gone, Frigga said, at the very moment when Freyja, for the sake of a shining treasure, had done something that wounded his heart. Freyja raised a hand to the necklace, still warm against her skin. For the first time since she had taken it, it no longer felt light.

From that day on, Freyja set out to search for Odur. She crossed forests where no god had ever left a footprint, mountains covered in snow all year round, and seas where the waves never rested. Season after season, year in and year out, Freyja kept walking, calling her husband's name across the whole earth. The voice that had once rung warmly through the palace grew a little hoarser in the wind each year, and nowhere did anything answer her.

At last, after that long search, Freyja turned to Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, who could hear every sound in the world. She asked whether he knew where Odur was. Heimdall answered with only one strange saying. Odur, he said, was in every place the searcher had not yet reached, and in every place the searcher had already left. So as long as one kept searching, one would never find him. Freyja was standing on the rainbow bridge between the earth and Asgard when she heard it. She could not grasp all of its meaning. She only knew that it sounded as sad as her own heart.

Freyja returned to Asgard, weary and hollow after so many years of hopeless searching. Frigga welcomed her and said nothing more about Odur. Instead, she gently pointed toward Hnossa. The little girl of years before had grown into a beautiful young woman, so gentle that Freyja stopped short. Looking at her daughter, Freyja felt her heart soften a little, though the emptiness Odur had left was still there, whole.

Freyja still wore Brisingamen around her neck, as she had since the first day she took it on the faraway mountain. But now she no longer wore it for its splendor. She wore it as a sign, to remind her of what she had done. It is said that Freyja still weeps from time to time, and that her tears, when they fall to the earth, turn into tiny drops of gold. That is why the poets who know her story call her by another name, the Beautiful Lady in Tears. The name goes hand in hand with the most beautiful necklace in Asgard. And each time the necklace glitters in the light, it tells its own story once more.