Sjofn was the Norse goddess of love and affection — a deity especially concerned with turning the hearts and minds of people toward love, kindling romance between men and women, and reconciling those whose love had turned to quarrelling. One of the gentler goddesses of Asgard, she was the divine matchmaker, the kindler of desire and the mender of lovers' strife.
The Goddess of Love's Awakening
Sjofn (Old Norse Sjöfn) was counted among the Aesir goddesses, and her particular care, as the old sources tell, was to turn the thoughts and hearts of both men and women toward love — to awaken affection, to incline people to romance, to kindle the warmth of love in human hearts. She was, in essence, a goddess of the falling-in-love itself: the gentle power that draws two people together, that turns indifferent thoughts toward desire, that makes the heart open to another.
The Reconciler of Lovers
Sjofn's domain extended beyond merely kindling new love to mending love grown troubled. She was concerned with reconciling lovers and spouses who had fallen into quarrel and strife, smoothing over the disputes and bitterness that can arise between those who love one another, and restoring the affection between them. In this she was a goddess of the maintenance of love as well as its beginning — the divine peacemaker of the heart, who could turn anger back into tenderness and heal the rifts between lovers. The Old Norse word sjáfni, meaning “love” or “affection,” was said to derive from her name.
One of the Handmaidens
Like several of the gentler goddesses, Sjofn is named in the lists of the Aesir goddesses given by the old sources but is preserved with little narrative of her own — we know her function and her name, but the detailed stories of her deeds, if there were any, have not survived. This is the fate of many of the Norse goddesses of the domestic and emotional realm: they were clearly honoured and invoked — one would call upon Sjofn in matters of love and the reconciling of lovers — but the surviving sources, written down long after, preserve mainly the grand myths of the chief gods, leaving these gentler deities as names and functions, glimpses of a richer worship now mostly lost.
The Kindler of Affection
Sjofn endures as the Norse goddess of love, affection and the reconciliation of lovers — the gentle power who turns hearts toward love and mends them when love falters. She embodies the Norse recognition that love, in all its phases — its first kindling, its quarrels, its healing — was a matter for the gods, worthy of its own divine guardian. To her one turned to awaken a love, to win an affection, or to heal a rift with a beloved: the goddess of the turning of the heart toward love.
She turns indifferent hearts toward love and mends the quarrels of those who already love — the gentle goddess of affection's first kindling and its healing.