Editing Freyr (section)

==''Ögmundar þáttr dytts''==
The 14th century Icelandic ''[[Ögmundar þáttr dytts]]'' contains a tradition of how Freyr was transported in a wagon and administered by a priestess, in Sweden. Freyr's role as a fertility god needed a female counterpart in a divine couple (McKinnell's translation 1987<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/3search.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20040610190449/http://userpage.fu-berlin.de/~alvismal/3search.pdf |archive-date=2004-06-10 |url-status=live|title=Heinrichs, Anne: ''The Search for Identity: A Problem after the Conversion'', in ''alvíssmál 3''. pp. 54–55.|access-date=22 May 2020}}</ref>):

{{Blockquote|Great heathen sacrifices were held there at that time, and for a long while Frey had been the god who was worshipped most there – and so much power had been gained by Frey's statue that the devil used to speak to people out of the mouth of the idol, and a young and beautiful woman had been obtained to serve Frey. It was the faith of the local people that Frey was alive, as seemed to some extent to be the case, and they thought he would need to have a sexual relationship with his wife; along with Frey she was to have complete control over the temple settlement and all that belonged to it.}}

In this short story, a man named Gunnar was suspected of manslaughter and escaped to Sweden, where Gunnar became acquainted with this young priestess. He helped her drive Freyr's wagon with the god effigy in it, but the god did not appreciate Gunnar and so attacked him and would have killed Gunnar if he had not promised himself to return to the Christian faith if he would make it back to Norway. When Gunnar had promised this, a demon jumped out of the god effigy and so Freyr was nothing but a piece of wood. Gunnar destroyed the [[Anthropomorphic wooden cult figurines of Central and Northern Europe|wooden idol]] and dressed himself as Freyr, then Gunnar and the priestess travelled across Sweden where people were happy to see the god visiting them. After a while he made the priestess pregnant, but this was seen by the Swedes as confirmation that Freyr was truly a fertility god and not a scam. Finally, Gunnar had to flee back to Norway with his young bride and had her baptized at the court of [[Olaf Tryggvason]].