Freyja in Later Traditions
Freyja's most consequential kinship is internal: her relationship to Frigg. Both are chief goddesses, both own a falcon cloak, both weep for an absent husband (Óðr's name is one consonant from Óðinn's), and scholarship from the nineteenth century onward has debated whether the two were originally one goddess split by the traditions that recorded them — a question the sources leave open and handbooks like Simek and Orchard still mark as unsettled. The interpretatio latina equated her with Venus, and the Germanic week keeps the trace: Friday, dies Veneris, 'the Lady's day' — though whether the day was named for Freyja or for Frigg is itself part of the same debate. Beyond Germania there is no borrowing to claim: the Vanir package — fertility, wealth, magic, and a share of the dead — is the North's own construction, and the goddess who taught seiðr to the Æsir has no exact counterpart anywhere else.