During my visit to the Cultural History Museum in Oslo today, I found another beautiful new collector’s item:
A statuette of the god Frøy (Freyr), also known as Yngve or Yngve-Frøy. He is, among other things, the god of fertility, hence the detail you see in pictures 2 and 3…
The Rällinge statuette is a bronze figurine discovered in Södermanland, Sweden in 1904 and dated to the Viking Age around the year 1000. Wearing a cone-shaped headdress, clutching his goatee and having an erect penis, the 7 cm tall figure is often thought to represent the god Freyr. This is traced to an 11th-century description of a phallic statue of Freyr in the temple at Uppsala, but the identification is uncertain.
Freyr was one of the Vanirs, who were primarily gods of fertility. He wooed Gerda, the daughter of the giant Gymir from Jotunheim. Their son Fjølnir would become one of Sweden’s legendary kings.
Freyr had the dwarf-built ship Skidbladnir, which could accommodate all armored Aesir, and always sailed with the wind at your back wherever you wanted. The dwarf Brokkr had also forged the golden boar Gullinborsti (“the one with the golden bristles”) for him. He is also called Slíðrugtanni (“the one with the dangerous tusks”). He pulls Freyr’s chariot and runs through the air and across the water and lights up the night with his bristles.
