THE TERRIBLE ONE'S HORSE: CHAPTER 2

SLEIPNIR: THE “SLIPPERY” HORSE OF ODIN

Some fascinating theories have been proposed for the natural or supernatural basis of Odin’s horse, Sleipnir, ‘slipper’ or ‘sliding one’ (see Rudolf Simek’s Dictionary of Northern Mythology; the name is plainly derived from ON sleipr, ‘slippery)’.  Among these are (see also H.R. Ellis Davidson’s Gods and Myths of Northern Europe):

1) a celestial steed with eight legs who has his origin on the Gotland Picture Stones, where the multiplicity of legs on the horse is meant to indicate speed (much as we do in our modern era with cartoons)

2) the eight-legged horse represents the bier of a dead man, born by four men, who themselves have eight legs

3) the horse is akin to the shamanistic Wind Horse or Khiimori of Tengriism, a symbolic representation of the human soul or perhaps, rather, the vehicle which transports the human soul after death

4) the eight legs are a substitute for the eight spokes of some European sun wheels, found on rock carvings, for example

5) that Sleipnir is the same as Yggdrasill, the ‘Terrible One’s Horse’, a designation for the Sky-Tree of Norse mythology

The only idea that truly stands up to comparative scrutiny is No. 5 above.  Sleipnir is gray because that is the color of the bark of the ash tree, i.e. Yggdrasill.  And his eight legs?  Well, in Aado Lintrop’s “The Great Oak and Brother-Sister” (FOLKLORE, Vol. 16, 2001: http://www.folklore.ee/folklore/vol16/oak2.pdf), we learn of the great World Tree of the Yakuts:

“Realising that this should be the edge of his earth, he wondered where does the thick tree with branches in eight spheres end, and when he rose to see – it grew through the Yakut man’s small world, grew through the three spheres of the white sky, turned into the main black enamelled silver horse-hitching post of the God of the White Master (Ürüng Ai Tojoon), who drank the white milk food and ate on the spread ysyahh. He had the ysyahh pole of the cream-coloured horse, the high pillar of the white horse, the hitching post of a mouse-coloured horse with the constantly ascending full moon, with the never setting sun that rotated on the vault of heaven [---] (Hudiakov 1890: 250)

Another account of the World Tree, recorded from the Yakuts, bears strong resemblance to the great birch of the Mordvinian folk songs:

A thick tree of eight branches grows on the yellow navel of the eight-faceted world. Its bark is of niello silver, gnarls of silver, cambium of gold, cones like beakers with nine protruding handles, leaves like the skin of a four-year-old mare. White sülügüi [the nectar of the gods] of the White Master’s God (Ürüng Ai Tojoon) gathers foam, the yellow sülügüi of the White Master’s God is iridescent, sloshy. Hungry passers-by eat, tired ones rest, the hungry will recuperate, the tired will fatten. (Hudiakov 1890: 112–113)”

Here we have a sky tree, associated with horses, with eight branches – which in the Norse system are represented as the eight legs of Sleipnir/Yggdrasill.  We’ve long known that Odin’s hanging from the World Tree was poetically conceived of as “riding the gallow’s horse”, and the same expression is used for hanged men.  Thus the metaphors of tree and horse are fused and both become interchangeable symbols for the heavens that turn on the North Pole-North Star axis.

The sky-horse “travels” in the sense that the dome of heaven turns and, as it does so, different portions of it set into and rise from the underworld in accordance with seasonal fluctuations.