The story behind the names

Norse lore & glossary

Frigga’s Gifts and Aegir’s Hall take their names from Norse myth. Here is every Norse name and phrase we use, what it means, and where it comes from. Names keep their Old Norse letters: Æ (“ash”) is a single letter, often written “Ae” in English.

Frigga: Old Norse: Frigg; Queen of the Æsir and wife of Odin; the goddess of marriage, motherhood and the home. The poems say she knows every person’s fate but never tells it. “Frigga” is the long-standing English form of her name — and the namesake of Frigga’s Gifts.
Asgard: Old Norse: Ásgarðr, “enclosure of the Æsir”; The home of the gods, where Frigga is queen.
Æsir: Old Norse plural; one god is an “áss”; The main family of Norse gods: Odin, Thor, Frigga, Baldur, Týr and others. They were Ægir’s favorite guests.
Ægir: Old Norse: Ægir, “sea”; A giant who is the sea itself, and the most famous host in the myths: the gods sailed to his hall to feast. Aegir’s Hall is named after him.
Giants: Old Norse: jötnar; Powerful beings of the wild — sea, frost, mountain. Ægir is one; Thor took the great cauldron from another, Hymir.
Thor: Old Norse: Þórr; God of thunder, the strongest of the Æsir. In the poem Hymiskviða he fetches a cauldron a mile deep from the giant Hymir so Ægir can brew ale for every god at once.
Ægir’s hall: From the Prose Edda and the poem Lokasenna; His feasting hall was lit by gleaming gold instead of firelight, and the ale served itself — the “cup that refills itself” in our story.
The old poems & sagas: The Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda; Most of these myths come from the Poetic Edda (old poems written down in Iceland in the 1200s) and Snorri Sturluson’s Prose Edda (around 1220). We say “sagas” loosely — strictly, the sagas are the Icelanders’ family histories.
Keeps the hearth: Our phrase; The hearth is the heart of the home; Frigga is the goddess who watches over the household.
Keeper of every vow: Our phrase; Poetic license: Frigga blesses marriage, while the goddess who hears oaths and wedding vows is Vár, another of the goddesses of Asgard.
Raise your horn: A Norse-style toast; Feasts were toasted with drinking horns — raising yours is our invitation to celebrate at Aegir’s Hall.
Seek her blessing: Our phrase; Couples asked Frigga to bless a marriage — our way of pointing weddings to Frigga’s Gifts.