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Updated: June 28, 2025
Haye you forgotten so soon? Freia.... It is in the bond that she shall follow us home." "Have you taken leave of your senses... with you bond?" asks Wotan, with a quick flash. "You must think of a different recompense. Freia is far too precious to me."
Fafner now approaches Wotan. "Hear, Wotan.... Keep Freia.... We have fixed upon a lesser reward. We will take in her stead the Nibelung's gold." Wotan comes near losing his temper. "What I do not own, I shall bestow upon you shameless louts?" Fafner expresses a perfect confidence in Wotan's equipment for obtaining the gold.
He counselled him to buy the giants' labor by the promise of Freia, knowing that the gods could never endure to let the amiable goddess go. He led them to believe that when the time came he would give them further counsel by which to retain her. And his word Wotan chose to trust, and gave his heart over to the untroubled enjoyment of his plans' completion.
We simpletons labour with toil-hardened hands to earn a sweet woman who shall dwell with us poor devils.... And you mean to call the bargain naught?..." Fafner gloomily checks him: Words will not help them. And the possession of Freia in itself is to his mind of little account. But of great account to take her from the gods. In her garden grow golden apples, she alone has the art of tending these.
Under the pressure of all their angers, he finally airily delivers himself: "Having at heart to help you, I travelled the world over, visiting its most recondite corners, in search of such a substitute for Freia as might be found acceptable to the giants.
But he tells of the theft of the gold; the Giants listen greedily, and they agree to take it, if Wotan can get it, instead of Freia. Wotan has a double motive: he does not want all the gold, or, indeed, any of it, save the Ring shaped by the Nibelung; that he determines to grasp, else the Nibelung will become his master.
He replies magnanimously, "Grudge him not the luxury of railing!" Fricka, Donner, and Froh hasten to welcome the returning gods. The approach of Freia, whom the giants are bringing between them, is felt before she appears, in a subtle sweetening of the air, a simultaneous lightening of all the hearts and return of youth to the faces, which Froh's daintily expansive greeting describes.
Thor's hammer is mighty, but mightier the love of the kind Æsir for their little Freia! Good Odin, dear brother Frey, speak for me! You will not make me go?" The Asir looked at her and thought how lonely and bare would Asgard be without her loveliness; for she was fairer than fair, and sweeter than sweet. "She shall not go!" shouted Frey, putting his arms about his sister's neck.
But again the sly waiting maid whispered timidly, "Oh, Thrym, be not amazed! The truth is, my poor mistress's eyes are red with wakefulness and bright with longing. For eight nights Freia has not known a wink of sleep, so eager was she for Jotunheim." Then again Thrym was doubly delighted, and he longed to call her his very own dear wife. "Bring in the wedding gift!" he cried.
When pressed to give his mind to the business immediately in hand, and to extricate Wotan from his dilemma, he has nothing to say except that the giants are evidently altogether in the right. The castle has been duly built: he has tried every stone of it, and found the work first-rate: there is nothing to be done but pay the price agreed upon by handing over Freia to the giants.
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