Welcome Freyja!

Some scholars have linked customs and imagery involving hares to Ēostre and the Norse goddess Freyja. Writing in 1972, John Andrew Boyle cites commentary contained within an etymology dictionary by A. Ernout and A. Meillet, where the authors write that "Little else [...] is known about [Ēostre], but it has been suggested that her lights, as goddess of the dawn, were carried by hares. And she certainly represented spring fecundity, and love and carnal pleasure that leads to fecundity." Boyle responds that nothing is known about Ēostre outside of Bede's single passage, that the authors had seemingly accepted the identification of Ēostre with the Norse goddess Freyja, yet that the hare is not associated with Freyja either. Boyle writes that "her carriage, we are told by Snorri, was drawn by a pair of cats — animals, it is true, which like hares were the familiars of witches, with whom Freyja seems to have much in common."

The Spring Festival of Ostara is also the Festival of Freyja (Norse): This fertility goddess abandons the Earth during the cold months of also re-emerges in the Spring to restore Nature's beauty. She wears a magnificent necklace called Brisingamen, which represents the fire of the sun. Goddess of Fire. Freyja (Freya) is also known as Mardöll (sea light), Gersimi (gem) and Menglödh ("happy with her necklace"). Freya, the Norse Goddess of Love, Beauty, War, Magic and Wisdom. She is the Goddess of the Witches.

Freya and the Fox, by Emily Balivet