the timboucher experience

I’m not sure what triggered the connection, but earlier today, I started thinking about Miss Piggy of the Muppets in relationship to the Norse goddess, Freya. Actually, it may have been brought on by one of those new Domino’s Pizza Four-for-All commercials. At least, that’s probably what planted Miss Piggy into the background of my subconscious mind.

Anyway, the connection hinged around the fact that Freya sometimes is depicted riding a wild boar. Actually, the boar’s named is Hildisvini, and I’ve read that the boar is either a transformed version of her secret paramour, Ottar the Simple, or of her brother, Frey. Frey himself also had a pet boar that he rode around on named Gullinbursti. Right, so they rode boars. But that’s not all. Apparently, both Freya and Frey were both fertility gods. So that means that Freya ruled over things like love, sex & attraction. She’s sort of the equivalent of Venus or Aphrodite in that respect. Freya even had this magical necklace called the Brisingamen, which she got from these dwarven craftsmen in exchange for sex. When she wore it, no man or god could resist her.

As you may recall, when Piggy is first introduced in the Muppet Movie, she is participating in (and winning, I believe) a beauty contest. When Kermit sees her, he is absolutely smitten, almost like he is cast under the magical spell of her Brisingamen necklace. And the similarities don’t end there. I forgot to mention that when Freya is depicted riding a boar, it is because she also has an aspect as a battle goddess, and the boar is her war mount. One of Miss Piggy’s other main attributes, in my mind, is her hot temper. And isn’t there a scene where Kermit is about to have his brain drained by that science-guy, and Piggy breaks free and starts kicking everybody’s ass with karate? That’s what I thought.

So yeah, I just thought that was a pretty interesting correlation…. One of the other interesting things I learned about Freya & Frey is that they are not of the same “class” as the other Norse gods. They are what’s called Vanir, while the rest of the gods are the Aesir. According to this site, the Vanir were semi-synonymous with the elves, who were also related to fertility. I think Frey is sometimes called the ruler of elves, or something like that. And there’s some point in Norse mythology, where the Vanir join the Aesir because of a war or some such. I’ll have to look into this more. It sounds to me like its one of those cases where there is a vestige of an earlier or alternate cult of worship which became syncretically fused. In any event, the whole concept of a group of quasi-magical beings, whether they are the Vanir or the Aesir, kind of reminds me of the actual group of the Muppets themselves.

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