Of all the treasures of the Norse gods — Thor’s hammer, Odin’s spear and ring, Freyr’s ship and golden boar — only one belongs to a goddess and is worn as an ornament. Brísingamen is the necklace (or perhaps the belt, collar, or torc) of Freya, the goddess of love, beauty, war, and magic. It is so famous that one of Freya’s poetic names is “owner of Brísingamen.” It shatters when she is angry, is stolen by Loki, and becomes the cause of a war that will never end.
Yet the myths of Brísingamen survive only in scattered fragments: brief references in the Poetic Edda, a few kennings in skaldic poetry, a strange late tale told in a fourteenth-century saga manuscript, and a single mysterious line in the Old English poem Beowulf. Piecing them together reveals a treasure whose history reflects both the glamour and the danger of desire.
What Was Brísingamen?
The name means “necklace of the Brísings.” Who the Brísings were is unknown. They may have been dwarves, or a family of legendary smiths, or the name may be related to the Old Norse brísingr, “fire” or “flame” — making Brísingamen “the fiery necklace” or “the shining necklace.”
The object itself is called a men, a word that usually means a necklace or collar, but may have referred to a belt or girdle. Gold neck-rings and elaborate necklaces of beads, pendants, and chains have been found in Scandinavian graves and hoards, and female figures on small gold foils and pendants from the Iron Age are sometimes shown wearing prominent necklaces, which some scholars have connected with Freya.
Freya’s Rage
The most vivid early reference to Brísingamen comes in the comic Eddic poem Þrymskviða. When Thor asks Freya to dress as a bride and marry the giant Thrym so he can recover his stolen hammer, Freya is so enraged that “all the hall of the gods shook, and the great Brísingamen burst apart.” Shortly afterwards, the gods dress Thor as Freya, and part of his disguise is the necklace itself: “let him wear the great Brísingamen” (see Thor in a Wedding Dress).
The detail suggests that the necklace was Freya’s defining attribute, so recognizable that wearing it would make anyone look like her.
Loki’s Theft and Heimdall’s Fight
A lost myth tells how Loki stole Brísingamen and how Heimdall, the watchman of the gods, recovered it. Snorri Sturluson refers to it only briefly in the Skáldskaparmál, where he explains poetic names for Heimdall: he is “the visitor of Vágasker and Singasteinn” and he “contended with Loki for Brísingamen.” Loki is called “the thief of Brísingamen.”
The tenth-century skaldic poem Húsdrápa, composed by the Icelandic poet Úlfr Uggason to describe carvings on the walls of a new hall at Hjarðarholt, apparently depicted the fight. The surviving fragment says that Heimdall, “the renowned defender of the gods’ path,” contended with Loki at Singasteinn. Snorri adds that both fought in the form of seals.
We do not know the full story. It seems that Loki stole the necklace and hid on a rock far out at sea, and that Heimdall, the all-seeing, found him and fought him there in seal form and brought the treasure back. The fight prefigures their final battle at Ragnarök, when the two will kill each other.
The Sörla Þáttr: How Freya Won the Necklace
The fullest story of Brísingamen comes from a much later source: the Sörla þáttr (“The Tale of Sörli”), a short narrative included in the great Icelandic manuscript Flateyjarbók, compiled around 1390. It is a Christian-era retelling, treating the gods as human kings and queens of Asia, but it contains a striking tale.
Freya, a mistress of Odin, was walking near a rock one day and found it open. Inside, four dwarves — Alfrigg, Dvalinn, Berlingr, and Grérr — were forging a golden necklace, nearly finished. Freya had never seen anything so beautiful, and she wanted it desperately. She offered them gold and silver and other treasures.
The dwarves said they had no need of money. Each of them wanted only one thing: that she should spend a night with him. Freya agreed. After four nights, the dwarves kept their bargain, and gave her the necklace.
Loki Steals It Again
Loki learned of the bargain and told Odin. Odin, in the Sörla þáttr, is angry and jealous, and orders Loki to steal the necklace. Loki protests that it will be difficult, because no one can enter Freya’s bower without her permission. But he goes anyway.
The door is locked. Loki turns himself into a fly and searches for a way in, finding at last a tiny hole at the top of the gable, no bigger than the prick of a needle. He creeps through. Freya is asleep, wearing the necklace, but the clasp is underneath her. Loki turns himself into a flea and bites her cheek. Freya stirs and turns over, and Loki, back in his own form, unfastens the necklace, opens the door, and carries it away to Odin.
The Price: An Endless War
When Freya woke and found the necklace gone, she knew who had taken it and went to Odin to demand it back. Odin agreed on one condition: she must cause two kings, each ruling twenty kings, to fight a war, and she must use her magic so that the fallen would always rise again and fight on, until a Christian hero came and ended it.
Freya accepted. The story that follows tells of the Hjaðningavíg, “the battle of the Heodenings,” an eternal war between two kings, Hedinn and Högni. Every night, Högni’s daughter Hildr raises the dead with her magic, and every day they fight again. The war continues for 143 years, until the Christian Olaf Tryggvason’s follower Ívarr ljómi comes to the island and kills the fighters, releasing them.
The legend of the eternal battle was known long before Flateyjarbók; it appears in the ninth-century skaldic poem Ragnarsdrápa and in Saxo Grammaticus. The Sörla þáttr links it to Brísingamen, making the necklace the origin of an endless war.
Brísingamen in Beowulf
The only reference to the necklace outside Norse literature comes in the Old English epic Beowulf. After Beowulf kills Grendel, the Danish queen Wealhtheow gives him a magnificent collar. The poet compares it to the greatest necklace ever known:
I have never heard of a better treasure under heaven since Hama carried away to the bright city the necklace of the Brosings, the jewel and its setting.
Hama is a figure of Germanic legend who stole a treasure from the Gothic king Eormenric. The Brosinga mene of Beowulf is clearly the same name as Brísingamen, which shows that a legend about this necklace was known in both England and Scandinavia — though the story attached to it in the Old English tradition was quite different.
Interpretations
What did Brísingamen mean?
- Fertility and sexuality. Freya is a goddess of love and fertility, and her necklace — worn at the throat and breast — is often seen as a symbol of her sexual power. The Sörla þáttr story, in which she buys it with four nights, reinforces this, though it may reflect Christian hostility to the pagan goddess as much as older tradition.
- Sun or fire. If brísingr means “fire,” the necklace may be a solar symbol, and its theft and recovery a myth of the sun’s disappearance and return.
- Wealth and the dwarves. In Norse myth, the gods’ greatest treasures are all made by dwarves: Mjölnir, Gungnir, Draupnir, Skíðblaðnir, Gullinbursti. Brísingamen belongs to this class of divine craftsmanship.
- Conflict. Loki steals it; Heimdall fights for it; the Sörla þáttr makes it the price of an endless war. Like the Rhinegold of the Sigurd legend, the treasure is desired by all and brings conflict wherever it goes.
Brísingamen Today
The necklace has inspired modern artists and writers. Alan Garner’s classic children’s fantasy novel The Weirdstone of Brisingamen (1960) borrowed its name for a magical stone. Modern jewellers sell “Brísingamen” replicas based on Viking-Age designs, and in contemporary Heathenry, Freya’s necklace is a symbol of the goddess herself.
Last reviewed: September 2026.