Misconception 15: Vanir and Incestuous Marriage
15. The Vanir Practiced Incestuous Marriage.
“While Njord was with the Vanaland people he had taken his own sister in marriage, for that was allowed by their law; and their children were Frey and Freya. But among the Asaland people it was forbidden to intermarry with such near relations.” Ynglinga Saga, 4.
I have never believed that the Vanir or their people practiced incestuous marriage. It just did not ring true to me. I had a hunch that what Snorri wrote in the Ynglinga Saga was a misconception of what the Vanir practiced. Riane Eisler’s The Chalice and the Blade helped me understood why it didn’t ring true.
The Indo-European tribes that came into Europe in waves, including those whose gods were the Aesir, practiced exogamy; that is, they married outside of their own tribes. As they made their way into Europe one way the Indo-Europeans infiltrated and gained dominance over the tribes they encountered was by marrying members of those tribes. Exogamy was an Indo-European method of conquering the people of Europe. Sometimes “marriage” was really rape. This practice is reflected in the hybridized mythologies of Europe. See for example the story of the rape of the Sabine women or the Hebrew’s invasion of Canaan.
Many of the tribes over-taken by the Indo-Europeans practiced endogamy; that is, they married within their own tribes, among their own people. While it is common for members of the same tribe to call each other brother and sister, calling each other brother and sister does not mean they had the same mother and father. This is, for example, what the Cherokee and many other Native American tribes practiced. The Cherokee tribe consisted of seven clans. They had specific customs about who could marry whom. They did not marry their biological brothers and sisters. It was no more incest than two Christians who are brother and sister in Christ getting married is incest. What the Cherokee and Old Europeans practiced was endogamy. However, from the perspective of the exogamic Indo-Europeans endogamy is incest.
I think that what Snorri wrote about was the endogamic practices of the people of the Vanir distorted through the eyes of the Indo-European peoples of the Aesir. I also think that it is possible that Freyja and Freyr, the Lady and Lord, were not brother and sister in the sense of being the children of the same parents, Njordr and his unnamed wife. I think that it is more likely, being the Lady and the Lord, that Freyja and Freyr were and still are husband and wife. . There is one hint in the primary sources that Freyja and Freyr were married. In Lokasenna they are listed among other husbands and wives as if they themselves are married. I also think that it is possible that Njordr was called their father in an honorary sense, the sense of being older and a chieftain of among the Vanir.