Sleipnir

Summary

Sleipnir is Odin's eight-legged horse, and for Snorri the best of the gods' horses. In Gylfaginning Snorri lists the horses the Æsir ride each day to their court of judgment: Sleipnir is the best, Odin owns him, and he has eight legs. Grímnismál says that Yggdrasil is the best of trees, Odin the best of the Æsir, Sleipnir the best of horses, and Bilröst the best of bridges.

The story of his birth is the story of a bargain the gods broke. A builder came to the gods offering to build a wall round Asgard against the giants in a single winter, for a wage of Freyja, the sun and the moon. He hauled the stones with his stallion Svaðilfari, and three days before the deadline the wall was nearly done. Afraid of paying, the gods forced Loki, who had advised the bargain, to spoil it. Loki turned himself into a mare, came out of a wood to the stallion and neighed; the stallion broke his ropes and ran after her all night, the work fell behind, the builder showed himself a giant, and Thor killed him with the hammer. Some time later Loki bore a grey foal with eight legs, the best horse among gods and men. An old stanza says: Loki got the wolf on Angrboða, and he bore Sleipnir by Svaðilfari.

Sleipnir carries his rider where no other horse can go. When Baldr was killed, his mother Frigg asked who would ride to the realm of the dead to ransom him. Hermóðr, Odin's son, took Sleipnir and rode nine nights through dark, deep valleys where he could see nothing, until he reached the bridge over the river Gjöll. Its guardian, Móðguðr, asked his name and said the bridge rang no less under him alone than under the five troops of dead men who had crossed the day before. At the gate of Hel he dismounted, tightened the girth, mounted and spurred the horse, and it leapt over the gate without touching it. In Baldrs draumar Odin himself saddles Sleipnir and rides down to Niflhel to ask a dead seeress about his son's dreams; a hound with a bloodied breast meets him, and Odin rides on, the earth-road resounding under his horse, until he reaches Hel's high hall.

The idea the story turns on is that the best thing the gods own came from a bargain they broke. The stallion that nearly built the wall in one winter became the sire of Odin's horse, and the trick that saved Freyja, the sun and the moon bred the mount that crosses between the worlds: over air and sea, on the road to the dead, and over the gate of Hel. What the giants lost by deceit became Odin's power on the road.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this, as a reading proposed on the method. Sleipnir comes from the adjective sleipr, slippery, which goes back to a Germanic verb meaning to slip, and the dictionary glosses the name "the slipper". Remove the suffix -nir, which makes the adjective into a name for one who does the thing, and sleip- remains: s, l, and a b that has become p. These are the letters of Arabic salib, in order. In Lane, farasun salibu al-qawāʾim is "a horse light, or active, in the legs, in the shifting of the legs"; salb is "going lightly and quickly"; and insalaba is "he went at a very quick pace", said of a horse or camel, as in "the she-camel went so fast that she was as though she went forth from her skin". On this reading Sleipnir is al-salibu al-qawāʾim, the horse light and quick in moving its legs, which is what the story makes him when it gives him eight legs, makes him outrun every horse, and has him leap over Hel's gate.

Linguistic Root

Cleasby and Vigfusson give Sleipnir as "the 'slipper', the name of Odin's eight-footed steed", and sleipr as an adjective, slippery. Orel puts the adjective under Germanic *slaipaz, with Old High German sleif, smooth, slippery, derived from a verb meaning to slip.

Under s-l-b Lane gives salib, "light, or active, and quick"; rajulun salibu al-yadayni bi-l-ṭaʿn, "a man light in the arms in thrusting"; farasun salibu al-qawāʾim, "a horse light, or active, in the legs, in the shifting of the legs", or according to al-Azharī "long in the legs"; salb, "going lightly and quickly"; insalaba, "he went at a very quick pace", said of a horse or camel; and insalabat al-nāqa, "the she-camel went so quick a pace that she was as though she went forth from her skin".

The sounds follow the Juthoor sound laws. S is s, l is l, and b, of the labial group, becomes b or p in the European languages, answering the p of sleip-, as the b of balla answers the p of Muspell. The senses meet: the slippery in Norse is what moves without hindrance, the salib in Arabic is light and quick, and insilāb is a speed in which the runner seems to slip out of its skin. What remains is that the diphthong ei of the Norse name is a long vowel with only a short i to answer it in salib.

The project's Semitic essay does not read Sleipnir's name.

Key Mythic Narratives

The race to Asgard

Snorri tells in Skáldskaparmál that Odin rode Sleipnir into the land of the giants, and the giant Hrungnir asked who this was, riding over air and sea on a wondrous horse. Odin wagered his head that no horse among the giants was as good. Hrungnir, angered, mounted his horse Gullfaxi and chased him; Odin kept ahead, and the giant did not notice until he was inside the gates of Asgard, which began his quarrel with Thor.

Runes on his teeth

Sigrdrífumál lists the places on which runes were carved, among them Sleipnir's teeth, beside the ear of the sun's horse, the wheel of Hrungnir's chariot and the point of Odin's spear.

Symbolic Reading

The essay "Rereading Norse Myths" reads Sleipnir as an image of the Viking ship: the eight legs are eight oars, four on each side, and the horse that outruns every horse and goes over land and sea is a ship that was sometimes hauled overland. Norse poetic language itself supports the image, for poets call a ship "the horse of the sea" and "the wave-horse". The texts that tell Sleipnir's story, however, describe a horse with a saddle and a girth to be tightened, born as a foal from a mare and a stallion, so the reading explains the image of the many legs without replacing the story.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Hermes goes down to Hades and brings Persephone back to her mother. Hermóðr's ride on Sleipnir is a journey of the same kind: a messenger enters the house of the dead to bring back someone who died or was taken. Hermes succeeds, in that Persephone returns for part of the year; Hermóðr fails, because one giantess refuses to weep for Baldr. Sleipnir shares with Fenrir a parent in Loki, so the wolf that swallows Odin at Ragnarök is the brother of the horse that carries him.