To start, I'm not saying that this is in any way factual or historical. Rather, this is just an epiphany based on something I noticed regarding Frey, and I wondered if it might be part of what defines the Vanir.
One of Frey's earlier names is Ing, or Yngvi-Freyr. If I read the name right, that roughly means "Lord of the Yngvi", which was, of course, the name of the oldest Swedish dynasty. I suspect, however, based on what little I can gather from some brief research, particularly the concept of the Ingvaeonic group of Tribes, that this may have also been the name of a specific Tribe, for whom Frey was a Patron.
Another reason why I suspect this is that the Saxons had a God named "Saxnot". While I don't know of any attestation of this God outside of a baptismal oath not to worship him and a few others, the name makes me wonder if this was the Saxons' Tribal Patron.
If true, then that's two Germanic Tribes who named themselves for their Gods.
Then I started thinking about the Frisii. While the accepted likely meaning of the word, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, meant "curly headed", I realized that the name does sound an awful lot like the named "Frija" whenever I hear the second Merseburger Charm, which was the name for the Goddess who may have been Frigga, Freya, or the same Goddess who was in the process of splitting into those two distinct personalities during the Viking Age. In addition to "beloved", the word is also cognate with the modern English word "free", and seems to have had that meaning as well.
With all of these observations, I came to wonder: might the Vanir Gods be the various Tribal Gods, while the Aesir are the Gods the Tribes all worshiped? It "makes sense" to me, since the Vanir Gods are associated with Earth and fertility, which would be very important in more localized conceptions, while it seems to me that the Aesir are more associated with the Sky, which everyone shares.
Of course, that's not to say that there aren't problems with this possibility. Far as I can tell, the term "Ingvaeonic" seems to be Roman in attestation and may or may not have been a word any Tribe used to refer to itself until after Rome's vast influence had spread even to areas outside its political boundaries. Saxnot may look like the word "Saxon", but the two terms may only be superficially related given the lack of any other attestation. And, of course, Frigga is an Aesir Goddess, not Vanir, and it's Her name that "Frija" is ancestor to; "Freya" means "Lady", and comes from a completely different PIE root. Hence why I stressed at first that this is not an historical statement of fact, or even any kind of theory. At best it's a pet hypothesis that's yet to be fully explored, and may never be fully resolved.
One of Frey's earlier names is Ing, or Yngvi-Freyr. If I read the name right, that roughly means "Lord of the Yngvi", which was, of course, the name of the oldest Swedish dynasty. I suspect, however, based on what little I can gather from some brief research, particularly the concept of the Ingvaeonic group of Tribes, that this may have also been the name of a specific Tribe, for whom Frey was a Patron.
Another reason why I suspect this is that the Saxons had a God named "Saxnot". While I don't know of any attestation of this God outside of a baptismal oath not to worship him and a few others, the name makes me wonder if this was the Saxons' Tribal Patron.
If true, then that's two Germanic Tribes who named themselves for their Gods.
Then I started thinking about the Frisii. While the accepted likely meaning of the word, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, meant "curly headed", I realized that the name does sound an awful lot like the named "Frija" whenever I hear the second Merseburger Charm, which was the name for the Goddess who may have been Frigga, Freya, or the same Goddess who was in the process of splitting into those two distinct personalities during the Viking Age. In addition to "beloved", the word is also cognate with the modern English word "free", and seems to have had that meaning as well.
With all of these observations, I came to wonder: might the Vanir Gods be the various Tribal Gods, while the Aesir are the Gods the Tribes all worshiped? It "makes sense" to me, since the Vanir Gods are associated with Earth and fertility, which would be very important in more localized conceptions, while it seems to me that the Aesir are more associated with the Sky, which everyone shares.
Of course, that's not to say that there aren't problems with this possibility. Far as I can tell, the term "Ingvaeonic" seems to be Roman in attestation and may or may not have been a word any Tribe used to refer to itself until after Rome's vast influence had spread even to areas outside its political boundaries. Saxnot may look like the word "Saxon", but the two terms may only be superficially related given the lack of any other attestation. And, of course, Frigga is an Aesir Goddess, not Vanir, and it's Her name that "Frija" is ancestor to; "Freya" means "Lady", and comes from a completely different PIE root. Hence why I stressed at first that this is not an historical statement of fact, or even any kind of theory. At best it's a pet hypothesis that's yet to be fully explored, and may never be fully resolved.
She makes similar points in Gods and Myths of Northern Europe.
