The captivating goddess Freyja reigns as one of the few prominent women in Norse mythology. Her softer image symbolizes love, beauty and fertility. She also is associated to some extent, however, with war and death, further emphasizing her importance in the warrior culture.
As leader of the Valkyries, the deities who escort slain warriors to the afterlife, Freyja enters a battlefield to choose half of the bravest dead men for her palace, Folkvang. (Her lover Odin takes the other half to Valhalla.) As a woman of power, she blazes across the sky every day in her chariot, which her two large cats dutifully pull. It also is believed her cats were a gift from the great hammer-wielding Thor himself, the most famous of all Norse gods.
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