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Norway...land of dark forests and moonlit lakes, land of snowcapped mountains, impetuous torrents and icy rivers. Misty waterfalls run foaming down the slopes, the deep fjords are surrounded by mighty mountains, and the Atlantic Ocean whips unceasingly the indented rocky coasts of this long and narrow country. Norway...land full of legends where reality and fantasy mingle, land of men and gods that keep on living through the remembrance of their deeds.
Freya
Freya
As the legend has it, Freya, the beutiful goddess of love and fertility, used to travel on her golden chariot distributing abundance and prosperity. Her chariot was pulled by a magnificent and proud couple of cats: they were the Norwegian Forest Cats.
Freya
Unequalled cats, true felines, similar to lynxes, where beauty coincides with functionality, clever and born to live in extreme conditions, yet very affectionate and suitable for indoor life.
Ossian av Midgard del Carro di Freya
The cattery "Il Carro di Freya" proposes cats of the highest genealogy like their mythical ancestors. Kittens are bred at home and they are provided with A.N.F.I. and F.I.Fe. pedigree and regular vaccinations. To choose a Norwegian Forest Cat means to merge into a dimension of true contact with Nature, from which Man seems to be departing more and more.

MYTH

Mythology identifies the Norwegian Forest Cat with the myth of Freya, the northern goddess of the sun that used to proceed on a chariot of fire pulled in the sky by a pair of cats. All the farmers that would put some milk out of the door for the stray cats received the benediction of Freya; the goddess also blessed the persons in love and protected the harvests. In fact, in English Friday means "the day of Freya", and was considered the most propitious day for the weddings. It was believed that these cats were able to foretell marriages, and their presence at the celebrations was of good omen. In conclusion, the Norwegian Forestcat after all was a good cat, whose absence from home could mean only one thing: that he was out hunting. In Scandinavia, cats hunting outdoors have have acquired the fame of loving loneliness and meditations by the fire, becoming the so-called "cat of the butter". Differently from the English "cat of the barn" - whose fame of devouring any dairy product was as negative as his ability to hunt mice was positive - the "cat of the butter" has turned into an unlikely guardian of butter itself. This is a case of comradeship pushed to the extreme; but the point is that, whatever the cat was, he was endowed with such a charm that he could become the defender of anyone or anything, even of a pat of butter. A cat of that kind had the fame - in Lapland as well as from Norway to the Netherlands - of putting the trolls into flight. The legend tells about a farmer who used to dine with a group of trolls at Christmas Eve. Once, a wanderer with his tamed bear spent the night at the farm just during the Christmas Eve dinner. One of the trolls, mistaking the bear for the cat of the farmer, offered some food to the sleeping animal; then the beast, that was dreaming, uttered a dreadful growl. Now, as trolls dread thunders, they hurried out headlong from the house of the farmer, chased forever by the terror inspired by what they presumed to be a cat! And that's why the Norwegian Forest Cat is so popular in the traditon: whoever is able to bewitch a troll by letting him believe that he has a thunder hidden in the throat is a precious friend indeed. Our "friend of the butter" also gives a small sample of this thunder each time he is allowed to lick that golden treasure. Otherwise, the legend has it, he protects it at the cost of his own life.

A Troll with a cat
Freya

FREYA, QUEEN OF THE VANES

It stands to reason that a similar conception of the world has produced the same symbols in different parts of the Earth. Freya, like Bastet and Diana, embodies love, sexuality and fertility, and travels across the sky on a gold chariot pulled by two big silvery cats with fluttering tails. The cats, one black and one white, represent the two sides of the night that - through the increase of brightness and the dark declining of the moon - reflect the evolution and the renewal of Nature; they are a male and a female, because there is no life without the two genders. In Germanic mythology, the god Odin grants Freya an unlimited power upon nine worlds, the nine spheres created by the gods. As in Egyptian astrology and in medioeval sciences, again we find the nine layers of the stars, in wich the earth surface is included. In ancient symbology Freya flies with her draught-cats through these layers and along the crystal streets of seven planets to go to all the worlds where love and life rule. Freya, for the welfare of all the living creatures, controls the sun rays and the rain, determining earth fertility. Still nowadays, in middle-European folk-beliefs, cats are linked to atmospheric phenomena. Freya the sweet, lady of the nine worlds, was the protectress of the weddings; in order to get into her good graces, the new bride had to feed the housecat with particular meals, to be sure about the good weather during the feast. Also receiving a cat as a present was very appreciated by the new-married couple as a forerunner of celestial gifts. The new couple had to prepare a cup of fresh milk in the new house, and if the cat run to drink it straight away, it was a sign that there was already a good spirit in the house. The cats of Freya, with their long silvery coat and their fluttering tails, are still a cultural patrimony of Nordic countries; Norway in particular has protected and safeguarded an ancient and natural cat-breed, the Norwegian Forestcat. The "Skogkatt", in Nordic folklore, is a fairy-cat endowed with extraordinary powers, protagonist of lots of adventures written by Asbjørnsen and Moe, two half nineteenth-century Scandinavian writers, authors of a fine collection of fairy-tales still read in Scandinavian schools.

Freya

SORCERESS AND QUEEN

According to some Nordic medioeval chronologists, Freya was a princess of the Vanes, people skilled in the art of magic dwelling in northern Black Sea, near the mouths of the Don, the ancient Tanais. From there, towards the end of the Roman Empire, this race would have migrated towards North Europe. From the beautiful queen and sorceress Freya would descend the "witches", women skilled in the Pythian art, able to modify the weather and to fly. The worship of Freya has always matched the worship of cats, considered by their devotees to be masters and means of the pursuit of secrets in moonlit nights. The cult of Freya caused the decimation of German cats in XV century. Pope Innocent VIII considered this cult heathen, and thousands of the Goddess' devotees were sent to the stake under the charge of witchcraft, and many of their cats died committed to the flames too. The papal condemnation probably gave rise to the superstition according to which Friday 13 brings bad luck, because the day dedicated to Freya was Friday and 13 was her sacred number.