Völuspá describes the Æsir-Vanir War in compressed form. Snorri's Ynglinga saga gives a more elaborate account of the war and peace settlement. The Vanir themselves — Freyr, Freyja, Njörðr — appear throughout both Eddas and the sagas. Vanaheimr as a place is described minimally in the surviving sources; what follows integrates all available references.
The Vanir — Who They Are
The Vanir are the second family of Norse gods. The Æsir (Odin, Thor, Tyr, Baldr, Heimdall) represent divine sovereignty, war, and order. The Vanir (Freyr, Freyja, Njörðr) represent fertility, prosperity, seafaring, and seiðr — the magic associated with fate and shapeshifting. These are not simply descriptive domains; they represent two distinct theological traditions that were at some point synthesized into a single pantheon.
Scholars debate whether the Æsir-Vanir division reflects an historical synthesis of two different religious traditions among Germanic peoples — possibly the merging of an agricultural deity-complex with a warrior deity-complex as different Germanic groups came into contact. This is speculative but consistent with the mythology's structure. The war between the gods is, in this reading, a mythologized memory of the conflict and eventual synthesis between two ways of understanding the divine.
The Æsir-Vanir War
Völuspá describes the first war in the world with striking compression: "She remembers the first war in the world, when Gullveig was stabbed with spears and burned in Hár's hall; three times they burned her, three times she was reborn, often, not seldom, yet she still lives." Gullveig (gold-power) — a Vanir being — was attacked by the Æsir and could not be killed. She was reborn as Heiðr, the practitioner of seiðr. Her attack by the Æsir was the provocation. War followed.
The war itself is described briefly: the Vanir broke the walls of Ásgarðr. Neither side could achieve decisive victory. Peace was made through a mutual exchange of hostages. The Æsir sent Hœnir (a silent, imposing figure) and Mímir (the wise counselor) to the Vanir. The Vanir sent Njörðr and Freyr to the Æsir, along with Freyja. The Vanir, feeling they had been cheated when they discovered that Hœnir could only speak wisely when Mímir prompted him, beheaded Mímir and sent his head back. Odin preserved the head and consulted it for wisdom — Mímir's head became one of Odin's prized sources of counsel.
The peace was sealed by both sides spitting into a vat — from their combined spittle was made Kvasir, the wisest being ever created. This is the mead of poetry's origin. The peace between the gods literally created the substance of poetic inspiration.
The Vanir Gods
Njörðr is the god of the sea, wind, and seafaring prosperity. He lives in Nóatún (ship-harbor) in Ásgarðr but comes from Vanaheimr. He married the giantess Skaði in a famous story: she came to Ásgarðr to demand compensation for her father's death. The gods offered her a husband chosen only by seeing the suitors' feet. She chose what she thought were Baldr's feet — they were Njörðr's. Their marriage was unhappy: she wanted the mountains, he wanted the sea. They each spent nine nights in the other's home and could not bear it. They separated and remained separate gods.
Freyr is the lord of fertility, sunshine, and abundance. He was given Álfheimr at the cutting of his first tooth as a gift — an unusual detail that connects the Vanir to the elves. He is depicted holding a great antler, or with an erect phallus in some figurines, representing sexual and agricultural fertility directly. His ship Skíðblaðnir can sail any sea in any wind and fold to fit in a pocket. His boar Gullinbursti shines in the dark as it runs. He gave away his sword — the one that fights giants on its own when wielded by the right person — to win Gerðr, and will lack it at Ragnarök.
Freyja is described on the Pantheon pages. In the context of Vanaheimr: she is the one who taught seiðr to the Æsir. This is directly stated — Odin learned seiðr from her. The magic that defines Odin's deeper practices came from the Vanir through Freyja. The absorption of Vanir wisdom into Æsir practice is literally embodied in Odin's character.
What We Don't Know About Vanaheim
Vanaheimr is poorly described in the surviving sources. We know it exists. We know the Vanir come from it. We know that the hostage exchange moved Freyr, Freyja, and Njörðr out of it permanently into Ásgarðr. What remains in Vanaheimr — whether there are other Vanir beings, what the realm looks like, how it operates — is not recorded in any surviving text.
This absence is itself information: the Vanir tradition may have been more fully suppressed than the Æsir tradition during the Christianization, or the surviving sources may simply not have included Vanaheimr material that once existed. What we have is fragments of a theological tradition glimpsed through the stories of its refugees in Ásgarðr.