Freya Brigettesdotter

Artistic interpretation of Freya by @nighthawkes on tumblr

**Freya** is the narrator of the fourth season of Within the Wires. She was the hereditary leader of the original chapter of the Cradle, and sent tapes to her daughter, Sigrid, as she travelled the world in search of like minds.

> *"Believe me. I love you. Believe* in *me. I love you. Believe that I am with you even when I am not. Believe as I believe. I believe in you, too. I believe in our task. Oh yes, my children, we have a task, and in this task I may die. We have a task to grow the Cradle, to show ourselves and eventually the world just how powerful we are."* **--Freya in Cassette #8: Winter 1997-98**
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## Biography

### Early Life

Freya claimed to be the first child of the Cradle. She was born in 1949 to Brigette and Louis, who were political activists during the beginning of the Society. Brigette had been told she was infertile, so her pregnancy was considered a miracle. Her birth was registered with the government in former-France, but as emerging legislation put the nuclear family as a structure at risk, Brigette convinced Louis and some of her fellow activists to flee the Society and form their own group, where they could raise their children in secret. This group, based in Sundsvall, former-Sweden, was later named the Cradle.

On 7 September 1954 the Internal Investigations Division conducted a raid, claiming that they were stockpiling illegal weapons on a military scale and making plans to revolt. Twelve people died in the raid, including Louis, and Brigette was arrested. Freya and ten other Cradlers escaped and were hidden in Stockholm. She shared a room with five other girls, and none of the children were allowed to leave the house in case they were spotted. On her release, Brigette was reunited with Freya and quickly reformed the Cradle in central former-France.

As Freya grew up, Brigette told her time and time again how important it was that the Cradle stayed hidden. Brigitte raised Freya to be atheist, and the Cradle at large seemed to share the sentiment. They believed that practicing religion was a waste of time and they should not rely on anybody but themselves, including a god figure, to help them. They also recognised the power of organised religion to influence minds and viewed it as a fortification of laws that they considered to be unjust.

At some point before 1993, the Cradle moved to Hedmark in former-Norway. Freya's daughter, Sigrid, was born in roughly 1974. When she was a baby, Sigrid loved toffee. Her first experience with it was confusing for her and delightful for Freya because of the facial journey she went on processing its texture and flavour. Freya stated later that up to that point, she had never seen her daughter so happy. She had demanded more, but been refused, no matter how much Freya wished to see her that happy always.

When Sigrid was two or three years old, her mother left for a trip and she thought she had vanished forever, becoming inconsolable. When Freya had returned, the family had recounted this to her, laughing. Freya had not found it funny at the time. When she was four years old, Brigette died and Freya took over her position as leader.

There was much about the world and the way they lived that Freya did not explain to Sigrid when she was a child, only describing the history of the Cradle to her when she was nineteen years old. She had originally told her that her grandfather had died of cancer, rather than a bullet to the head.

In early 1993, Freya was arrested in Oslo because of her refusal to comply with mandatory government check-ins. She escaped prison immediately before she was transferred to a more secure facility with the aid of a "small fire" and sent a tape to Hedmark explaining her situation. She intended to travel for a while to make sure she had dropped any tails before she made her way back to her family.

### One Big Family

Later in the same year, Freya discovered that there were other Cradles across the world, who had been inspired by the Sundsvall massacre to fight back against the Society. After flying from Paris to New York, a woman named Melissa made her aware of the other groups across North America and Freya decided to visit as many as she could. She met families at Lake George, Madawaska, Chicago, Bismarck, and Sandpoint and agreed to teach them how to live self-sustainably and out of the Society's eye. She began to consider this her calling in life - uniting the Cradles under a shared set of ideas and methods.

In summer 1994, Freya became enamoured with the idea of communal faith and ritual while visiting La Palma in Mexico. Their version of Catholicism was new to her; focused on community and giving thanks to each other under the guidance of the Virgin Mother. Freya saw a stronger family and community in La Palma than she did in Hedmark and was convinced that the Cradle was destined for a higher purpose. She began to encourage the "congregation" to participate in "sermons".

In 1994, Freya started meeting with people from the Society who might be sympathetic to her newfound cause - to bring the ways of the Cradle to the Society at large with sympathy. Usman, a lawyer with connections on the Societal Council, could not help, but he introduced her to a man named Jure, who had been born in a group inspired by the Cradle. His commune was dismantled and he was reprogrammed at the Institute and presently ran a company as an upstanding member of Society. Still sympathetic, he - and his company - were interested in helping the Cradles.

Freya arranged for Jure to visit the Cradle in Hedmark on February 26 1995, but it did not go well. Freya was present during Jure's visit, but did not stay long after he was made unwelcome. She was unhappy with the group's reaction, and tried to assure them that Jure had her full confidence. She insisted that the congregation must trust her judgement, even if they did not understand it.

Freya continued to travel the world, venturing out of the Americas to the Indian subcontinent and Australia. She wrote a manifesto called 'The Hand', the first version of which was finished in 1996. She intended to update the document every year with what she had learned about setting up and running Cradles, including recipes, practical advice, and rules. She asked Sigrid to use The Hand during sermons from summer of 1996 onwards.

By spring 1997, Freya no longer felt that Hedmark was her true home, as every Cradle in the world she had touched was her home and she considered them all her responsibility. She selected deputies in each camp to make managing them easier, and communicated with them via cassettes as she did with Sigrid. When a Cradle (or a group of them) in North America decided to go public without consulting Freya, she ostracised them and replaced the "traitorous" deputies. She distanced herself emotionally from all the remaining Cradles by demanding that they prove they were devout and would fall in line, and stated outright that her way was the only way they would be allowed to exist in the Cradle.

Between 1997 and 1998, Freya decided to leave behind Brigette's guidance of staying hidden, believing that they must claim a place in the Society in order to bring their vision to everybody in the world. Freya believed that with Jure's - and KR Development and the Institute's - help, they could stop needing to hide from the Society. According to her, the Cradle had become not just a community or a shared idea, even a religion, but a franchise. As Freya related this in Sigrid via cassette, she asked her to stop sighing, sensing that her daughter disapproved. She encouraged, once again, the use of the Hand to manage the members of the Hedmark Cradle.

Jure had told her that somebody in Hedmark was leaking sermons to the police, and began to consider Sigrid a suspect before dismissing the idea and apologising. She asked Sigrid to do anything she could to find the leak. In her recording to the Hedmark Cradle at large, she talked about a hurricane that ravaged the Port Arkansas Cradle near Corpus Christi in the Gulf of Mexico, and her own relief efforts there. She claimed that she was putting herself in danger by continuing to travel around the Cradles, as the Society may have been tracking her movements. She left them with the note that she was prepared to die for the good of the Cradle.

Upon hearing that members of the Hedmark Cradle had become fearful of monsters in the woods in 1998, Freya became concerned that Sigrid was not doing enough as deputy to manage the Cradlers. She dismissed their fears of monsters and instead told Sigrid to look for a person among them responsible for the recent thefts, as the Society would do. She then bid the Cradle farewell, saying that she would not be able to contact them for a while, and that separation would be a test of faith.

Just before the turn of the millennium in autumn of 1999, Freya contacted the Hedmark Cradle from Oslo to warn them of a raid that was about to be conducted on their campsite. Rather than get them to retreat further into the woods, Freya asked that they stand their ground with a shipment of rifles from KR Development and fight the IID off. She said that she believed in their chances and had been assured that the opposition would back off when met with resistance. However, she also made numerous comments about the value of martyrdom and believed that Sigrid would not live to see Oslo, which she regretted. There were more attacks planned for the Utrecht, Wiesbaden, and Albertville Cradles, which she also knew about.

To prepare the Hedmark Cradle for the attack, she told them a parable from The Hand about a girl, a damselfly, and a bird. She unpacked its meaning, concluding that the damselfly's unwilling sacrifice was for the good of the bird, and therefore the world. She said she would miss the Hedmark Cradle when they were gone.

## Additional info

* In Norse mythology, Freya was the goddess of fertility. The name "Freya" can also be taken as a feminine form of the name "Frey" which means "noble(wo)man"

## References

1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Season 4, Cassette #5: Spring 1995
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 Season 4, Cassette #2: Autumn 1993
3. ↑ Season 3, Reel #9: September 13, 1954
4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Season 4, Cassette #8: Winter 1997-98
5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Season 4, Cassette #3: Summer 1994
6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Season 4, Cassette #1: Spring 1993
7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Season 4, Cassette #6: Summer 1996
8. ↑ Season 4, Cassette #4: Winter 1994-95
9. ↑ Season 4, Cassette #7: Spring 1997
10. ↑ Season 4, Cassette #9: Autumn 1998
11. ↑ Season 4, Cassette #10: Autumn 1999