object
Brísingamen
Freyja's famous necklace. It bursts when she rages at Thor in Þrymskviða, Thor wears it disguised as her, and Loki and Heimdall once fought over it in the shape of seals.
Brísingamen is Freyja's necklace. Snorri states only that "Freyja had the necklace Brísinga-men" Gylfaginning 35 and lists it among the things the poets use to name her Skáldskaparmál 20. The poems show it in use.
In Þrymskviða the giant Thrym demands Freyja as the price of Thor's hammer. When Thor tells her to put on the bridal veil, she snorts with rage, the gods' hall shakes, "And burst was the mighty Brisings' necklace" Þrymskviða 12. Heimdall then proposes that Thor go in her place wearing the necklace Þrymskviða 14, and so he does Þrymskviða 18 (see Thrym steals Thor's hammer).
The necklace was also the prize in a lost myth. Snorri calls Heimdall "Seeker of Freyja's Necklace" and says he fought Loki for it at Singasteinn, the two of them in the shape of seals, as told in Úlfr Uggason's poem Húsdrápa Skáldskaparmál 8. Loki in turn is "Thief ... of Brísinga-men" Skáldskaparmál 16, and the poem Haustlöng calls him "the necklace-robber, Brísinga's thief" Skáldskaparmál 22. Put together, Loki seems to have stolen the necklace and Heimdall to have won it back, but no surviving source tells the story in full.
The name appears outside Scandinavia as well. The Old English poem Beowulf compares a splendid neck-ring to the "Brosinga mene" that a hero called Hama once carried off, which suggests the necklace was famous across the Germanic world.
In the sources
Quoted from the hosted translations; each line is checked against the text when the site is built. Select a reference to read it in context.
Freyja had the necklace Brísinga-men.
Wrathful was Freyja, and fiercely she snorted, And the dwelling great of the gods was shaken, And burst was the mighty Brisings' necklace
Then bound they on Thor the bridal veil, And next the mighty Brisings' necklace.
he is also Frequenter of Vágasker and Singasteinn, where he contended with Loki for the Necklace Brísinga-men
Where the sources disagree or fall silent
- How Freyja got the necklace. The best-known story, in which she spends a night with each of four dwarves to buy it, comes from Sörla þáttr, a much later saga tale, not from the Eddas.
- Why Heimdall and Loki fought over it, and why Loki is called 'Brísinga's thief' in Haustlöng (Skáldskaparmál 22): the theft story is lost.
In modern culture
Not from the medieval sources.
Brísingamen gave its name to Alan Garner's novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960), in which the 'weirdstone' has little to do with the Norse necklace.
