Freia, Freja or Frigga, from the Gothic Frijon, to love, known also as Holle or Holda (Gothic holthen, to help), and Bertha or Perchtha (Goth. peracta, shining), was the Teutonic Aphrodite or Goddess of Love.  The separate personifications of her various names and attributes in different localities resulted in the creation of at least four distinct goddesses or fairies (Freia, Frigga, Holda and Bertha), who in spite of the conflicting legends that have clustered around them still preserve a congenital likeness that betrays their common origin. 
    Freia, in the final form of the Norse legend, became the representative of sexual love, as Frigga was of motherly love.  Being abandoned by her husband Odin in favor of Frigga she has ever sought vainly for him and wept tears of gold.  She was the most beautiful of all the goddesses, her hair was long and golden, she was clad in a white garment that spread a rosy refulgence.  Her voice was of enthralling sweetness.  She loved flowers and haunted rose bushes and willow trees.  She lived in a garden divided by limpid waters from the outer world and containing the Fountain of Youth, where the sources of life were renovated, while all around played the souls of the unborn.  She rode in a chariot drawn by two cats.  Not only was she the goddess of love but also of house-wifely accomplishments.  At the period of the winter solstice, when the German tribes celebrated their rites of sun-worship, she visited mortal households and noted the industry of maidens at their spinning.  In Germany the distinction between Freia and Frigga was not so accurately outlined, and under either name the goddess combined the characteristics of Juno and of Venus, the motherly and the erotic elements.  Christianity frequently confounded her, on the one hand with Venus as emblematic of sinful lust, and on the other with the Virgin mother.  The Venus who seduced Tannhauser inhabited the Horselberg, an old place of Freia worship.  The kindleinsbrunnen of mediaeval Germany which were under the protection of the Virgin and to which married women made pilgrimages in the hope of being blessed with children were confused reminiscences of Freia's fountain of life. (Heroes and Heroines of Fiction, Classical Mediaeval, Legendary, Walsh, 1915)