Page:Norse mythology or, the religion of our forefathers, containing all the myths of the Eddas, systematized and interpreted with an introduction, vocabulary and index.djvu/246

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they are nevertheless wholly different characters. Frigg is asaqueen, Freyja is vanadis. Frigg is a mother's love; Freyja is the love of the youth or maiden. The asas are land deities, the vans are divinities of the water. The vana-goddess Freyja represents the surging, billowy, unsettled love; the asynje Frigg represents love in its nobler and more constant form.


SECTION X. FRIGG'S MAID-SERVANTS.

Fulla, Hlyn, Gnaa, Snotra, Var, Lofn (Sjofn), and Syn, are enumerated as maid-servants of Frigg.

Fulla goes about with her hair flowing over her shoulders and her head adorned with a golden ribbon. She is intrusted with the toilette and slippers of Frigg and admitted into the most important secrets of that goddess. The word Fulla means full, fulness, and as the servant of Frigg she represents the fulness of the earth, which is beautifully suggested by her waving hair and golden ribbon (harvest), and when Balder sent the ring Draupner from Hel, his wife Nanna sent Frigg a carpet, and Fulla a gold ring.

Hlyn has the care of those whom Frigg intends to deliver from peril.

Gnaa is the messenger that Frigg sends into the various worlds on her errands. She has a horse that can run through air and water, called Hofvarpner (the hoof-thrower). Once, as she drove out, certain vans saw her car in the air, when one of them exclaimed:

What flies there?
What goes there?
In the air aloft what glides?

She answered:

I fly not, though I go,
And glide through the air