Sleipnir

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged grey horse, is one of the strangest and most enduring figures in all of Norse mythology. Its name comes from Old Norse words meaning "slippy" or "the slipper," and it was regarded as the best of all horses among gods and men. How does a god come to ride a creature born under such bizarre circumstances? And what does it mean that this same horse could carry its rider to the halls of the dead? Those questions pull us through one of the oldest recorded stories in the Norse tradition.

• 2. An Unlikely Birth

  ›

  Loki is the parent of Sleipnir, and the story of how that came to pass begins with a desperate bargain struck between the gods and an unnamed builder. Set at the very beginning of the gods' settlement, when Midgard was being established and Val-Hall was being built, the builder offered to construct a fortification capable of keeping out invaders in just three seasons. His price was steep: the goddess Freyja, plus the sun and the moon. The gods debated and eventually agreed, but they placed tight restrictions on the builder. He had to finish within the deadline with no assistance from any man. The builder made one request: that his stallion Svaðilfari could help him. Thanks to Loki's influence, this was allowed.

  Svaðilfari proved astonishingly powerful. The stallion performed twice the deeds of strength of the builder himself, hauling enormous rocks that left the gods stunned. Progress on the wall came fast. Three days before the summer deadline, the builder was nearly at the entrance to the fortification. The gods convened and, in what the sources describe as a unanimous decision, agreed that Loki was responsible for allowing the stallion. They threatened Loki with a horrible death unless he devised a scheme to make the builder forfeit his payment.

  Loki swore oaths he would do it, whatever the cost to himself. That night, as the builder drove out to fetch more stone with Svaðilfari, a mare ran out from the woods. The mare neighed at Svaðilfari, and the stallion, realizing what kind of horse it was, tore apart his tackle and ran toward her. The mare ran back into the wood. Svaðilfari followed. The builder chased after. The two horses ran all night, and the building work was completely halted. Without his stallion's extraordinary strength, the builder could not recover his momentum. When the gods discovered the builder was a hrimthurs, a frost giant, they disregarded their oaths entirely and called for Thor. Thor arrived and killed the builder by smashing his skull into shards with the hammer Mjollnir. Somewhat later, Loki gave birth to a grey foal with eight legs: Sleipnir, described in the Prose Edda as "the best horse among gods and men."

• 3. Across the Realms

  ›

  Odin rides Sleipnir in several distinct episodes recorded across the medieval sources, and each journey tells us something different about what the horse represents. In Baldrs draumar, after the gods convene about the god Baldr's troubling dreams, Odin places a saddle on Sleipnir and the two ride together to the realm of Hel. The poem Sigrdrífumál records that runes should be cut on Sleipnir's teeth and on the sledge's strap-bands, suggesting the horse held a specific place in Norse ritual thinking.

  The Prose Edda's Skáldskaparmál provides a vivid episode in Jotunheim, the land of the giants. Odin rides Sleipnir to the residence of the jotunn Hrungnir, who asks what sort of person this was, wearing a golden helmet and riding sky and sea, and says the stranger has a marvellously good horse. Odin wagers his head that no horse as good could be found in all of Jotunheimr. Hrungnir admitted Sleipnir was fine, but claimed his own horse Gullfaxi had a much longer stride. Incensed, Hrungnir leapt onto Gullfaxi to attack Odin for his boasting. Odin galloped hard ahead, and Hrungnir found himself, in his fury, having rushed straight into the gates of Asgard.

  The most extended account of Sleipnir in action comes in chapter 49 of Gylfaginning, when the god Hermóðr agrees to ride to Hel to offer a ransom for the dead Baldr. Odin's horse Sleipnir was fetched and led forward. Hermóðr rode for nine nights through deep, dark valleys so black he could see nothing. They reached the river Gjoll, then crossed Gjoll bridge, where a maiden named Módgud guarded the crossing. She noted that recently five battalions of dead men had ridden over the bridge and made less sound than Hermóðr alone. Sleipnir and Hermóðr continued downwards and northwards to Hel's gates, where Sleipnir jumped so hard over the gate that it came nowhere near the horse's legs. It was Sleipnir's speed and jumping ability that made the journey possible at all.

• 4. Written in Stone

  ›

  The Tjängvide image stone and the Ardre VIII image stone, both from the island of Gotland in Sweden and dated to the 8th century, are generally accepted by scholars as depicting Sleipnir. Each stone shows a rider mounted on a horse with eight legs. On the Tjängvide stone, a horizontal figure holding a spear appears above the rider, interpreted as possibly a valkyrie, and a female figure greets the arriving rider with a cup. Most scholars read this scene as a rider arriving at the world of the dead.

  Other stones have also been linked to Sleipnir, though with less certainty. The Eggja stone, dated to the mid-7th century and bearing the Odinic name haras, meaning "army god" in Old Norse, may be interpreted as depicting Sleipnir. The English Runic Inscription 2, from the 11th century, is also believed by some scholars to include a depiction of the horse. If the Gotlandic stones are read correctly, then images of Sleipnir predate the written Eddic sources by roughly five centuries, placing the horse at the heart of Norse visual culture well before the 13th-century manuscripts were compiled.

  Sleipnir also appears in skaldic poetry. The 10th-century skald Úlfr Uggason used the kenning "sea-Sleipnir" in his poem Húsdrápa, a work that describes the funeral of Baldr. Scholar John Lindow notes that Úlfr's choice of Sleipnir as the base word for a ship kenning in the context of Baldr's funeral suggests Sleipnir's role in the failed recovery of Baldr was already known in Iceland in the last decades of paganism.

• 5. The Shaman's Horse

  ›

  Hilda Ellis Davidson argues that the eight-legged horse of Odin is the typical steed of the shaman. In the shamanic journeys documented across many cultures, the shaman is usually represented as riding some bird or animal to reach the heavens or the underworld. Davidson notes that while the animal varies, the horse is fairly common in lands where horses are widely used, and Sleipnir's ability to bear Odin through the air fits the pattern of the shaman's steed. She cites Mircea Eliade's study of shamanism, which includes an eight-legged foal from a story about a Buryat shaman as a parallel.

  Davidson also proposes a second explanation for the eight legs. A dead man carried on a bier by four pallbearers could be described as riding a steed with eight legs, since the four bearers each contribute two legs. Davidson cites a funeral dirge from the Gondi people of India, recorded by Verrier Elwin, which refers to Bagri Maro, "the horse with eight legs," and makes clear from context that the horse is the dead man's bier. The song is sung when a distinguished Muria person dies. Davidson suggests the image of Odin's steed as eight-legged could arise naturally out of exactly this funeral imagery, reinforcing Sleipnir's function as a horse that carries its rider to the land of the dead.

  Ulla Loumand cites Sleipnir alongside the flying horse Hófvarpnir as prime examples of horses in Norse mythology that mediate between earth and sky, between Ásgarðr, Miðgarðr, and Útgarðr, and between the world of mortal men and the underworld. The Encyclopedia of Indo-European Culture proposes a further layer, theorizing that Sleipnir's extra legs may be the remnants of horse-associated divine twins found across Indo-European cultures, ultimately tracing to Proto-Indo-European religion. The encyclopedia suggests Sleipnir represents an original pair of horses, and draws parallels to Celtic myths involving a goddess who gave birth to divine horse twins, where the demand for a goddess by an unwanted suitor echoes the hrimthurs demanding Freyja.

• 6. Legacy and Descendants

  ›

  Völsunga saga preserves a story in which Sleipnir's lineage directly shapes the fate of its greatest hero. In chapter 13, the hero Sigurðr is looking to choose a horse and meets a long-bearded old man he has never seen before. The old man suggests they drive the available horses into the river Busiltjörn. All of the horses swim back to land except one: a large, young, handsome grey horse that no one had ever mounted. The old man says the horse is from Sleipnir's kin and must be raised carefully, because it will become better than any other horse. The old man then vanishes, and the narrative reveals he was Odin. Sigurðr names the horse Grani, and Grani goes on to become the famous steed of the Volsung hero.

  A riddle in the 13th-century legendary saga Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, known as Heiðreks gátur, encodes the image of Odin on Sleipnir as a puzzle. The riddle asks: who are the two that run on ten feet, have three eyes, but only one tail? The answer given is Odin riding Sleipnir, a compressed image that counts Odin's two legs, Sleipnir's eight, and their single shared gaze.

  The Gesta Danorum, written in the 12th century by Saxo Grammaticus, is considered by many scholars to contain a thinly veiled appearance by Sleipnir. In book I, a young man named Hadingus rides with a one-eyed old man of great age, and during the return journey Hadingus trembles beneath the old man's mantle and peers out. He sees the sea passing beneath the horse's steps. The parallel to Odin and Sleipnir crossing between worlds is unmistakable to most readers of the Norse tradition.

  In the modern world, Sleipnir left a mark on Icelandic folklore: the horseshoe-shaped canyon Ásbyrgi in Jókulsárgljúfur National Park in northern Iceland is said by tradition to have been formed by Sleipnir's hoof. Dagfin Werenskiold completed a wooden relief depicting Odin on Sleipnir between 1945 and 1950 for the exterior of the Oslo City Hall. A statue of Sleipnir dated to 1998 stands in Wednesbury, England, a town whose name derives from the Anglo-Saxon form of Odin's name, Wóden. Rudyard Kipling wrote a short story in 1888 titled Sleipner, late Thurinda, featuring a horse named Sleipner, and the name has been carried by ships across northern Europe for generations.