Gambara

Gambara is a Germanic wise woman (also called priestess or seeress) who appears in several sources from the 8th to 12th centuries. The legend is about the origin of the Langobard people, then known as the Winnili, and it takes place either before they emigrated from Scandinavia or after their migration, having settled in modern-day northern Germany. It relates that Assi and Ambri, the leaders of their neighbours the Vandals, demanded that Ibor and Agio, the leaders of the Winnili, pay tribute to them, but their mother Gambara advised them not to. Before the battle, the Vandals called on Odin (Godan) to give them victory, but Gambara invoked Odin's wife Frea (Frigg and/or Freyja) instead. Frea advised them to trick her husband, by having the Winnili women spread their hair in front of their faces so as to look bearded and present themselves as warriors. When Odin saw them, he was embarrassed and asked who the "long-beards" (longobarbae) were, and thus naming them he became their godfather and had to grant them victory. The legend has parallels in Norse mythology, where Frigg also deceives her husband in earthly politics. Etymology Some connect her name to ('strenuous'), while others interpret it as * or * with the same meaning as 'wand bearer', i.e. 'seeress'. Her name is thus grouped with other seeresses who have staff names, or names that can be interpreted as such, like Ganna ('wand-bearer') and Waluburg from - 'staff'. The name of her son Agio is from PGmc * ('sword', 'edge'), while his brother Ibor'''s name means 'boar' (from PGmc *) the animal sacred to the Norse god Freyr, the god of fertility and the main god of the Vanir clan of the gods, whom it has been argued were the primary gods of the early Lombards in Scandinavia, and Gambara would have been the priestess and earthly representative of the Vanir goddess Frea (Freyja). The name of the Vandal enemy leader, on the other hand, Assi, is a very rare Germanic personal name that is probably derived from PGmc * ~ *, which refers to Odin's own Æsir clan of gods, and who according to Scandinavian sources waged war against the Vanir until they reached a peace agreement, united and exchanged hostages. His brother's name Ambri is probably derived from the ethnonym Ambrones, a tribe who left southern Scandinavia and were virtually annihilated by the Romans in 102 BC, apparently driven from their homes by soil exhaustion in Jutland.