Freyr's central myth, told in the poem Skirnismal, is a story of desire and its cost. Catching sight of the giantess Gerd from Odin's high seat, he falls sick with love and sends his servant Skirnir to win her, giving up his own marvellous sword, which fights of its own accord, as part of the bargain. The loss proves fatal in the long run: at Ragnarok, the doom of the gods, Freyr must face the fire-giant Surt without his weapon and falls, having traded his defence for love. The tale is often read as a myth of the sky or sun wooing the earth into fertility, but its emotional core is the god who chooses longing over safety. His attributes, the ship Skidbladnir that folds into a pouch, the golden boar Gullinbursti, mark him as a giver of abundance and swift blessing.
A small Viking Age bronze figurine found at Rallinge in Sweden, showing a bearded, seated male figure with a pointed cap, crossed legs and an erect phallus, is widely identified by archaeologists as an image of Freyr, offering rare physical confirmation of the fertility-god imagery Adam of Bremen describes at Uppsala; now held in the Swedish History Museum in Stockholm, it remains one of the very few surviving three-dimensional pre-Christian Scandinavian cult figures that can be linked with reasonable confidence to a specific named god rather than identified only generically.