thehumon:

I’ve seen a lot of non-Scandinavian heathen women say they feel like they can’t worship Freyr because of how he treated Gerd which I always thought was a strange thing to say. Freyr never wanted to hurt Gerd. He gave Skrinir gold and apples to give to her. It was Skrinir who insisted on bringing the sword and later used it to threaten her. Besides it would be straight up illegal by Norse standards to force a woman to marry. Odin got kicked out of Asgard for 10 years for raping a jotun woman once, so if Gerd didn’t like Freyr she could easily divorce him. In some versions of the text Skrinir doesn’t even threaten Gerd.

Anyway, Norse mythology is a bit of a jigsaw puzzle, like most other religions that had to make way for Christianity. The few stories we have left were written down by monks who didn’t care that much, so a lot of information is given that we don’t know the backstory to. Gerd is worried about “the man who killed her brother” but we never hear about her brother dying, who did it or even who he is. Freyr kills a jotun named Beli with an antler because he no longer has his sword so some speculate that Beli is Gerd’s brother, but the timeline doesn’t match unless it happened between Skinir leaving Freyr and getting to Gerd’s house.

The reason why Freyr is sometimes considered protector of queer people is because in one story he is worshipped by men who move like women, dance and ring bells in his honor. His house might even be filled with such people depending on how you read the text.

All in all, this is just one theory about what exactly is going on with Freyr and Gerd. We know Freyr was super important and probably had hundreds of stories told about him because so many places are named after him and worship of him is mentioned in texts from other countries, but the story of how he fell in love with Gerd is the only one we have left where he is the main character.