2014 - The Goddess Frig Reassessing An Anglo-Saxon Deity

The Goddess Frig:: Reassessing an Anglo-Saxon Deity
Author(s): Ethan Doyle White

Source: Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural , Vol. 3, No. 2
(2014), pp. 284-310
Published by: Penn State University Press
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/preternature.3.2.0284
REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.5325/preternature.3.2.0284?seq=1&cid=pdf-
reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
Penn State University Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Preternature: Critical and Historical Studies on the Preternatural
This content downloaded from

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
the goddess frig: reassessing
an anglo-saxon deity
Ethan Doyle White
abstract
This article critically examines the evidence for the existence of the Anglo-Saxon goddess Frig,
exploring toponyms, day names, Old English textual sources, archaeology, and comparisons
with continental Germanic mythologies. Challenging previous assertions that she was the con-
sort of the god Woden and was associated with love and motherhood, it furthermore contends
that this scholarly misinterpretation of the deity has had wider repercussions, affecting the way
that contemporary Pagans interpret this particular divinity. Ultimately, it argues that far less
can be said about Frig with any certainty than has been previously supposed, suggesting that
a case can even be made that she had never existed as a deity in Anglo-Saxon England at all.
keywords
Frig; Early Medieval; Anglo-Saxon; Paganism; Mythology; Goddess
The world of the Anglo-Saxon gods will forever remain a mystery to us, existing
just beyond the reach of written history. This pagan world sits in an enigmatic
realm that is in many respects prehistoric, an alien headspace far removed from
our own intellectual universe. Situated within a polytheistic cosmos, clouded
from us by centuries of Christian theology and Enlightenment rationalism, we
can discern the existence of a handful of potential deities, who though long
deceased have perhaps left their mark in place-names, royal genealogies, and the
accounts of proselytizing monks. Such sources have led scholars to put together
a pantheon for early medieval England, populated by such murky figures as
Woden, Þunor, Tiw, and a goddess known as Frig. Though no unequivocal
evidence for her existence has survived for us today, it has long been believed
that this enigmatic figure has left her mark on the names of various villages and
hamlets across England, in veiled Old English references to sex, and in the name
of one of our own days of the week, Friday. However, despite decades of schol-
arship in the field of Anglo-Saxon studies, the subject of Frig has been largely
preternature, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2014

Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pa.
PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 284 30/08/14 1:44 PM

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
ethan d oyle w hite 2 85
neglected, and it is hoped that this contribution will go some way to rectifying
this unfortunate omission.
The concept of “paganism” or “heathenism” is problematic when dealing
with the beliefs and ritual praxes of any past society, and Anglo-Saxon England
is no exception.1 Widely used in earlier scholarly literature to refer simply to
that which was not evidently Christian, it has recently been suggested that the
term be rejected altogether in Anglo-Saxon studies, with “traditional religion”
being suggested as an alternative.2 As Ian Wood highlighted, using terms like
“pagan” and “Christian” for the Early Middle Ages locks scholars into “the
cultural constructs and value judgements of the early medieval missionaries,”
thereby making it even more difficult to understand the perspectives of those
we label “pagan.”3 While scholars like Sarah Semple have proceeded to phase
out the use of the term when discussing pre-Christian beliefs, it nevertheless
remains clear that a majority of scholars working in this field have not cast aside
such terminology, accepting that while problematic, these words retain some
utility, and in this particular case I am inclined to agree.4 We must keep in mind
that most people in early Anglo-Saxon England never considered themselves to
be “pagan,” the concept being used by Christians to designate the non-Judeo-
Christian as a form of “other.” Hence, adherents of non-Christian cults would
not have seen themselves as a part of some monolithic “paganism” in the way
that those who worshipped Christ might see themselves as Christian. At the
same time, terms like “heathen” and “pagan” remain useful to Anglo-Saxonists
in designating something “religious” (a hugely problematic concept in itself ),
but which is clearly not Christian in nature.5 In most instances, such
“paganism” would predate the Christianization of Anglo-Saxon England, but
it is clear that many “pagan” practices continued to exist and indeed perhaps
thrive in a syncretic blend with the incoming cult of Christ.
The scholarly study of Anglo-Saxon paganism emerged in the nineteenth
century, undertaken by pioneers like Jacob Grimm and John Yonge Akerman,
who approached the subject from a variety of different disciplinary approaches.6
Since then, archaeologists such as Audrey Meaney and David Wilson have
explored it largely through burial evidence, while historians like Brian Branston
and Hilda Ellis Davidson have focused on our scanty textual sources from
the period—namely, the work of Bede—as well as the toponymical evidence of
English place-names and comparisons with other mythologies from
Germanic-language Europe.7 What could be termed the “traditional” account
of Frig holds that she was one of the deities brought to Britain during the Anglo-
Saxon migration of the fifth and sixth centuries, having her origins in a continental

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
2 86 pr eternature
figure with the hypothetical Proto-Germanic name of *Frijjo. According to this

view, she was one of the primary goddesses within a pantheon that included the
likes of Woden and Þunor, who were each represented elsewhere in Germanic-
language Europe by cognate deities, such as the Norse Óðinn and Þórr. Such
an interpretation of the evidence has never before been challenged, although
recent years have seen a critical reappraisal of the evidence for both Woden
and two minor Anglo-Saxon goddesses, Hretha and Eostre, by the philologist
Philip A. Shaw.8
My approach has been heavily informed by the work of eminent historian
Ronald Hutton, whose studies on the relationship between pre-Christian
religion and modern-day Paganisms have attracted international attention.
Although Hutton has never focused in particular on the heathen cults of the
early medieval, he did devote a large part of one chapter to the subject in his two
overviews of pre-Christian religion in Britain, and was also invited to provide
the afterword for a recent archaeological anthology on the subject.9 When deal-
ing with the world of the Anglo-Saxon heathen, Hutton reminds us to be for-
ever cautious, highlighting the problem of accepting any one interpretation of
the evidence as holy writ; regarding the deposition of weapons and other metal
objects in water places for instance, he notes that many differing intentions may
have lain behind such a practice. Perhaps it was a form of worship devoted to a
deity believed to live in the water, or the water might have been seen as a gate-
way to the realm of such deities. Equally, such deposits might have constituted
offerings to allow a safe passage across the water, or to keep enemies (real or
imagined) from crossing it, or perhaps it was the location that was sacral rather
than the water itself.10 Hutton’s questioning nature provides a useful template
for the manner in which I shall approach my study of Frig. This approach stands
in clear contrast with the more speculative, imaginative method that has been
employed in recent decades by Richard North and Stephen J. Yeates in their
studies of pre-Christian Anglo-Saxon religion.11 In no way am I suggesting that
the work of North and Yeates is of lesser value to that of Hutton—far from
it—but there are clearly problems innate to such speculation, as illustrated by
the multiple academic reviews of said tomes.12
In this article, it is my plan to assemble together all of the available evidence
for Frig and her cult, before undertaking a critical reassessment of it.
Unfortunately, the intervening Christian centuries have not been kind to

Frig, and today we have scant evidence of her existence. Nowhere do we have
any contemporary literary evidence naming or describing her outright, and
instead Anglo-Saxonists have surmised her existence from a collection of

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
scattered sources. These can be divided into five distinct categories of evidence,
some more convincing that o thers: the Old English word for Friday, various
place-names from within E ngland, sexual references in Old English literature,
archaeological analysis of cultic praxes, and comparisons with Scandinavian and
other continental mythologies. In doing so, I point out the multiple problems
with using such evidence as an accurate reflection of pre-Christian religious belief
and praxes in England, suggesting the possibility—in a manner similar to Shaw’s
work on Woden—that our evidence for Frig might actually be the result of later
Christian extrapolations about the pagan past using their own knowledge of
continental deities. Following on from my examination of the available evidence,
I examine a number of previous interpretations of Frig, both from academics
studying the ritual and beliefs of Anglo-Saxon England and also from c ontemporary
pagans, and find them wanting. In doing so, this article is as much about how people
have interpreted Frig in the post-Anglo-Saxon world as it is about the evidence for
the goddess herself. Ultimately, I present my conclusions, in the hope that they will
inspire and improve future research into the cults of heathen England.
frigedæg
Our best evidence for the existence of a goddess known as Frig comes from the
English-language name for the sixth day of the week, Friday. Although spell-
ings did vary, this day was known in Middle English—the language of late medi-
eval England—as Freiday, which itself stems from an earlier word used in Old
English, the language of Anglo-Saxon England: Frigedæg. Translated into
Modern English, this word would have literally meant “Frig’s Day.” The Oxford
English Dictionary (OED) records a number of instances of the word appearing in
Old English literature, including from two particularly notable works, both likely
dating from the ninth century, Bald’s Leechbook and the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle,
while the related term Frigeniht, or Frige niht, was also used in certain Old English
sources to refer to the night between Thursday and Friday.13 Meaney asserted
that the spelling Frige, as it appears in Frigedæg, refers to the genitive and dative
forms of the deity’s name, while arguing that the nominative case would be Freo, a
theory that does not appear to have attained universal acceptance.14
The concept of a seven-day week in which the weekdays are given individual
names is not indigenous to the British Isles or to the Germanic-speaking world,
instead having developed in the Middle East. From there it had spread west into
the Greco-Roman world, and then further north into linguistically Germanic

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
2 8 8 preter natur e
parts of the continent. In Latin, the administrative language of the Roman

Empire, the sixth day was known as Veneris dies—“Venus’s day,” being named
after the planet, which was in turn named for the goddess deeply connected
with sex and feminine beauty; this influence is still apparent in the names given
to Friday by several Modern European languages, such as the French Vendredi
and the Italian Venerdí. It has long been thought that when the Germanic-
speaking peoples discovered the Roman seven-day week system, they adopted
it through a process known as loan translation, substituting the names of the
Roman deities for their own native gods, a form of interpretatio Germania. In
such a scenario, the Anglo-Saxons (or their continental ancestors) would have
adopted the seven-day week, but replaced the name of Venus for that of Frig,
just as they replaced the name of Mercury for Woden (hence, Wodensdæg or
Wednesday) and Jupiter for Þunor (Þunresdæg, Thursday). This in turn implies
that they saw a similarity between Frig and Venus, equating them with a similar
function in their pantheons; as such, we could suggest that Frig herself was
associated with sex and female sexuality.15
It has long been supposed that the origins of this Anglo-Saxon seven-day
week system originated in the fourth century, during the late Roman period
which preceded the early medieval. According to this view, propagated by
the likes of Jacob Grimm and Udo Stutynski, the transmission occurred via
societal contacts between Germanic- and Latin-speakers along the Rhine
frontier, entering into the Proto-Germanic heartlands where it came to influ-
ence those various languages—Old English among them—that developed from
this mother tongue over the coming centuries. Such a scenario does explain
why even today, cognate terms to Friday appear in a number of other West
Germanic languages, such as Modern German (where Friday is known as
Freitag, from the Middle High German vritac, which in turn comes from the
Old High German friatag, meaning “Frija’s Day”) and Modern Dutch (vrijda,
which comes from the Middle Dutch vriendach, which can in turn be traced
back to the Old Frisian friadei, fredei, or frigendei, “Frija’s Day”). In the North
Germanic languages of Scandinavia and its colonies, a similar situation can be
seen; the Modern Danish and Swedish word for Friday is Fredag, which comes
from the Old Swedish fredagher. However, in recent decades, this traditional
view has come to be challenged within Anglo-Saxon studies. Christine Fell sug-
gested that the adoption of the seven-day week, with its accompanying weekday
names, actually occurred several centuries later, during the Christian conversion
of Anglo-Saxon England. Her ideas were picked up and expanded by Philip
Shaw, who has convincingly suggested that it was equally plausible that the

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
ethan d oyle w hite 289
Germanic world’s adoption of the seven-day week occurred in the seventh and
eighth centuries, brought in by scholarly Christians who were acquainted with
the systems of timekeeping being used in southern, Latin-speaking Christen-
dom. In such a context, the West Germanic languages would have adopted the
Latin weekday system through the educated elites, before spreading it into the
North Germanic languages via societal interaction.16
These two alternate frameworks for the origin of the seven-day week, and
for the origin of Frigedæg, each have very different repercussions for our under-
standing of Frig. If the traditional view is correct, then in Late Roman conti-
nental Europe, Germanic-speakers adopted the Latin week system, but simply
replaced the Roman deity names with those of their own indigenous gods; they
recognized Venus in their own *Frijjo (the hypothetical Proto-Germanic deity
from whom Frig emerged), to whom they devoted the sixth day of the week.
When many of these people migrated to Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries,
they brought with them this goddess, who became known as Frig—as well as
the concept of Frigedæg. Contrastingly, if the Latin weekday system was only
adopted later, in the seventh and eighth centuries, then it would be apparent
that the very idea of Frigedæg was being constructed by Christian clergyman
who may well have had little or no experience with non-Christian cults; it is
even possible in such a scenario that there never was a Frig cult in England, but
that it had only existed elsewhere in Germanic-language Europe. This situation
is a long way from being resolved, if such a resolution is even possible.
The earliest surviving reference from England informing us that the Germanic
sixth day of the week took its name from a goddess was provided by a Christian
clergyman writing in the late tenth century. Ælfric of Eynsham was a homilist
who has been described by the eminent Anglo-Saxonist Peter Hunter Blair as
“a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of
his mind even with Bede himself.”17 In his work De falsis diis (On False Gods),
Ælfric proclaimed that “Ðone sixtan dæg hi gesetton þære sceamleasan gyde-
nan Uen[us] gehaten, and Fric[g] on Denisc”18 (The sixth day [Friday] they
established for the shameless goddess called Venus and in Danish ‘Fricg’”).19
Elsewhere, in his Lives of Saints, Ælfric discusses the forms in which the Devil
appeared to Saint Martin of Tours in his hermit’s cell, commenting that the
Satanic bogeyman appears: “hwilon on ueneris þære fulan gyden þe men hatað
fricg”20 (“sometimes as Venus the foul goddess whom men call Fricg”).21 We
must be cautious and recognize that here, Ælfric speaks of the Danish deity Fric,
which North plausibly considers to be an anglicization of Frigg, rather than an
Anglo-Saxon Frig.22 Ælfric was living in a time that had seen three centuries of

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
29 0 preter natur e
Christianization eroding and altering the pre-Christian beliefs, but which had
also witnessed increasing pagan settlement and influence through the incur-
sions of Danish communities who had used military prowess to establish the
Danelaw. In effect he was therefore commenting on what we might label “Norse
paganism” rather than “Anglo-Saxon paganism.” Its utility for our purposes
can therefore be questioned.
A later reference to the etymology of Friday appears in the thirteenth-century
poem Brut, authored in Early Middle English by the poet Laȝamon. Produced
centuries after the transition from Anglo-Saxon to Norman rule and well into
the period of Christian dominance, it details a much mythologized history of
Britain, taking as its basis Geoffrey of Monmouth’s twelfth-century Historia
Regum Britanniae. In the parts detailing the activities of Hengest, the father of
the Anglo-Saxon peoples, it states that:
ȝet we habbeð anne læuedi; þe hæh is and mæhti.

heh heo is and hali; hired-men heo luuieð for þi.
heo is ihate Frææ; wel heo heom dihteð . . .
Freon heore læfdi; heo ȝiuen hire Fridæi . . .
Þus seide Hæ[n]gest; cnihten alre hendest.23
We have a lady who is most high and mighty

High she is and holy; nobles love her for this:
She is called Frea, well does she direct them . . .
Frea, our Lady; we give to her Friday . . .
So spoke Hengest, of all knights the handsomest.24
Could it be that this passage represents a very late survival of knowledge regarding
the goddess Frig? This is the view that seems to be adopted by Kathleen Herbert,
but it is far from proven.25 Figures such as Woden appeared in various works of
literature from this period, although they are largely disconnected from any heritage
that they might have had as heathen deities.26 The fact that Laȝamon claims that
Frea rather than Frig was the source of Friday presents further evidence that he was
not familiar with any pre-Christian tradition, unless perhaps Frea was another of
the deity’s names. In Old English, the word frea meant “dear one” or “lord,” and
appears in such sources as the late seventh-century Cædmon’s Hymn and the famous
Late Anglo-Saxon epic Beowulf. Stephen Pollington remarked that “nowhere does
it appear to be necessarily the name of a god so much as a title or circumlocution,”
but he believed it likely that it did at one point represent an Anglo-Saxon deity due

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
to the fact that the name was cognate with the Old Norse Freyr, a god who features
in Norse mythology.27 He was of the opinion that in Anglo-Saxon England, the god
Frea was a counterpart to Frig, forming a divine pair just as Freyja and Freyr did in
Norse mythology.28 This is an interesting idea, but has no real evidence to support
it, instead relying heavily on assuming clear comparisons with Scandinavian belief.
place-name evidence
Our second area of evidence for the existence of Frig comes from the etymol-
ogy of six distinct place-names. The Modern English names of many towns,
villages, and other sites across the country have long histories, having descended
from Middle English terms that in turn evolved from Old English names that
were given to such locales during the early medieval. The idea that English
place-names might contain within them the names of Anglo-Saxon deities
dates back to John Mitchell Kemble’s 1849 book The Saxons in England, later
being taken up by E. A. Philippson and Bruce Dickins, but it was the Swedish
philologist Eilert Ekwall, in a short 1935 paper appearing in the German jour-
nal Englische Studien, who first publicly suggested that five English place-names
illustrated evidence for Frig. In contrast to Meaney’s aforementioned ideas, he
put forward the suggestion that Frig was in fact the nominative version of the
goddess’s name, and that it was never actually used in early medieval England.
Her real name, he argued, was in fact Frēo, the Old English word for “woman”;
he believed there to be “good reason” for this idea, but failed to sufficiently
expound on these ideas, which have been largely neglected since. Skepticism
of Ekwall’s ideas were expressed by the prominent Anglo-Saxonist historian
Frank Merry Stenton in his 1940 presidential address for the Royal H istorical
Society, followed by further work by Henry E. Bannard and then, more
prominently, by the acclaimed English philologist Margaret Gelling.29 Through
such cumulative research, six locales across England have been identified as
potentially having Old English names adopted from that of the goddess Frig,
including in her suggested name of Frēo: three of these, Frobury, Froyle, and
Freefolk, are all located in the modern county of Hampshire, while Fretherne is
in Gloucestershire, Friden in Derbyshire, and Fryup in Yorkshire.
The hamlet of Friden in Derbyshire (53.1400° N, 1.7520° W) sits within the
Peak District, occupying a space eleven miles southeast of Buxton, the n earest
town. A 1599 source refers to it as Frydon Mouth, while several decades earlier, in
1533, it was being referred to as Frydendale-Mouth. Stretching back into the early

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
29 2 preter natur e
thirteenth century, it appears in a Middle English text as Stanifridenmuth, lead-

ing the etymologist Kenneth Cameron, in his epic three-volume series on The
Place-Names of Derbyshire (1959), to suggest that the hamlet’s Old English name
might have been frigedene, meaning “Valley of Frig.” Cameron’s suggestion
would have remained nothing more than an educated hypothesis were it not
for an astoundingly lucky find that was brought to scholarly attention in 1984
by Nicholas Brooks, Margaret Gelling, and Douglas Johnson. They unearthed
a seventeenth-century copy of a previously unknown charter written in 963, in
which King Edgar granted five hides of land at Ballidon to an individual named
Æthelferth, whom Brooks and colleagues suggested was probably a thegn
(a member of the landed aristocracy). Within that charter, it expressly refers to
a site in the area known as frigedene, vindicating Cameron’s original analysis.
For this reason, Audrey Meaney asserted that Friden is the only one of the pro-
posed Frig place-names that appears in a “reliably early form,” with all of the
others being traceable to no earlier that the Norman Domesday Book.30
The Gloucestershire village of Fretherne (51.7807° N, 2.3874° W) appears as
Frethorn in the 1236 Book of Fees, as Freorne in the 1195 Pipe Rolls, and as F
rohorn
in the 1166 Red Book of the Exchequer. Proceeding further back, it appears
as Fridorne in the Domesday Book of 1086, leading Ekwall to first suggest that
its name came from the Old English Frige Þorne, meaning “Frig’s Thornbush.”31
We know from textual sources that later clergymen considered tree veneration
a pagan practice, lending some credence to the idea that such a bush might have
cultic associations.32 However, it is of note that an alternative was suggested
by Albert Hugh Smith in his Place-Names of Gloucestershire, where he raised
the possibility that the toponym came from frio, meaning “peace” or “truce,”
in which case the real place- name might have been “Thornbush of Truce” or
something of that nature.33
Fryup in Yorkshire (54.4317° N, 0.8916° W) is an isolated hamlet located in
the North York Moors of Yorkshire, near to the head of a valley running off of
Esk Dale. It appears as Frihop in the 1234 Feet of Fines, and earlier than this
features as Frehope in the twelfth-century Guisborough Cart. Ekwall was the
first to suggest that its Old English name might have been Frēo hop, meaning
“Frēo’s Narrow Valley.”34 Many years later, Gelling and Ann Cole would suggest
that paganism “could have lingered here for a long time” due to its geographi-
cal seclusion, although this in itself tells us nothing of use.35 The Hampshire
village of Freefolk (51.2333° N, 1.3000° W) is located two kilometers east of
Whitchurch and two kilometers west of Overton. Appearing as Frefolk in the

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
1412 Feudal Aids, in the 1086 Domesday Book it is recorded as Frigefolc, which
Ekwall translated as Frige’s folc, or “Frige’s People.”36 Also in Hampshire, Froyle
(51.1667° N, 0.9167° W) was discussed by Ekwall, who highlighted that it exists
as Froille in the 1230 Pipe Rolls, and before that as Froli in the Domesday Book,
suggesting that it may have originated as Frēo hyll, meaning “Frēo’s Hill.”37
A third Hampshire site was identified by Ekwall as a potential Frig site. This
was Frobury (51.3321° N, 1.2644° W) in the east of the county, which appears
as Froilebiri in the 1186 Pipe Rolls and which is now the site of an angling club.
Ekwall suggested that like Froyle, Frobury had also once been known as Frēo
hyll, “Frēo’s Hill,” but that the Old English bury, meaning “manor,” had been
added to the latter, resulting in the name by which it is known today.38
Meaney highlighted two further place-names that she suggested might pos-
sibly have taken their name from the goddess; Friday’s Church is a Bronze Age
barrow at Wepham Down in Sussex, located near to some Anglo-Saxon bar-
rows and thorn trees, while she was also tempted to speculate that Fridaywood
Farm in Colchester, Essex, was another such Frig-name site; the locale certainly
appears as Frideislond in a 1272 source. At the same time, she accepted that the
“Friday” name might have been applied to these sites later, during the C hristian
period, due to the day’s connection with the crucifixion or fast day, and its sub-
sequent association with poor soils in folk custom.39 Of relevance here is John
Hines’s suggestion that when they do potentially reference deities or other
mythological figures, the names of barrows and other non-natural landscape
features are likely to be the creation of “later, imaginative formation” rather
than reflections of genuine pre-Christian belief. Contrastingly, he argued that
topographic features containing references to groves (lēah) and fields (feld) were
more likely to represent genuine cultic sites.40
Working on the assumption that these place- names really do represent sites
named for the goddess Frig, there are several factors that should be considered.
Most prominent among these is their geographical location, potentially repre-
senting the distribution of sites that were important to Frig’s cult. Although
Ekwall noted that the three northeast Hampshire sites were insufficiently close
to one another to be directly connected, suggesting instead that they had been
“named independently of each other,”41 the fact that they are all within twelve
miles of one another (with Basingstoke right in the middle) could potentially
be used to present an argument that her cult was particularly strong in that part
of England. The idea that Frig might have represented a localized rather than
pan-English goddess is not without precedent in Anglo-Saxonist scholarship;

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
29 4 pr eternature
Shaw has suggested that the goddess Eostre, although being recorded in the
works of Jarrow-based monk Bede, was in actuality a Kentish deity.42
Nevertheless, I am of the opinion that we cannot simply assume that these
sites represented cultic areas dedicated to Frig. As should be apparent, there
are clearly multiple problems with this list of place- names, something that has
long been acknowledged; speaking in 1940, Frank Stenton expressed caution
as to Ekwall’s ideas, noting that it would be “unwise to draw any historical
conclusions from these names alone,” while in 1961 Gelling thought it “safer to
omit the possible references to Frig from the canon of established pagan place-
names.”43 More recently, Meaney echoed the ideas of her predecessors when she
suggested that “competent scholars should perhaps reconsider Ekwall’s sug-
gestions.”44 Fellow archaeologist David Wilson has commented that though it
can always be hoped that future place- names shall be identified that can eluci-
date further on the gods of pagan England, he pessimistically realized that the
opposite was probably true, and that some of those which have been previously
identified shall be shown to be unreliable through further philological examina-
tion.45 Such attention from experts in Anglo-Saxon philology would be of great
benefit here, and it is hoped that such work will be forthcoming.
Another problem lies in Ekwall’s assumption that the term Frēo was the
true name of the goddess, something for which we lack supporting evidence;
for this reason, we should express extreme caution when considering Froyle,
Frobury, and Fryup as centers of Frig’s cultic veneration. Furthermore, even if
these places were indeed named after Frig, it is possible that the Frig in question
was not the name of the goddess, but rather another mythological figure or a
human being who bore the same name. Of note here is that in the Anglo-Saxon
account of the foundation of Minster-in-Thanet in Kent, a malevolent coun-
cilor named Þunor is swallowed up by the ground, with a mound named Þunor-
shlæw (“Þunor’s Barrow”) being erected on the spot; clearly, it is possible that
places could be given names that were associated with specific human beings
bearing the names of deities.46 Though not proven, it is possible that the name
Frig was fairly widespread in Anglo-Saxon England; today, it is common to
find Latin Americans named “Jesus” and South Asians named “Krishna.” Yet
another issue was highlighted by Shaw when he noted that these places might
not have been given their names by pagans themselves, but by later Christian
Anglo-Saxons, who associated such sites with earlier religious practices about
which they knew little.47 Unfortunately, I do not see any way that scholarship
will ever be able to resolve issues such as these, meaning that a cloud of doubt
shall always hang over such toponyms.

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
references within old english literature
The third source of evidence for Frig can be found within the corpus of Old
English literature. In certain instances, the common noun frig is used to refer
to “love,” although Christine Fell was of the opinion that it probably referred
more explicitly to sexual intercourse, an analysis with which I agree.48 One of
those texts found within the Exeter Book, the Old English poem Christ I—also
variously known as Christ A, The Advent Lyrics, and simply Advent—has been
tentatively dated to the late eighth or early ninth centuries; in this poem, the
anonymous author twice states that the Virgin Mary conceived Jesus Christ
without friga weres, meaning without “the love of man,” therefore clearly indi-
cating the act of heterosexual intercourse.49 The word also appears in two of the
surviving poems authored by the mysterious figure known only as Cynewulf in
about the eighth or ninth centuries: Juliana, the Exeter Book text which that
details the life of a Christian martyr, and Elene, which appears in the Vercelli
Book manuscript and discusses the Invention of the True Cross. In the former,
it is used by Juliana’s father, Africanus, in his attempt to convince her to marry
the pagan nobleman Helisius, while in the latter it is included as part of a quote
attributed to Moses prophesying the birth of Christ.50 In another of the poems
found in the Exeter Book, Deor, which tells the story of a scop’s lament at being
replaced by his lord, the term frige is used again, this time referencing the love
felt by the figure of Geat for his mistress Matihld.51
It is significant that the common noun frig refers to sex in the Old English
language, considering that the mythological figure of Frig was supposed to bare
similarities to Venus, the Roman deity strongly associated with sex. Although
certainly not conclusive, it does provide us with compelling circumstantial evi-
dence that Frig might have been associated with sexual relations. However, there
is always the possibility that the common noun and mythological name were
entirely unrelated in meaning, just as today, the male names Rob and Bob (both
short for Robert) have no connection to the verb “rob” (i.e., from “robbery”),
or “bob” (i.e., “bobbing”); hence we should refrain from assuming an automatic
thematic or symbolic connection between Frig the mythological figure and frig
the common noun. Of potential relevance is the Modern English slang term
“frig,” used to refer to masturbation or sexual intercourse. The OED traces the
term back to Late Middle English, but believes that beyond that it is of unknown
origin.52 Although we clearly have no evidence that directly connects this to the
earlier Old English term, the fact that they are phonetically identical and carry
essentially the same meaning seems astonishing if it is a coincidence. Further

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
29 6 pr eternature
research on the development of frig in Middle English might hopefully unearth

the origins of this particular term.
archaeological evidence
Our fourth form of evidence comprises the archaeological material that has been
uncovered from the regions once contained within Anglo-Saxon England. This
is potentially a very valuable resource, for archaeology has shone great light on
the realities of Anglo-Saxon paganism over the past century and a half, uncover-
ing such wonders as the Sutton Hoo ship burial and the Yeavering royal house.
So how would Frig and her cult be visible in the Anglo-Saxon material record?
We might expect to find cultic images of a female figure that could represent
Frig, for Bede writes that the pagans of England venerated “idols.”53 Unfor-
tunately, depictions of the human form are rare in the context of Anglo-Saxon
England. In 1853, John Yonge Akerman could comment that “not a single Teu-
tonic idol has been preserved in England,” proceeding to suggest that the stat-
ues would have been wooden, and hence rotted away.54 Well over a century later,
Ronald Hutton suggested that perhaps some of the crude wooden figurines
recovered from British peat bogs—typically attributed to the bronze and iron
ages—might actually be Anglo-Saxon in date,55 an idea that could potentially be
tested using radiocarbon dating, or, with any larger carvings, dendrochronology.
However, Stephen Pollington has highlighted the existence of two metal female
figurines that have been tentatively attributed to an Anglo-Saxon date. One is a
silver-guilt figurine of unknown provenance, now in a private collection, depict-
ing a female with long golden hair and a long skirt; topless, her left hand cups
her right breast, while her right hand touches her belly and hip. The other is a
copper-alloy figure recovered from the River Deben in Suffolk which that went
on sale to the art market ion 2011; small and bullet shaped, it depicts a naked,
apparently female figure, one hand cupping a breast and the other placed on
the womb.56 Although stylistically the latter does share many similarities with
other (male) figurines that have been dated to the Anglo-Saxon period, such as
that from Bloodmoor Hill in Carlton Colville, Suffolk, we cannot be entirely
sure without further analysis that these figurines are actually Anglo-Saxon
in origin. Even if this does prove to be the case, we certainly have no way of being
sure that these figurines genuinely represent the goddess Frig; they could just as

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
easily represent a different goddess or mythological figure, or be amulets or toys

who that do not depict any specific individual at all.
We might furthermore expect to find cultic sites in the vicinity of those afore-
mentioned locations potentially named after Frig. Non-Christian Anglo-Saxon
cultic sites are notoriously difficult to identify archaeologically, although across
England, a variety of sites carry the Old English word hearg, a term translated
variously as “pagan temple,” “hilltop shrine,” or “idol.” Upon analyzing various
examples, Sarah Semple highlighted that the term was applied to sites which
had seen cultic use before the Anglo-Saxon period, and therefore might not have
referred to Anglo-Saxon ritual sites themselves.57 It seems that pagan cultic sites
were not usually contained in buildings, as only one wooden structure (allegedly)
representing such a site—Building D2 at the Yeavering complex in Northumbria—
has so far been discovered.58 As far as this author is aware, no cultic sites have been
archaeologically identified in the vicinity of any of the Frig -place- name locales,
but equally it appears that no one has specifically looked for them either. Future
research in this area would do well to heed the example of Semple, who—influ-
enced by the approach advocated by toponymists Gelling and Cole—visited hearg
sites to examine their topography, exploring the neighboring location up to a dis-
tance of circa roughly 1.5 km2.59 Could it be that there are specific topographic fea-
tures associated with these Frig place-name locales, and could they be at all linked
to ritual or cultic praxes? Another potential avenue of archaeological investigation
would be to explore earlier Roman iron age sites that display evidence of a Venus
cult to see whether they also contain evidence for later Anglo-Saxon votive prac-
tice; for instance, at the Romano-British temple at Middle Hills Field on Wood
Eaton hill in Oxfordshire, Venus figurines dating to the Roman occupation were
discovered, while Gelling argued that the hill was later labeled an Old English
hearg site.60 If true that at the time of the migration, Frig was associated with
Venus (and as has been shown, this is not necessarily the case), then it could be that
Venus’s earlier cultic sites continued to be used under the new devotion to Frig.
Problematically, of course, even if Anglo-Saxon cultic practice can be identified at
the same locales as the earlier Venus -cult, this by no means automatically means
that the early medieval cult practices at the site was were devoted to Frig. Archae-
ology does have a role to play in the further investigation of any potential Frig cult
in Anglo-Saxon England, but there should be little cause for undue optimism
due to of the serious problems that such archaeological investigation—and
interpretation—would face.

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
29 8 pr eternature
continental comparisons
The study of Anglo-Saxon paganism should never be seen in isolation, and it is

important to recognize the cultural and linguistic connections that early medi-
eval England shared with its continental neighbors. Although it has been widely
debated as to what extent migration played, it is clear that the Anglo-Saxon
cultural package entered Britain from continental Europe in the fifth and sixth
centuries. The Anglo-Saxons thereby held to an ancestral commonality with
other Germanic-speaking peoples, and continued to trade and interact with
them throughout the early medieval. For this reason I consider it pertinent to
examine the mythological traces and remnants that we can find among these
“sister societies” of the Anglo-Saxons in the hope that they can shine potential
light on the cult of Frig. At the same time, we must be cautious not to import
continental mythological systems wholesale into Anglo-Saxon England, merely
substituting the names of the deities; this is something that has been a problem
in Anglo-Saxon studies for some time, but has recently been heavily criticized
by Shaw.61
Alongside the Old English (OE) Frig, there are textual references to an
Old Norse (ON) goddess known as Frigg, and to an Old High German
(OHG) Friia, the latter appearing in the Second Merseburg Charm.62 For
this reason it has been suggested that all of these deity names had their ori-
gins in a common source, a goddess known as *Frijjo in Proto-Germanic.63
While some might paint this figure out to be some sort of Pan-Germanic
deity who was viewed in the same way across time and space, this is not the
approach that I adopt, and I believe it important to evaluate each of these as
a separate mythological entity in their its own right, each situated in their
its own unique contexts. In essence therefore, I consider the Scandinavian
Frigg and Anglo-Saxon Frig, while etymologically cognate, to be two distinct
deities.64 There are problems with this etic approach; if two individuals from
the sixth-century met, one from contemporary Denmark and the other from
Kent, it is likely that they would recognize their respective Frigg and Frig as
one and the same, just as Germanic-speaking peoples appeared to have seen
Frig as being the same deity as the Roman Venus.
Our best attested evidence for pre-, or at least non-Christian beliefs and
practices in Germanic-speaking Europe comes from Scandinavia and the
Nordic settlements in Iceland. Here, we have a variety of textual sources which
were produced in a Christian context but which hark back and reference pre-
Christian mythologies. The most prominent are the early thirteenth-century

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
writings of the Icelandic historian, poet, and politician Snorri Sturluson, author
of the Prose Edda, in which indigenous and Christian mythological elements
mix. Also useful is the Poetic Edda, which had been written down around about
the time of Snorri, and the Scaldic poetry which often references mythological
themes. The Danish historian and clergyman Saxo Grammaticus also included
references to pagan mythological elements within his work, the Gesta Danorum,
written in the twelfth century. The Christian author Adam of Bremen wrote
the Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiæ Pontificum around 1060 to encourage fur-
ther missionary efforts into what was still a largely pagan Scandinavia, in which
he included descriptions of sites such as the temple complex at Uppsala. Such
sources permit us to gain an idea of the pre-Christian mythologies of Scandi-
navia that is far fuller and richer than that which we have for England. These
sources attest to the existence of two prominent goddesses within Scandinavian
mythologies, both of whom provide interesting comparisons with our Anglo-
Saxon Frig: Freyja and Frigg. The former has been the subject of an extensive
and informative study by Britt-Mari Näsström, who has established that she
was a “multifunctional deity whose cultic realms extend far beyond the fertility
aspect.” In our textual sources, she appears as the daughter of the god Njörðr
and brother of god Freyr, a member of the Vanir deities, a sexually promiscuous
figure associated with sex and seiðr (sorcery), who sits over one of the halls of
the dead.65 To the best of my knowledge, Frigg has not received such meticulous
treatment, though it has nevertheless been established that she was the wife of
Óðinn, one of the most prominent gods of the Norse pantheon, being what
Stephen Grundy has called “patroness of the home, and a relative model of
social virtue.”66
In a 1996 paper, Grundy argued that Freyja and Frigg had originally repre-
sented a single goddess in the pre-Viking Age, before being divided into two
separate figures by the time that our textual sources were produced. He came to
this conclusion after noticing a variety of mythological similarities between the
two figures, such as claims that both were married to Óðinn, believing that these
may well have resulted from a shared common origin.67 I would suggest that the
existence of the Anglo-Saxon Frig might well provide evidence in support of
Grundy’s argument. It seems apparent that the OE Frig is linguistically cognate
to the ON Frigg, with both potentially having their origins in the language of
Proto-Germanic, as spoken in parts of the continent during later prehistory.
However, if, as has been proposed, the OE Frig was a mythological figure con-
nected to sexual intercourse, then that would imply a potential common origin
with Freyja, the Norse goddess associated with sexual acts, rather than with

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
3 00 preter natur e
the maternal Frigg. If there had been a Proto-Germanic goddess named *Frijjo
who was associated with both marriage and sexuality, it is possible that her
cult diversified and evolved in the coming centuries; in England, she became
Frig, associated with sexuality, whereas in Scandinavia she was divided into the
sexual-associated Freyja and the more maternal figure of Frigg. Admittedly, this
argument is conjectural, although I believe it worthy of note.
Another source, older than all the others, is Tacitus’s Germania, written in
the late first century C.E. by the Greek author who had never visited Germanic-
language Europe. Instead he obtained his information from secondary sources,
and the accuracy of his claims are therefore questionable. Tacitus discussed a
“Mother Earth” goddess whom he called Nerthus, asserting that she was ven-
erated by the Æstii tribes, and that her cult was overseen by a male priest who
officiated in a sacred grove on an island.68 Could it be that this mythological
figure represented some sort of ancestor for the later Anglo-Saxon Frig? It is
worth noting that the name Nerthus has been widely considered to be related
to that of Njörðr, the male figure in Norse mythology described as the father
of Freyja and Freyr. Many scholars have debated why it should be that Nerthus
was portrayed by Tacitus as female while the later Njörðr is described as male,
but both Jan de Vries and Georges Dumézil suggested that Nerthus was an
androgynous fertility deity who could appear in both male and female form,
which brings us on to the potential question of Frig’s gender.69 So far, it has
been supposed that she must have been female, due to the etymology of her
name and comparisons with the Roman goddess Venus, but we have no evi-
dence to rule out the p ossibility that she might have had androgynous qualities.
what have archaeologists, historians,

and pagans believed about frig?
Many of those scholars who have searched for evidence of the goddess Frig
in toponyms, week day names, and continental comparisons have already been
mentioned in this article, but here I consider it pertinent to explore how exactly
scholars such as these have interpreted and described her. In particular, I wish
to tackle several recurring assumptions that have been propagated within the
field of Anglo-Saxon scholarship but which are not supported by the evidence
at hand: namely, that Frig was necessarily an object of veneration, that she was
the consort of the god Woden, and that she was a deity of love and motherhood.

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
Frank Stenton described Frig as one of the deities whose “individualized wor-
ship in England is beyond dispute.”70 Such a statement is unsustainable, for we
actually have no direct evidence that Frig was ever physically worshipped, pro-
pitiated, or otherwise venerated by the Anglo-Saxons; it is possible that she was
a mythological figure who held a prominent part in the pre-Christian world-
view but who was not physically reverenced in any way. Comparisons could
perhaps be drawn to the role of the Devil in Early Modern Britain; here was a
mythological figure who was widely believed to exist but was not venerated as
a deity, and in the eighteenth-century a wide variety of prominent landscape
features across Britain and its North American colonies came to be named after
him, just as locales were potentially named for Frig.71 The contexts are of course
different, and I do not mean to suggest that Frig was considered some sort of
malevolent anti-deity (not that this is impossible), but merely wish to highlight
that mythological figures who are not deities can still leave significant traces on
the landscape and language of the people who believe in them. There are few
ways in which we could determine whether she was venerated or not, such as
finding a shrine or long-lost OE text that refers to such praxes, although the
prospects for either seems unlikely.
Both Brian Branston in The Lost Gods of England (1957) and Gale R. Owen
in Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons (1985) casually remarked that Frig
was the consort of Woden.72 Such assumptions must have arisen from a direct
comparison with Norse mythology, where Frigg is described as the consort of
Óðinn in Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda.73 In reality, we have no evidence that
in the mythology of the Anglo-Saxon world, Frig was ever seen as the consort
of Woden or of any other deity, and with the exception of royal genealogies
claiming divine ancestry for socio-economic elites, we have no knowledge of
the relationships between any of the Anglo-Saxon deities. That is not to say
that Anglo-Saxon communities did not see Frig as the consort of Woden, for it
remains a possibility, but it is one with no direct supporting evidence.
Another potentially erroneous conception is that Frig served the role of a god-
dess of love and motherhood. Most notably, Lloyd and Jennifer Laing described
Frig as a “goddess of love and mother of both men and gods” in their book,
Anglo-Saxon England (1979), echoing Branston’s earlier statement that she con-
stituted the Anglo-Saxon “mother of gods and men”; Ronald Hutton similarly
later described her as “a goddess of love or festivity.”74 While we know that
Frig was indeed potentially associated with sex, it is problematic to automati-
cally associate her with love; they are not the same thing. Furthermore, simply

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
3 02 pr eternature
describing her as a “goddess of love” does not resolve the problem of which par-
ticular conception of love we are talking about; romantic, filial, or agapaic? As
already established, we have no idea regarding Frig’s familial relations, render-
ing the comment that she was the “mother of both men and gods” completely
unprovable. Parallels can be seen with the manner in which Eostre, the goddess
briefly mentioned in Bede’s De temporum ratione (‘The Reckoning of Time’), has
been described as a “goddess of spring” both by both those who champion and
those who challenge the accuracy of Bede’s account, despite the complete lack of
any evidence linking that particular deity with the springtime.75
In his primer on Anglo-Saxon England, Peter Hunter Blair described Frig
as a “goddess associated with a fertility cult,” an assessment echoed by Hilda
Ellis Davidson, who referred to her as one of the “fertility deities” of northern
Europe.76 If anything, this is the interpretation that best matches the evidence
available, but is not free from problems. Being associated with sexual activity
is one thing, being part of a cultic practice revolving around fertility is quite
another. Indeed, we needn’t assume that sexual acts were inherently linked to
fertility, for the overwhelming majority of sexual acts possible between one (or
more) human beings do not result in procreation. Unfortunately, our knowledge
of sexual activity and the taboos surrounding it is very slim for the pre-Christian
era, although we do have textual sources pertaining to the later Christian
period indicating that a variety of different practices, both heterosexual and
homosexual, were known to exist.77
These misinterpretations have in turn been adopted by a wider, non-
academic audience, including members of the Neo-Pagan community, who have
re-adopted these old gods for their own contemporary spiritual needs. While the
interdisciplinary field of Pagan studies has blossomed in recent years, with some
work being done on the new religious movement of Heathenry that seeks to
resurrect the veneration of the deities found in Germanic Europe, littleresearch
has been done into those groups whose focus is on Anglo-Saxon England.78
In Hammer of the Gods: Anglo-Saxon Paganism in Modern Times (2003),
a book propagating such a Heathen revival, the author, Swain Wodening, states
that Frig was Woden’s wife and “the most powerful of the goddesses,” holding
“immense wisdom” and ruling over Asgardr as its “noble queen.” Wodening
furthermore remarks that her domain was that of the household, and that she
was associated with spinning and weaving. A very similar picture is painted by
Alaric Albertsson in his book on Anglo-Saxon Neo-Paganism, Travels Through
Middle-Earth: The Path of a Saxon Pagan (2009). Also labeling Frig as the con-
sort of Woden, he describes her as being “sovereign over household and domes-

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
tic affairs” and over “marriages and childbirth,” again propagating ideas for
which we have no evidence.79
Aside from Heathenry, other contemporary Pagan religions have also
adopted an influence from the mythologies of Anglo-Saxon England. Most
notable among these has been Wicca, the religion of Pagan Witchcraft that
first arose to public notice in 1950s England. Two of Britain’s most publicly
visible Wiccans were Stewart and Janet Farrar, whose The Witches’ Goddess:
The Feminine Principle of Divinity (1987) culminates in a catalogue of female
divinities from different mythologies from across the world; here, Frig was
homogenized alongside the Norse deities Frigg and Freya as the “most revered
of the Teutonic goddesses,” with descriptions taken from Norse mythology.80
Another significant figure in the early development of Wicca was Raymond
Buckland, an Englishman who helped to establish the religion in the United
States, later founding the tradition of Seax-Wica, blending Anglo-Saxon ico-
nography with the traditional duotheism of Wiccan religion. In The Tree: The
Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft (1974), a work propagating this tradition to a
wider audience, he described a duotheistic system devoted to Woden and Freya,
personifications of the ancient “God of Nature” and “Goddess of Fertility.”
In referring to “Freya” rather than “Frigg,” Buckland’s approach was further
conflating Scandinavian and Anglo-Saxon mythological systems.81 Of course, if
contemporary Pagans wish to view Frig as the consort of Woden, or as a deity
of the household, then that is a perfectly legitimate part of their new religious
beliefs, but it does perpetuate misconceptions about the past, and about the
very societies to which they look for inspiration. For those Heathens who con-
sider themselves Reconstructionists, following in the exact footsteps of the early
medieval English, this situation would be particularly problematic.
conclusions
As I hope that this article makes clear, our evidence for a goddess known as
Frig existing within the mythology of early Anglo-Saxon England—and being
venerated by early Anglo-Saxons—is far less reliable than has been previously
assumed by scholars discussing Anglo-Saxon paganism. What could perhaps
be called the “traditional” view was that she was a goddess associated with love
and sexuality who was imported to Britain during the Anglo-Saxon migration,
and whose veneration was gradually supplanted by Christianization; at the
same time, she was often thought of as the consort of Woden, being a mater-

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
3 04 pr eternature
nal figure who looked over both gods and humans. Having explored those five
areas of evidence that have been used to argue for the existence of Frig, I do
not think that this view can be outright dismissed, but it is clearly not the only
option available. As Shaw has argued, the theophoric days of the week might
have entered Anglo-Saxon England in an elite Christian context, with “Friday”
therefore gaining its name from people who knew little of pre-Christian cults,
but had perhaps heard of a Frig cult elsewhere on the continent. Similarly, only
one Frig toponym has been securely dated to the Anglo-Saxon period, that of
Friden in Derbyshire, and even then we have no evidence that it refers to a god-
dess Frig and not some other individual of the same name; equally, the name
could have developed in a Christian context by those who knew little of paganism.
The fact that the common noun frig referred to sex does in no way mean
that a deity of that name actually existed, while the archaeological evidence
obtained so far is inadmissible. In itself, the existence of the Norse Frigg does
not prove the existence of an Anglo-Saxon Frig, and it can even be argued that
English accounts of Frig were actually referencing Frigg, who had been intro-
duced through Danish incursions. In such a scenario, it could be argued that
there never had been a deity in early Anglo-Saxon England known as Frig at
all, and that instead she was a later creation of Christian authors who were
trying to understand the pre-Christian past through reference to the cults of
neighboring societies. This is a similar scenario to that regarding the figure of
Woden presented by Shaw, where he argued that such a deity might never have
existed in England, instead being a later Christianized figure based loosely on
a localized deity found among the Alamanni and Langobards in the western
Danube region of continental Europe.82 Such a view not only has repercussions
for how future scholars should look at Frig and other supposed deities of pre-
Christian England, but also has ramifications for adherents of Anglo-Saxon
Neo-Paganism, who might be venerating a deity who in fact never really existed
in the Early Middle Ages.
Such a pessimistic outlook should not stop future scholars from searching
for further evidence that might shine light on this mysterious figure. This article
should not be seen as authoritative, and I hope that it serves as a platform for
others—particularly those with expertise in philology—from which to embark
on future research. Perhaps a search of late iron age votive inscriptions for
evidence of any deity names that are etymologically related to Frig might prove
fruitful, just as it proved useful in shedding light on the potential existence of
the goddess Eostre.83 Archaeological investigation of those locales with poten-
tial etymological links to Frig might reveal evidence of cultic practice. Perhaps, if

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
we are very, very lucky, some rare manuscript might be discovered in an archive
somewhere, much like the Charter of King Edgar, containing the transcription
of an Old English text revealing more about this puzzling figure from England’s
past. At the same time we must accept that we will never really understand Frig,
a mysterious entity who shall forever remain an enigma.
n ot e s
Ethan Doyle White, a doctoral candidate at University College London, would like to thank
the two anonymous scholars who kindly gave up some of their time to peer review this article,
and who provided him with a number of constructive comments.
1. The accuracy of such terms has for instance been challenged in the context of the
Maya; see Elizabeth Graham, Maya Christians and Their Churches in Sixteenth-Century
Belize (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2011), 89–92. Conversely, the term has been
controversially championed by Prudence Jones and Nigel Pennick, A History of Pagan Europe
(New York: Routledge, 1995); Ken Dowden, European Paganism: The Realities of Cult from
Antiquity to the Middle Ages (New York: Routledge, 2000); Michael York, Pagan Theology:
Paganism as World Religion (New York: New York University Press, 2003). For a concise
etymology of the term see Owen Davies, Paganism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 1–6.
2. David Turton, in the “discussion” to Ian N. Wood, “Pagan Religions and Supersti-
tions East of the Rhine from the Fifth to the Ninth Century,” in After Empire: Towards
an Ethnology of Europe’s Barbarians, ed. G. Ausenda (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1995), 276–77;
Chris Scull, review of Signals of Belief in Early England, by Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark,
and Sarah Semple, eds., British Archaeology 118 (May–June 2011): 55. Having its origins in
anthropological terminology, the use of “traditional religion” for Anglo-Saxon England was
put forward by John Hines, “Religion: The Limits of Knowledge,” in The Anglo-Saxons
from the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: An Ethnographic Perspective, ed. John Hines
(Woodbridge: Boydell, 1997), 375–410.
3. Wood, “Pagan Religions and Superstitions East of the Rhine,” 253.
4. Sarah Semple, Perceptions of the Prehistoric in Anglo-Saxon England: Religion, Ritual
and Rulership in the Landscape (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
5. Most scholars of Anglo-Saxon Paganism have chosen to ignore the intensely problem-
atic question of how to define “religion.” A notable exception is Hines, “Religion,” 376–77.
6. For more on this historiography see Eric Gerald Stanley, The Search for A nglo-Saxon
Paganism (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1975); Sue Content and Howard
Williams, “Creating the Pagan English: From the Tudors to the Present Day,” in Signals of
Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, ed. Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark,
and Sarah Semple (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 181–200.
7. Audrey Meaney, “Woden in England: A Reconsideration of the Evidence,” Folklore
77, no. 2 (1966): 105–15; Audrey Meaney, Anglo-Saxon Amulets and Curing-Stones (Oxford:
British Archaeological Reports, 1981); Audrey Meaney, “Pagan English Sanctuaries, Place-

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
3 06 preter natur e
Names and Hundred Meeting Places,” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 8
(1995): 29–42; David Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism (New York: Routledge, 1992); Brian
Branston, The Lost Gods of England (London: Thames and Hudson, 1957); Hilda Ellis David-
son, The Sword in Anglo-Saxon England: Its Archaeology and Literature (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1962); Hilda Ellis Davidson, Gods and Myths of Northern Europe (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 1964); Hilda Ellis Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of Northern Europe (New York:
Routledge, 1993); Hilda Ellis Davidson, Roles of the Northern Goddess (New York: Routledge,
1998).
8. Philip A. Shaw, “Uses of Wodan: The Development of His Cult and of Medieval
Literary Responses to It” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Leeds, 2002); Philip A. Shaw, Pagan
Goddesses in the Early Germanic World: Eostre, Hreda and the Cult of Matrons (London:
Bristol Classical Press, 2011).
9. Ronald Hutton, The Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles: Their Nature and Legacy
(Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 268–83; Ronald Hutton, Pagan Britain (New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press, 2013), 293–321; Ronald Hutton, “Afterword: Caveats and Cultures,” in Signals of
Belief in Early England: Anglo-Saxon Paganism Revisited, ed. Martin Carver, Alex Sanmark,
and Sarah Semple (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2010), 201–6.
10. Hutton, “Afterword,” 202–3.
11. Richard North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1997); Stephen J. Yeates, The Tribe of Witches: The Religion of the Dobunni
and Hwicce (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2008); Stephen J. Yeates, A Dreaming for the Witches:
A Recreation of the Dobunni Primal Myth (Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2009).
12. John Hines, review of Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, by Richard North, Early
Medieval Europe 8 (1999): 418–20; T. A. Shippey, review of Heathen Gods in Old English Lit-
erature, by Richard North, The Modern Language Review 95 (2000): 170–71; Stephen Pol-
lington, The Elder Gods: The Otherworld of Early England (Ely: Anglo-Saxon Books, 2011),
26; Shaw, “Uses of Wodan,” 21; Peter S. Wells, review of The Tribe of Witches, by Stephen
H. Yeates, Cambridge Archaeological Journal 19 (2009): 283–84; Simon Rodway, review of The
Tribe of Witches, by Stephen H. Yeates, Britannia 40 (2009): 397–98; Della Hooke, review
of The Tribe of Witches, by Stephen H. Yeates, British Archaeology 104 ( January/February
2009): 53; Jeremy Harte, review of The Tribe of Witches, by Stephen H. Yeates, Time and
Mind: The Journal of Archaeology, Consciousness and Culture 4, no. 1 (2011): 123–26.
13. “Friday, n. and adv.,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/74638?;
“Frinight, n.,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/74747?.
14. Meaney, “Pagan English Sanctuaries, Place-Names and Hundred Meeting Places,” 33.
15. Such reasoning is put forward, for instance, by Hutton, Pagan Britain, 297.
16. Jacob Grimm, Teutonic Mythology: Volume I (1883; repr., Mineola, N.Y.: Dover, 2004),
122–23; Udo Strutynski, “Germanic Deities in Weekday Names,” Journal of Indo-European
Studies 3 (1975): 363–84; Christine E. Fell, “Paganism in Beowulf: A Semantic Fairy-Tale,”
in Pagans and Christians: The Interplay Between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic
Cultures in Early Medieval Europe, ed. T. Hofstra, L. A. J. R. Houwen, and A. A. MacDonald
(Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1995), 18; Philip Shaw, “The Origins of the Theophoric Week
in the Germanic Languages,” Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007): 386–401. Of potential interest

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
on this process is Cecil H. Brown, “Naming the Days of the Week: A Cross-Language Study
of Lexical Acculturation,” Current Anthropology 30, no. 4 (1989): 536–50.
17. Peter Hunter Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 3rd ed. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2003), 357.
18. Homilies of Ælfric: A Supplementary Collection: Volume II, ed. John C. Pope (London:
Oxford University Press, 1968), p. 686, ll. 176–77.
19. Translated by North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, 256.
20. Ælfric’s Life of Saints: Being a Set of Sermons on Saints’ Days Formerly Observed by
the English Church: Volume II, ed. W. W. Skeat (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1966),
p. 265, ll. 216–17.
21. Translated by North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, 256.
22. North, Heathen Gods in Old English Literature, 256–57.
23. Laȝamon, Brut, eds. G. L. Brook and R. F. Leslie (Oxford: Oxford University Press:
1963), p. 360, ll. 6943–52. In my quotation, the Tironian “et” symbol has had to be rendered
as “and.”
24. Lawman: Brut, trans. R. Allen (London: J. M. Dent & and Sons, 1992), ll. 6943–52.
25. Kathleen Herbert, Looking for the Lost Gods of England (Hockwold-cum-Wilton,
Norfolk: Anglo-Saxon Books, 1994), 24.
26. Shaw, “Uses of Wodan,” 171.
27. Pollington, Elder Gods, 242.
28. Ibid., 215.
29. John Mitchell Kemble, The Saxons in England: A History of the English Commonwealth
till the Period of the Norman Conquest—Volume I (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and
Longmans, 1849), 343–46; E. A. Philippson, Germanisches Heidentum bei den Angelsach-
sen (Leipzig: B. Tauchnitz, 1929); Bruce Dickson, “English Names and Old English Hea-
thenism,” Essays and Studies by Members of the English Association 19 (1934): 148–60; Eilert
Ekwall, “Some Notes on English Place-Names Containing Names of Heathen Deities,”
Englische Studien 70 (1935): 56–59; Frank Merry Stenton, “The Historical Bearing of Place-
Name Studies: Anglo-Saxon Heathenism,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th
ser., 23 (1941): 1–24; Henry E. Bannard, “Some English Sites of Ancient Heathen Worship,”
Hibbert Journal 44 (1945): 76–79; Margaret Gelling, “Place-Names and Anglo-Saxon Pagan-
ism,” University of Birmingham Historical Journal 8 (1961): 7–25; Margaret Gelling, “Further
Thoughts on Pagan Place-Names,” in Otium et Negotium: Studies in Onomatology and Library
Science Presented to Olof von Feilitzen, ed. F. Sandgren (Stockholm: P. A. Norstedt & Sons,
1973), 109–28; reprinted in Place-Name Evidence for the Anglo-Saxon Invasion and Scandinavian
Settlements: Eight Studies, ed. Kenneth Cameron (Nottingham: English Place-Name
Society, 1977), 99–114.
30. Kenneth Cameron, The Place-Names of Derbyshire, Part II (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1959), 369; Nicholas Brooks, Margaret Gelling, and Douglas Johnson,
“A New Charter of King Edgar,” Anglo-Saxon England 13 (1984): 137–55; Audrey Meaney,
“Paganism,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Michael Lapidge,
John Blair, Simon Keynes, and Donald Scragg (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), 351.
31. Ekwall, “Some Notes on English Place-Names Containing Names of Heathen Deities,” 58.

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
3 08 pr eternature
32. Della Hooke, Trees in Anglo-Saxon England: Literature, Lore and Landscape, Anglo-
Saxon Studies 13 (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2010), 31–35. For a wider European look on
such practices and the Christian prohibitions against them, see Valerie I. J. Flint, The Rise of
Magic in Early Medieval Europe (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1991), 204–16.
33. Albert Hugh Smith, The Place-Names of Gloucestershire, Part II (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1995), 178.
34. Ekwall, “Some Notes on English Place-Names Containing Names of Heathen
Deities,” 58.
35. Margaret Gelling and Ann Cole, The Landscape of Place-Names (Stamford: Shaun
Tyas, 2000), 137.
Deities,” 58.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
40. Hines, “Religion,” 386.
Deities,” 58.
42. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World, 64–67.
43. Stenton, “Historical Bearing of Place-Name Studies,” 16; Gelling, “Place-Names and
Anglo-Saxon Paganism,” 19.
45. Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 21.
46. Stephanie Hollis, “The Minster-in-Thanet Foundation Story,” Anglo-Saxon England
27 (1998): 41–64.
47. Shaw, “Uses of Wodan,” 33–34.
48. Christine Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England (London: Colonnade, 1984), 28.
49. “Christ,” in The Exeter Book, ed. George Philip Krapp and Elliot van Kirk Dobbie
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1936), pp. 4 and 14, ll. 37 and 419. For more on this
poem, see Donald Scragg, “Advent Lyrics,” in The Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Anglo-Saxon
England, ed. Michael Lapidge et al., John Blair, Simon Keynes and Donald Scragg (Oxford
and Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell, 1999), 5.
50. Cynewulf, Juliana, ed. Rosemary Woolf (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1977),
p. 25, l. 103; Cynewulf, Elene, ed. P. O. E. Gradon (Exeter: University of Exeter, 1977), p. 40,
l. 341. For more on Cynewulf, see Jane Roberts, “Cynewulf,” in Blackwell Encyclopaedia of
Anglo-Saxon England, ed. Lapidge et al., 133–35.
51. Deor, ed. Kemp Malone (Exeter: Exeter University Press, 1977), p. 25, line 15.
52. “Frig, v.,” Oxford English Dictionary, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/74675#eid3728294.
53. Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, ed. and trans. L. Sherley-Price, in Bede: A History of the
English Church and People (London: Penguin, 1968); the accuracy of using Bede has been
disputed, see R.I. Page, “Anglo-Saxon Paganism: The Evidence of Bede,” in Pagans and
Christians: The Interplay between Christian Latin and Traditional Germanic Cultures in Early
Medieval Europe, ed. T. Hofstra, L.A.J.R. Houwen and A.A. MacDonald (Groningen:
Egbert Forsten, 1995), 99–129; S.D. Church, “Paganism in Conversion-Age Anglo-Saxon

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
England: The Evidence of Bede’s Ecclesiastical History Reconsidered,” History 93, no. 310
(2008): 162–80.
54. John Yonge Akerman, Remains of Pagan Saxondom (London: John Russell Smith,
1853), xx, xxv.
55. Hutton, Pagan Religions of the Ancient British Isles, 274.
56. Pollington, Elder Gods, 215–16.
57. For more on this issue see David Wilson, “A Note on OE hearg and weoh as Place-
Name Elements Representing Different Types of Pagan Worship Sites,” Anglo-Saxon Studies
in Archaeology and History 4 (1985): 179–83; Wilson, Anglo-Saxon Paganism, 44–66; John
Blair, “Anglo-Saxon Pagan Shrines and Their Prototypes,” Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archae-
ology and History 8 (1995): 1–28; Meaney, “Pagan English Sanctuaries, Place-Names and
Hundred Meeting Places,” 29–42; Sarah Semple, “Defining the OE Hearg: A Preliminary
Archaeological and Topographic Examination of Hearg Place- Names and Their Hinter-
lands,” Early Medieval Europe 15 (2007): 364–85.
58. Brian Hope Taylor, Yeavering: An Anglo-British Centre of Early Northumbria (London:
Her Majesty’s Stationary, 1977); Chris Scull, “Post-Roman Phase 1 at Yeavering: A Recon-
sideration,” Medieval Archaeology 35 (1991): 51–63.
59. Semple, “Defining the OE Hearg,” 372.
60. J. Bagnall-Smith, “Interim Report on the Votive Material from Romano-Celtic
Temple Sites in Oxfordshire,” Oxoniensia 60 (1995): 177–204; Margaret Gelling, The Place-
Names of Oxfordshire, Volume I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), 195.
61. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World, 15.
62. “Die Merseburger Zaubersprücher,” in Althochdeutsches Lesebuch, ed. Wilhelm
Braune (Halle [Saale]: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1942), 80.
63. Stephen Grundy, “Freyja and Frigg,” in The Concept of the Goddess, ed. Sandra Billing-
ton and Miranda Green (London and New York: Routledge, 1996), 64.
64. There have been problems with scholarly publications erroneously rendering the
Anglo-Saxon Frig as “Frigg,” which is the Old Norse name of the Scandinavian deity. See,
for instance, Martin Welch, “Pre-Christian Practices in the Anglo-Saxon World,” in The
Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology of Ritual and Religion, ed. Timothy Insoll (Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2011), 863; and Hutton, Pagan Britain, 297–98.
65. Britt-Mari Näsström, Freyja: The Great Goddess of the North (Lund: Nova Press, 1995),
6–10.
66. Grundy, “Freyja and Frigg,” 56.
67. Ibid., 56–67.
68. Tacitus, “Germania,” in The Agricola and The Germania, ed. and trans. H. Mattingly,
rev. S. A. Handford (London: Penguin Books, 1970), 101–41.
69. Jan de Vries, Altgermanische Religionsgeschichte II (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1970),
165; Georges Dumézil, From Myth to Fiction: The Saga of Hadingus (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1973), 221–29.
70. Frank Stenton, Anglo-Saxon England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 99.
71. Jeremy Harte, “The Devil’s Chapel: Fiends, Fear and Folklore at Prehistoric Sites,” in
Written on Stone: The Cultural Reception of British Prehistoric Monuments, ed. Joanne Parker
(Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2009), 23–35.

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC
3 1 0 pr eternature
72. Branston, Lost Gods of England, 127; Gale R. Owen, Rites and Religions of the
Anglo-Saxons (Totowa, N.J.: Barnes and Noble, 1981), 22.
73. Owen was criticized for using Scandinavian evidence in such a manner by
Peter S. Baker, review of Rites and Religions of the Anglo-Saxons, by Gale R. Owen, Albion:
A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies, Vol. 13, no. 4 (Winter 1981): 393.
74. Lloyd Laing and Jennifer Laing, Anglo-Saxon England (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1979), 86; Branston, Lost Gods of England, 42; Hutton, Pagan Religions of the Ancient
British Isles, 267.
75. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World, 55.
76. Blair, An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon England, 123; Davidson, The Lost Beliefs of
Northern Europe, 56.
77. Fell, Women in Anglo-Saxon England, 56–73; Hugh Magennis, “No Sex Please, We’re
Anglo-Saxons? Attitudes to Sexuality in Anglo-Saxon Prose and Poetry,” Leeds Studies in
English 26 (1995): 1–27; Allen J. Frantzen, “Between the Lines: Queer Theory, the History
of Homosexuality, and Anglo-Saxon Penitentials,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies 26 (1996): 255–96; Carol Pasternack and Lisa M.C. Weston, eds., Sex and Sexuality
in Anglo-Saxon England: Essays in Memory of Daniel Gillmore Calder (Tempe, Ariz.: Arizona
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2004).
78. Notable examples of academic research into Heathenry include Jenny Blain, Nine
Worlds of Seid-Magic: Ecstasy and Neo-Shamanism in North European Paganism (London:
Routledge, 2002); Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan Revival and White Separatism
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2003); Michael F. Strmiska and Baldur A. Sigurvinsson,
“Asatru: Nordic Paganism in Iceland and America,” in Modern Paganism in World Cultures:
Comparative Perspectives, ed. Michael F. Strmiska (Santa Barbara, Calif.: ABC-CLIO, 2005),
127–180; Jenny Blain, “Heathenry, the Past, and Sacred Sites in Today’s Britain,” in Modern
Paganism in World Cultures, ed. Strmiska, 181–208.
79. Swain Wodening, Hammer of the Gods: Anglo-Saxon Paganism in Modern Times
(Little Elm, Tex.: Angleseaxisce Ealdriht, 2003), 70–71; Alaric Albertsson, Travels Through
Middle Earth: The Path of a Saxon Pagan (St. Paul, Minn.: Llewellyn, 2009), 29.
80. Janet Farrar and Stewart Farrar, The Witches’ Goddess: The Feminine Principle of Divin-
ity (London: Robert Hale, 1987), 221–22. For more on the early development of the Wiccan
religion, see Ronald Hutton, The Triumph of the Moon: A History of Modern Pagan Witchcraft
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999); Ethan Doyle White, “The Meaning of ‘Wicca’:
A Study in Etymology, History and Pagan Politics,” The Pomegranate: The International Jour-
nal of Pagan Studies 12, no. 2 (2010): 185–207.
81. Raymond Buckland, The Tree: The Complete Book of Saxon Witchcraft (York Beach,
Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1974), 18–21.
82. Shaw, “Uses of Wodan,” 233–36.
83. Shaw, Pagan Goddesses in the Early Germanic World, 37–48.

156.26.17.11 on Mon, 24 Apr 2023 23:27:03 UTC

2014 - The Goddess Frig Reassessing An Anglo-Saxon Deity

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

You might also like

2014 - The Goddess Frig Reassessing An Anglo-Saxon Deity

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

2014 - The Goddess Frig Reassessing An Anglo-Saxon Deity

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Goddess Frig:: Reassessing an Anglo-Saxon Deity

Author(s): Ethan Doyle White

This content downloaded from

preternature, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2014

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 284 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 285 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

figure with the hypothetical Proto-Germanic name of *Frijjo. According to this

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 286 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 287 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

parts of the continent. In Latin, the administrative language of the Roman

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 288 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 289 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

ȝet we habbeð anne læuedi; þe hæh is and mæhti.

We have a lady who is most high and mighty

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 290 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 291 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

thirteenth century, it appears in a Middle English text as Stanifridenmuth, lead-

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 292 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 293 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 294 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

references within old english literature

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 295 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

research on the development of frig in Middle English might hopefully unearth

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 296 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

easily represent a different goddess or mythological figure, or be amulets or toys

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 297 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

The study of Anglo-Saxon paganism should never be seen in isolation, and it is

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 298 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 299 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

what have archaeologists, historians,

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 300 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 301 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 302 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 303 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 304 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from

PN 3.2_03_Doyle White.indd 305 30/08/14 1:44 PM

This content downloaded from