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The etymology, of course, goes back to the whitish stuff (e.g. Sanskrit majjA is cognate and means the inside of bones or other stuff). It has also seen its day as the whitish stuff that is brain in some branches of Indoeuropean. The inner core or the most salient part are also pretty common semantic extensions.

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Do you know the distribution or more fine-grained history of the semantic development to friendly? Is it a Scandinavian or Norse diffusion? Do you know of a similar semantic development elsewhere? In fact, I was expecting more of a friend as in lover (on parallels with heart) or family (on parallels of blood) rather than friend as in fellow-worker.