Gerðr

Summary

Gerðr is the daughter of the giant Gymir and his wife Aurboða, who was of the mountain-giants, in the Scandinavian myths. Snorri says she was the fairest of all women; she became the wife of Freyr and is counted among the goddesses who sit in the Æsir's hall.

Her story is a wooing by proxy. One day Freyr went up into Hliðskjálf, Odin's high seat from which the whole world can be seen, looked to the north and saw a great and fair house, and a woman walking to it; when she raised her arms to open the door, light shone from them over sky and sea, and all the worlds grew bright from her. Freyr went away full of grief and would neither speak, nor sleep, nor drink. Njörðr sent his page Skírnir to ask what ailed him, and Freyr said he had seen in Gymir's courts a maiden without whom he would not live long, and told him to woo her for him. Skírnir asked for his horse, which carries its rider through the flickering flame, and his sword, which fights by itself, and Freyr gave him both.

Skírnir rode over the dank fells into the land of the giants, past the herdsman sitting on the mound and past Gymir's hounds, until the earth shook under his horse and Gymir's courts trembled. Gerðr bade him into the hall to drink the good mead, though she feared he was her brother's slayer. He offered her eleven apples, all of gold, if she would call Freyr dearest to her, and she refused. He offered the ring that had been burned with Odin's young son, Baldr, from which eight like it drip every ninth night, and she said: I lack no gold in Gymir's courts. He raised the sword over her and threatened to strike off her head, and she said she would never endure coercion; then he threatened her father with it. Then he took a taming-wand and cursed her: she would sit on the eagle's mound turned away from the world and towards Hel, food would be more hateful to her than the serpent, she would live with a three-headed giant or without a husband, and be like the thistle crushed at the end of the harvest; and he carved for her the giant-rune and three staves, lewdness, frenzy and unbearable longing, saying that he could carve them off as he had carved them on, if need be. Then Gerðr yielded, handed him a frost-cup full of old mead, and said: I had meant never to love one of the Vanir. And she said: Barri is the name of the grove we both know, a still and windless grove, and after nine nights there Gerðr will grant Njörðr's son the joy of love. When Skírnir brought the news, Freyr said: long is one night, long are two, how shall I endure three? Skírnismál 10–42.

The idea the story turns on is that the lord of rain and the earth's fruit does not win his bride from the giants with gold, nor with the threat of the sword, but by setting before her a future with no husband, no joy and no fruit, so that she chooses the meeting in the grove. And the price is paid by Freyr, not by her: he gave away his sword, killed the giant Beli with a hart's horn, and will meet the sons of Muspell at Ragnarök without it. From this marriage comes a line of kings: Ynglinga saga says that Gerðr, Gymir's daughter, was Freyr's wife when he ruled the Swedes and built the temple at Uppsala, that their son was Fjölnir, and that from Freyr's other name, Yngvi, the kings of Uppsala were called Ynglings.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method, since the essay does not read her name. The final r of Gerðr is the Old Norse nominative ending; it drops in the genitive, Gerðar, leaving Gerð-: hard g, r, ð. The Norse dictionary links these letters with garðr, a fenced yard, and gerði, a fenced field, and it was "in Gymir's courts" that Freyr saw her. The essay reads this same word in the names of Asgard and Midgard as Arabic jarad. Arabic j answers hard g regularly, r is r, and d answers ð. In Lane jarad is a place destitute of herbage, and jarrada al-sayf is to bare a sword. On this reading Gerðr is the bare land kept in her father's yard, waiting for the lord of rain and crops, which is what the curse threatens her with: to stay without a husband like a thistle crushed at harvest's end, until she promises a meeting in a grove. And in her story a sword is bared at her twice.

Linguistic Root

Gerðr and jarad

Cleasby–Vigfusson records Gerðr as the name of a goddess, as a woman's name, and as an element in many compound names. Orel derives garðr from a Germanic word for house, family and court, which also gives Gothic gards, Old English geard, "enclosure, yard, dwelling, land", and Albanian gardh, "fence", and derives gerði, "fenced field", from it.

Lane, under j-r-d: jarada al-jarādu al-arḍa, "the locusts stripped the land of all its herbage"; jarida al-makānu, "it (a place) was, or became, destitute of herbage"; jarradahu min thiyābihi, "he stripped him of his garments"; and jarrada al-sayf, "he bared a sword, drew it forth from its scabbard". The root joins land whose growth is gone and a sword out of its sheath. Under j-d-r: jadara, "he made a wall of enclosure", and jadīr, "a place having a wall built around it; a walled place".

The comparison with jarad keeps the letters in order: j regularly becomes hard g in the European languages, as the Juthoor sound laws record, and d answers Norse ð between vowels. Jadīr matches the sense of the Norse word, walled ground, but needs r and d to change places; metathesis is one of the operations those laws record. The two readings meet in the story: a walled field in her father's yard, bare until the rain comes to it.

The essay's reading of garðr

The essay reads Midgard as madd + jarad, wide, open land, and Asgard as uss + jarad, and counts both readings as likely. Elsewhere it says that gard in Germanic is a walled garden, so it knows both senses: open ground in Arabic, walled ground in Norse. It does not mention Gerðr, but the word it reads is the word the dictionary connects with her name.

Key Mythic Narratives

Gymir, Gerðr's father, and Ægir

The prose introduction to Lokasenna says that Ægir "was also called Gymir", and Snorri says in Skáldskaparmál that Ægir, Hlér and Gymir are all one, the sea. In Gylfaginning, however, Gymir, Gerðr's father, is a man whose wife is of the mountain-giants, and the texts do not say whether the two are one Gymir.

Barri and Barrey

Skírnismál names the meeting place Barri, a windless grove; Snorri calls it Barrey and makes the meeting a wedding. The Northern Tales commentary suggests the name may come from barr, barley or needles of the pine. The poem does not name the brother whose slayer Gerðr fears Skírnir may be; commentators identify him with Beli, whom Freyr killed.

The price in gold in Lokasenna

At Ægir's feast Loki taunts Freyr with having bought Gymir's daughter with gold and given away his sword, so that he will not know how to fight when the sons of Muspell ride.

Symbolic Reading

The Norse rereading essay reads Freyr's giving up his sword for love as "peace in exchange for fertility": whoever wants to farm must lay down arms. The Northern Tales commentary notes an influential scholarly tradition that reads the whole poem as a fertility myth in which Freyr wins Gerðr, the earth. The images in the text support this reading without stating it: arms that light up the air and sea, a curse that would make her a dry thistle at harvest's end, a grove that may be named for barley, and nine nights for the lord of rain to wait.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Amarna text of the story of Nergal and Ereshkigal the marriage comes only under the threat of death, and in Skírnismál the sword is raised over Gerðr before she yields, so both tellings set the marriage of a lord on coercion. They part in that Gerðr does not yield to the sword but to the curse. Persephone is taken from her mother's house to the realm of Hades, and her mother withholds the earth's fruit until she returns; Gerðr's own body is threatened with staying fruitless. Her marriage to Freyr is a Norse witness of the sacred marriage, and the marriage of Skaði, Þjazi's daughter, to Njörðr is another marriage of the Vanir with the giants in the same family.