jewelry

Brisingamen

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.

Description

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.

Primary Sources

“Loki flew off and got the necklace Brísingamen from Freyja, or else her aid, in the matter of the hammer.”
Poetic Edda, Þrymskviða (with Prose Edda notices of Brísingamen)(c. 10th–13th century)

“Heimdall and Loki fought in the form of seals for the Brísingamen.”
Prose Edda, quoting Úlfr Uggason, Húsdrápa(c. 10th century poem / 1220 CE prose)

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