#gefjun

As she said, thewitchofthenorse‘s post represents her personal perspective and everyone is entitled to autonomy in how they approach their deities. But I still want to add my perspective to the discussion because while the aforementioned post is well-informed by generally-accepted academic positions on Gefjon, I spent over a year in academic institutions attacking those positions. I also do feel that there are some things that are not personal, which are literally incorrect, that are so ubiquitous in English-language discourse.

I will be referring to my MA thesis on the etymology of the word Gefjun which is accessible here: https://skemman.is/handle/1946/19599. Though primarily a linguistics paper one chapter is dedicated to describing her appearances in literature. References for everything I say below can be found in there (except Heimir Pálsson and Böðvar Guðmundsson 2015, which hadn’t come out yet).

Gefjon does not mean ‘the giving one’ (begin boring linguistics stuff)

Concerning her name, a definition ‘the giving one’ is completely untenable and unambiguously wrong. Albert Morey Sturtevant pointed out that it was wrong in 1952 and proposed a solution that he himself said required more research, but which was accepted uncritically by Richard North (who said the name derives from a verb *gefja, which never occurs anywhere but for some reason he knows it means ‘to give’), and which I disproved in 2014.

In researching for the paper I collected over 100 attestations of the word Gefjun in medieval and post-medieval manuscripts and I found that contrary to common understanding of Norse and Icelandic phonology the word is written “gefion” with unstressed “o” the vast majority of times. This should be impossible based on uncontroversial fact about unstressed vowels in Norse/Icelandic (hence, it’s normalized to Gefjun in most Icelandic literature or according to the Íslenzk fornrit standard). The solution I proposed was that it’s actually ǫ, thus, Gefjǫn, with a secondary stress-bearing Herrschersuffix like the -inn in Óðinn (which should yield Ǿðinn with i-umlaut unless some barrier stands between the root óð- and the suffix -inn, of the same type that would allow a full vowel range including ǫ in Gefjǫn). The sequence jǫ is usually written “io” in Old Norse manuscripts (e.g. “iotvn” jǫtunn). This suffix is well-known throughout Indo-European languages and can also be found in names like Epona, Perkūnas, etc.

This discovery made the standard position that the name is a deverbal from a hypothetical verb *gefja extremely unlikely as I was unable to find an example of this suffix attaching to a verb, nor did “gefion” comply with the orthographic expectations of such a deverbal (we’d expect “gefian,” which occurs only once, like 80% of the time, and “gefion” no more than a handful of times). That led to a new search for a root. At least two (Siegfried Gutenbrunner and Sverre Stausland Johnsen), maybe three (not sure if Günter Neumann got it from Gutenbrunner) scholars have independently and for different reasons proposed a Proto-Germanic noun *gabī ~ gabjō- underlying words like Goth. gabei ‘wealth, riches,’ ON gǫfugr ‘noble,’ and most interestingly Gabiae -- deities worshiped in Roman-occupied Germania. I was not able to determine what such a word should have meant at the time the name Gefjon was coined (at which time it was probably *gabj-an-ō or *gabj-an-u depending on timing -- I don’t think it’s possible to date this any more specifically than “probably pre-Norse”). But a lexical set based on its descendant words includes wealth, nobility, abundance, property (especially dowry/women’s inheritance).

(end boring linguistics stuff)

It’s also worth reminding that the word mær ‘virgin’ does not mean that the mær has never had sex. I made that statement in a conference presentation to an audience of Old Norse studies scholars and received exactly no pushback on that point. When John Lindow says that Gefjon doesn’t make any sense because she’s a virgin but has sex in her myths, he is being intellectually dishonest. When Heimir Pálsson and Böðvar Guðmundsson said in 2015 that Gefjon “sacrificed her [distinguishing feature of] virginity” to expand Óðinn’s kingdom this was malevolent ignorance (fortunately that was in Icelandic so it’s doubtful anyone read it). Her analogue in Saxo’s version of the plowing myth is an unmarried “matron,” an old woman, presumably a widow. So her characterization as a mær means that she is unmarried and perhaps theoretically “available” for marriage (which has its own set of theoretical implications) but definitely not that her having sex in the myths (multiple times) is a contradiction.

Gefjon’s position is imo best understood in light of Margaret Clunies Ross’s argument in Prolonged Echoes that there existed a recognized social status in Old Norse society that can be described as women who needed to accomplish tasks that corresponded to a masculine gender role. This position was accompanied by a set of symbolic actions that were unique to this position -- that is, women accomplished tasks usually assigned to men, but not the same way they did. An example that I think Clunies Ross did not mention, but which clearly fits the description, is the land-claim of Þorgerðr, whose husband died on the way to Iceland, in chapter 276 of the Hauksbók version of Landnámabók. While most land claims were made by circling the land with fire, hers was made by “lead[ing] a well-burdened two-winter-old heifer in an autumn-long day” around the land she was claiming. The similarity to the myth of Gefjon plowing should be apparent. We can contrast this to a woman who accomplishes masculine-coded tasks the masculine-coded way (e.g. Skaði).

As a side-note, I think that Clunies Ross disproved Carol Clover’s use of the one-gender model with this section, just a year after Clover proposed it, but the one-gender model continues to proliferate (perhaps because not as many people read Prolonged Echoes as claim to have).

This leads further to the conclusions made by Else Mundal that there is something a little “off” about Gefjon compared to the other goddesses. She does things usually only available to male gods (and jötnar), like fucking jötnar, fucking for specifically utilitarian reasons, and (or so it would appear from Lokasenna) taking a sexually dominant role. We might even be able to add “creation of landscape” to this. Her name is apparently unavailable to skálds making kennings for women, and the only time her name is used in kennings it’s to refer specifically to a völva (Gróa). In Droplaugarsona saga her name is shared by an assassin who appears disguised as a healer to get revenge for the man to whom she was a concubine (no, this isn’t the goddess, but I would compare the thematic use of names like “Heiðr” for völur, etc -- it’s worth asking why this name in particular was used). Bragi Boddason refers to the island she took from Gylfi as valrauf ‘war-booty.’ It should also be pointed out that while Gylfi is made into a human by Snorri for the purpose of his Euhemerized history, there is no compulsion to believe Bragi believed Gylfi was human. Indeed, Gylfi appears as a supernatural figure in later Icelandic folklore when he is invoked to cause a snowstorm. By interpretatio norrœna her name is regularly used in place of Diana in translations of Latin texts -- another goddess whose “virginity” does not correspond to the modern accepted use of the word. She’s one of the 13 deities denounced by name in Klements saga, perhaps indicating that in the centuries after conversion she was considered to have been important earlier (though, this being a translation, it could also be explained by interpretatio norrœna, though it’s unclear which god is which if that’s the case). In Lokasenna, after Gefjon attempts deescalation (one of the few who does) and Loki lashes back, it’s Óðinn who steps in and reminds Loki that he would not want to make an enemy of her. It’s practically inconceivable that her worship is unconnected to the Gabiae of Roman Germania but most scholars have been prevented from making this connection due to the long history of bad linguistics -- a technique probably only resorted to in the first place because actually accepting “mær who fucks” at face value was ruled out. That’s not to say that they’re the same, but this connection has hardly been explored at all.

A somewhat reductionist, but not completely inaccurate, way to describe Gefjon is to say that she does all of the things that Óðinn does, but is determined socially into a different position in the heavily gendered Old Norse society as a result of these actions. Her toolset is trickery, magic, sex, knowledge of the future. The society that recognized her was one where women’s marital status was a resource exploited by men with ambition to secure allegiances, etc, and her perpetual “maidenhood” is a negation of that, and according to Snorri she watches after others who died either having lived outside of the expectations of society by never marrying, or died before they could be sold off. She embodies the seizure of autonomy by those whom society does not grant autonomy. She won Sjælland by exploiting Gylfi’s underestimation of her, and then was subjected to over a century of not being taken seriously by Old Norse scholars because she was too difficult to explain using the models of Norse society they’d constructed which included an unjustified assumption of uniform, cross-class misogyny.

Now for some of my personal interpretation of this stuff. Gefjon has typically been seen as an “agricultural” goddess, a position bolstered by an etymology of her name meaning ‘the giving one’ indicated a generous goddess of the earth’s abundance. I think this is taking the wrong angle. I see her as more likely a territorial goddess. She isn’t the earth, she claims the earth, in a legally-recognized way (or existing in dialogue with legal procedures) using technology (a plow) and domesticated animals (with their balls chopped off). If we are to accept the nature/culture divide (which I don’t, and I don’t think Norse people did) we would have to place Gefjon firmly on the “culture” side. I’m inclined to believe the marriage to Skjǫldr is Snorri’s invention, riffing on the theme of dynastic houses descending from an ancestral figure married to a goddess, though the “perpetual maidenhood” angle might be interpreted in terms of each king’s obligation to a territorial deity (which we might also see in Þorgerðr hölgabrúðr, and reminds of some of the Gaelic goddesses like Medb). Snorri could also have gotten it from Breta sögur, a translation of Geoffrey of Monmouth in which Gefjon (= Diana) directs Brutus in the founding of Britain through divinatory ritual, injecting Gefjon into the context of the origin myth.

I actually think there are some contradictions in the available information about Gefjon like the contrast between the sanctioned seizure of autonomy (by the register of action described by Clunies Ross) and the unsanctioned (use of magic, disguise, subterfuge). My thoughts on interpreting this are not fully developed but I tend to see it as coming from two opposed perspectives. All societies consist of class struggle and these conflicting positions can perhaps be associated with either side of that struggle. Where Gefjon uses unsanctioned or illegal means to achieve her ends (subterfuge, seduction, assassination in disguise if we include Droplaugarsona saga) we see her through the lens of the hegemony to which she is a counterpower. That isn’t to say it should be dismissed, just that it’s being evaluated according to a different value system. Where her actions are sanctioned (a la Clunies Ross) it’s either taking the perspective of the counterpower, or it’s being reinterpreted to be in service to the hegemony (as Snorri does, and, embarrassingly, Heimir Pálsson and Böðvar Guðmundsson). This is of course not actually clear in the literature, and I’m mostly extrapolating on my theories about the social role of seiðr and seiðfolk as counterpower against centralizing autocracy under supra-regional kings like Haraldr hárfagri and Eiríkr blóðøx. But Norse Studies’ miserable failure to explain Gefjon is imo related to its refusal to consider any social position other than the hegemonic one, which is then universalized (e.g. “seiðr is bad” but uhhh did you consult the people who did seiðr?).

I don’t have much to add in terms of tips for devotional practice. As I think my blog probably reflects I’m not very manifestly religious. Some non-obvious personal associations that I have are:

manatees (because in Saxo the Gefjon analogue and her children take the form of “seacows,” a type of Scandinavian mythical creature that’s literally just a cow that lives underwater); the Starry Plough and by association Ursa Major/the big dipper;

knitting/wool (because of the now-closed Icelandic company Gefjun, which produced yarn called Gefjunarband -- yeah, this is some bullshit corporatism I wouldn’t expect from me but I can’t turn it off);

plants of genus Artemesia like mugwort and wormwood (by walking back Gefjon > Diana > Artemis);

indirectly, fire, by symbolic equivalence with plowing in land-claim rituals, although keeping in mind that this is both an equivalence AND a contrast; but also because of Lithuanian goddess Gabija and other figures with names beginning gab- (the connection here is usually rejected, and though I have doubts in the reasons for the rejection, I don’t have the knowledge of Lithuanian to investigate further; see Algirdas Greimas’ Of Gods and Men: Studies in Lithuanian Mythology)

Though done dirty by scholars, resulting in obscurity among heathens, some artists actually have done some justice to Gefjon. The most famous is surely Anders Bundgaard‘s Gefion fountain:

There’s also a great poem by Matthías Jochumsson (but is in Icelandic): https://books.google.com/books?id=du0QAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA96&dq=matth%C3%ADas%20jochumsson%20%22gefjun%22&hl=es-419&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiAj6bZmOriAhV0ThUIHW45AKEQ6AEIODAC&fbclid=IwAR1ws_iLYj5wZYRUgJhcXT0kePINbb_RywVUf577XXxpCyOHaueQgnOQsG0#v=onepage&q=GEFJUN&f=false