Norse Pantheonjewelry
Brisingamen
- Beauty Enhancement
- Desire Inducement
- Divine Radiance
The necklace of the Brisings, a magnificent piece of jewelry belonging to Freya. It enhances her already irresistible beauty and is one of the most coveted treasures in all the Nine Worlds.
About Brisingamen
Freya's necklace
Þrymskviða treats Brísingamen as Freyja's famous adornment in the plot to recover Thor's hammer. Snorri knows the necklace. Heimdall and Loki fight over it in the lost Húsdrápa, quoted by Snorri. The Sörla þáttr in the Flateyjarbók has Freyja buy the piece from four dwarves with four nights — a late, Christian-era Icelandic tale, not an Eddic cult charter. Treat that bargain as folk-literary, not as a temple inventory. The necklace is Freyja's; no shrine displayed it.
Origin
Obtained by Freya from four dwarven smiths, each of whom demanded a night with the goddess as payment.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Poetic Edda, Þrymskviða (with Prose Edda notices of Brísingamen)
- Prose Edda, quoting Úlfr Uggason, Húsdrápa
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
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