Odin's wives

Jord means "Earth" in Scandinavian languages, and Frigg was the Earth Goddess. Mixing Fjordgynn into the same person seems more doubtful; Wikipedia claims that the Older Edda's second part says that Fjordgynn was the mother of Frigg.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frigg

.. but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%B6r%C3%B0 says I'm wrong about Jord... got to read the Elder Edda from end to end myself some time soon....

This problem is more complicated than it seems on the surface. It would take me some time to pull out the citations but a close reading of the sagas suggests there was a tradition in which Frigg and Jord / Fjörgynn were the same person even though Snorri Sturluson portrays Frigg and Jord as different characters.

Most modern experts have rejected the assumption there was ever a single, unified version of these myths. Instead, there were probably many regional variations. What has come down to us are just pieces of the original diversity. We've come to believe they're canonical because they're all we have.

OK, not so hard. We've talked about this before and I have the good sense to copy a piece of my answer into my notes --

Frigg appears to have been the same person as Jörd, the earth goddess, although not all scholars accept the identification. The Norse gods were called by many names. Jörd (or Erde), the Norse and Germanic personification of the earth, was also known as Nerthus (Tacitus), Fjörgynn (Harbardsljod 56), Hlódyn (Völuspá 56, and Skaldskaparmal). Frigg, originally Frígída, was also known as Hlin (Völuspá 53).

Both Jörd and Frigg were wives of Óðinn. In the surviving literature, Óðinn's son þórr is twice called a child of Fjörgynn, twice called a child of Jörd, and once called a child of Hlódyn. Moreover, their names overlap. Frigg was the daughter of Fjörgynnr (Lokasenna 26), while Fjörgynn is an alternative name for Jörd (Harbardsljod 56). Fjörgynnr and Fjörgynn are male and female counterparts of the same name. Finally, Hlin, an alternative name for Frigg, was once used as a poetic name for the earth (Hávarðar saga ísfirðings 13).

Jörd seems to have been the unnamed sister of Njörðr..They were once married and had a son Freyr and, presumably, Freyr's sister Freyja (Lokasenna 26). According to Snorri, Jörd had a brother named Auðr ("Rich") or Unnr ("Wave"). These names appear to be alternative names for Njörðr, a sea god famed for his wealth. In an Old Norse proverb quoted by Jakob Grimm, a rich man is said to be "as rich as Njörðr" (sem audigr Njord). Moreover, the Roman historian Tacitus (Germania) called the Germanic earth goddess Nerthus, a masculine name that would have evolved by accepted linguistic processes into Njörðr.

Just as an aside, there is a similar confusion / blending of Frigg and Freyja. In Snorri Sturluson's version they are different characters, but there are scattered hints that there was a regional variation, or perhaps an older version of the tradition we have, in which they were the same person.

In the simplest terms, it seems there were two competing stories. In one of them, Óðinn married Jörd, who was formerly married to her brother Njörðr. In the other, Óðinn married Freyja, who was daughter of Njörðr and Jörd. If so, then Snorri preserves a branch of the tradition in which the original has been separated into Frigg and Freyja, Frigg character has been combined with Jörd while the Freyja character has (apparently) kept her original character and genealogical position.

Hmmm, not sure if that helped or not! :) Certainly highlights how tangled the whole mess is.

Then I've achieved my goal ;)

Justin, what's the evidence for the theory that Njord's sister-wife is Jord and married Odin?

That seems like one of those terribly neat theories that ties things nicely together, but I can't remember seeing anything that actually said so - certainly Snorre's Ynglingesaga tale doesn't say anything about what happened to Njord's sister-wife.

Sounds like one of those things that I would put in the profile as "there's a theory advanced by <scholar> in <book> that this person was identified with <profile> because of <evidence>".

I'll do some checking to track down the source. It's a fairly common theory, so I'm surprised you haven't heard it. It sounds like something that originated with Jacob Grimm, but I'd have to check.

Here's what I can say off the top. Tacitus says the Suebi worshiped an earth goddess named Nerthus, which is the feminine, Latinized form of the Proto-Germanic name *Nerþuz. (The initial asterisk shows this is a reconstructed form, not an attested form.) As far as I know, everyone is agreed that the name Njörðr is a later form of the same name.

So, there is an ancient earth goddess with the same name as the later Norse sea god, and she rides around in a cart as Freyja did. Njörðr and his unnamed sister are the parents of Freyr and Frejya. These name doublets occur more than once in Norse mythology (Freyr / Freyja, Fjörgynnr / Fjörgynn, and perhaps Ullr / Ullin are the ones that come to mind). So, it is not much of a jump to think Njörðr's sister wife had this kind of doublet name, particularly since Tacitus mentions an earth goddess with a name that would the doublet.

The piece I need to check is who suggested Jörd as the doublet for Njörd. She is attested as the consort of Óðinn and mother of Thor, and she is attested also with the name Fjörgynn with a doublet god Fjörgynnr, relationship unknown.

My instinct is that this is something that will have come from a comparative religion person, and particularly from ideas about Indo-European religion. A common idea there is that the Indo-Europeans religions are often structured around three sibling gods -- earth, sea, and sky. So, in its barest form the proto-myth might have been that the goddess of the earth was married to the god of the sea, then married the god of sky (Óðinn in our version, because he had apparently already displaced Tyr.)

Simek supports this reading as far as Njörð / Nerthus being an unattested brother / pair. Davidson discusses the possibilities but doesn't commit herself, ever, I don't think, to anything other than there being so many local variations that the search for a canonical version is pure foolishness (which is also what I think).

Distraction is so much fun :) matching Nerthus with Nerþuz is just someone showing off his keyboard, since the þ is the Icelandic "th" sound.

Njord / Jord is somewhat more interesting, since the word "Jord" (earth) is derived from gothic "airtha" / germanic "erth" according to a search in http://www.edd.uio.no/perl/search/search.cgi?appid=208&amp;tabid=2320 - while the "Njord" name is supposed to derive from "Nerthus". So if the etymologists are correct, this is an example of "false cousins" - "e" -> "j" vs "ne" -> "nj".

Agreed on the hopelessness of "reconstructing the truth" :-)

What an odd way of looking at it.

It's normal to use a thorn when appropriate in reconstructed forms. We don't have to, of course, but using accented versions seems like a nifty way of setting off names when we don't have italics to show when we're shifting around.

And, the meaning and etymology of Nerthus / *Nerþuz is unknown and highly contentious, but perhaps from *nerþō (strength).

However, there is a line of thought that argues a link to Jörd and its proto-Germanic ancestor *erþō (earth) -- *nē-erþō (not earth). The sea is "ground" but it is not earth. But then of course Tactius would have to be mistaken about the goddess' name, but mistaken in an interesting and revealing way.

I've heard another theory that connects the two names, but I can't think of it right now. Something to do with holy / not holy or healthy / not healthy, but any possibility along those lines eludes me.

Yeah. Sorry I mentioned it :)

Yeah, I shouldn't be that facetious :-) þ is a perfectly reasonable way of writng the sound denoted in IPA by /θ/ (according to Wikipedia, of course) and there are "th" sounds in English that don't sound like that at all, so it's more precise than "th". Sorry!

Arguing that prefix "N(e)" is negation / opposition is a fun way of relating the two names - I'll have to keep that in mind next time I want to argue about a name!

The word *ne is the reconstructed proto-German word for No, so it's a reasonable suggestion, but as I said, the meaning is unknown and there is a great deal of dispute.

But, let's back up for a minute to the question Alex asked, which is whether Jord and Frigg are definitely two different women, and whether one copy of Jord might have been mismerged with Frigg.

The answer is that it's not clear.whether they are really two different women. In Snorri's version, Jord and Frigg are two different women, both partners of Odin, and rivals. And, Freyja is a different person than Frigg.

But there is a sequence of identifications in the other material that would lead to identifying Jord and Frigg as the same person, at least in some versions.. And, we know that Frigg and Freyja were originally the same person, even though they had become different in the version Snorri knew.

So, the bigger questions are whether Odin married one woman or two different women, and whether they were mother and daughter. Probably, the answer is that there were regional variations of the story and the other versions have been lost except for small glimpses outside of Snorri.

So, for our purposes the best thing to do (I think) is stick to the sources and create different versions as needed. In the Snorri version, Odin will have two wives.

Saxat från Wikipedia.
Njord ("kraft", "styrka"), fornvästnordiska Njǫrðr, är en av vanerna och havets, vädrets, rikedomens, handelns, sjöfartens och fiskets gud i nordisk mytologi. Njords syster och hustru har av några forskare getts namnet Njärd utifrån förekomsten av förleden Njärd- i några svenska ortnamn.

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Njord

Namnet Nerthus är språkligt detsamma som Njord, i fornnordisk mytologi en manlig gud i vanernas gudaskara. Könsväxlingen har vissa sökt förklara med att kulten berört ett gudapar som förenats i ett fruktbarhetsbefrämjande bröllop. Sydskandinaviska mossfynd tycks bekräfta förekomsten av sådana riter, med åtföljande offer. En enklare tolkning är att hon är Njords icke säkert namngivna syster Njärd, mor till deras gemensamma barn Frej och Freja.

Inom ortnamnsforskningen anses av enstaka forskare att ett flertal mycket gamla namn med former liknande framförallt När- härstammar från platser som haft någon form av bindning till modergudinnan När alternativt Njärd (eller Njord). Exempel på sådana ortnamn är Närtuna och Närlunda. Stockholmsstadsdelen Nälsta är ett annat exempel, liksom industriområdet Mjärdevi i Linköping (med Njärd- förvanskat till Mjärd-).

https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nerthus

Is Njärd the same character as Njörun?

The greatest chance of getting a single decision on what the tree should look like is probably to declare one source primary, and that others will be grafted on where they fit, or cut where they don't fit (with mentions added in the tree of "an alternate theory supported by <source> suggest that .... " whenever appropriate).

Given the popularity of Snorre's Ynglingesoga, it seems natural to start with that as our "backbone" (except the Turkish bits). Even the Elder Edda is too convoluted and self-contradictory to add it all to our "backbone", I think.

Note: This is no more "correct" than the earlier decision to use Medlands as the "authoritative source" for the middle ages. There is no "correct", there's just "practical", and hopefully "not completely wrong". It's just a means to stop having to discuss every decision separately from the ground up.

Agreed. I like the idea of placing Snorri's version at the center, then spinning off other, fragmentary trees as possible. It's been the counter-argument all along.

Frigg can be just Frigg, with variant names in the AKA. The name Frea removed from Frigg and added to the AKA for Freyja. The name Jord removed Frigg and left in Jord as a separate character. The name Fjörgynn on Jord moved to the AKA (assuming we are willing to accept the theory they are the same and do not represent a conflict in the sources).

We'd end up with a very simple genealogy where Odin / Wotan has two wives -- Jord (mother of Thor) and Frigg (mother of Baldur). Users wouldn't need an academic degree in the field to understand the genealogy.

"very simple" ..... what a wonderful phrase!

We'd also have a wife of Odin called "Mother's name not documented", for all those people called sons of Odin that don't have their mother mentioned. In many trees they have been assigned to Freya or another wife more or less at random.

* assigned to Frigg ;)

Finally!
Ynglingesoga it is.

Just for future reference there seems to be an MP version of the "Turkish tradition" from the Prose Edda

Trór / Thor, king of Thrace

I have not followed it up or down, just hit on this profile by chance.

FYI i followed it down, it peters out with Finn Peverell (Odin's supposed grandfather).

Harald Tveit Alvestrand

The Sagas project page hyperlinks to http://lind.no/nor/index.asp?lang=&amp;emne=&amp;list=&amp;vis=Snorre but none of the links on that page actually lead anywhere.

Sigh .... I guess Idar Lind stopped maintaining his site. It's been a few years since the book came out.

I've sent email to the contact address listed. Let's see if it helps.

Re Ynglingesoga as "backbone": Alex, will you update the "Scandinavian Sagas" project to say this out loud? Or should I go do that?
(It's always nice to point people to a written-up statement when they complain about it later :-)

In the meantime, try http://www.northvegr.org/