[6] Its composition is very primitive and it is extremely dark in color.

Freia was discovered by the astronomer Heinrich d'Arrest on 21 October 1862, in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The sidereal orbital period of this asteroid is commensurable with that of Jupiter, which made it useful for ground-based mass estimates of the giant planet.

[7] A shape model for the asteroid was published by Stephens and Warner (2008), based upon lightcurve data.

This yielded a sidereal rotation period of 9.968240±0.000009 h. They found two possible solutions for the spin axis, with the preferred solution in ecliptic coordinates being (λ, β) = (139°±5°, 25°±5°).