The Vanir

Gods and Goddesses

The Vanir (Old Norse Vanir, pronounced VAN-ear) are one of the two principal
tribes of deities featured in Norse mythology. (The other tribe is the Aesir.) Among
their ranks are Freya , Freyr , Njord, and arguably the early Germanic goddess
Nerthus as well. Their home is Vanaheim, one of the Nine Worlds held within the
branches of the world-tree Yggdrasil.
Controversies
Unfortunately, as fragmentary as the sources on pre-Christian Germanic religion
are, we know next to nothing about what the pre-Christian Germanic peoples
thought of the Vanir as a group. Vanir is a rarely-used word. Its meaning is
unknown. While there is a smattering of plausible evidence for the worship of Freyr,
Freyja, and/or Njord outside of Scandinavia and Iceland, the title Vanir is never
used in connection with them. Some have even questioned whether the
Scandinavians and Icelanders themselves thought of Freyja, Freyr, and Njord as
belonging to a separate clan known as the Vanir before the writings of the
Christian historian and poet Snorri Sturluson . The Vanir do seem to be somewhat
more associated with human and ecological fertility than the Aesir, but this is a
vague tendency at best, and certainly not an absolute distinction; the Aesir god
Thor , for example, had a large role to play in the fertility of the land and human
society as well. Ultimately, all we can confidently say about the Vanir is that some
late Norse literary sources portray them as being a group dimly distinct from the
Aesir, and the gods and goddesses to whom the title Vanir has been applied were
among the most widely and passionately venerated of the pre-Christian Norse
deities.