Freyja ("Lady") was the chief female god of the Vanir, twin sister of Freyr, daughter of Njord. She was the goddess of love and beauty, but also of war and of magic; her dominions overlapped substantially with those of Frigg the queen of the Aesir, and the two were sometimes confused, but the older sources keep them distinct. Freyja drove a chariot drawn by two cats and rode the boar Hildisvíni. She owned the marvelous necklace Brísingamen, won at the cost of spending a night each with the four dwarves who had made it (a transaction Loki had spied upon and reported to Odin, who took the necklace and required her to instigate a war between two earthly kings as ransom for its return). She had a magical falcon-cloak that gave the wearer the power of flight. She received half of those slain in battle (the other half going to Odin's Valhalla); her hall was Sessrúmnir in the field of Folkvangr.

She was the great teacher of seid, the form of magic that Odin had learned from her — magic of prophecy, of binding, of altering the unfolding of fate, considered shameful for men to practice but proper to women. She had been married to a god named Óðr, who had vanished on long journeys; she wandered the worlds searching for him and weeping golden tears (her tears, by the Eddic kennings, became gold on land and amber on the sea). Whether Óðr was her actual lost husband or whether the figure was a doubling of Odin himself is a question modern scholars have variously answered; the etymological identity of the names is suggestive.