All about Sleipnir (juicy gossips )

Today I'm going to introduce you Sleipnir, Odin's eight-legged mount (and no, he's not a spider!). 

Odin riding Sleipnir  ( Tjängvide's picture )

Sleipnir, is the strongest, biggest and most powerful horse in the world.
He can run at unbelievable speed (that's why Odin always gets the best fallen warriors of every single battle... My poor three legged nag can't compete with him) either in the sky, on earth or over the sea.
The English word "slippery" could be  a good translation of his name, and it makes me consider that maybe it could be so, due to he doesn't like interviews and I had to insist a lot to make him tell me about his life... Luckily a jar of mead can make things easier, mhwahahahaha! 

Sleipnir is the son of Loki ("his mother"... I told you in the title of this entry, that there would be juicy comments ;) )  and Svaldifari, a horse with a high repute who helped to build Asgard's wall.
The history about how their parents meet started when an anonymous builder came as a volunteer to build a fortress for the gods, which will not let any enemy in.
In exchange for his services, he asked for the Moon, the Sun and the goddess Freyja (as you can see, he was a clever dude). 

Loki would give it to him just if he worked alone and finished his work in six months. Actually Loki thought that he would only be able to build the half of the fortress, and as a result he would get all this work done for free.

The builder accepted and asked if he could be helped by his horse Svadilfari. 

Svaldilfari was very strong and could move huge stones easily, which made the gods fear that he might get it... specially when they realized that he was doing all the work on time.

Due to "as usually" Loki was the one who got them into troubles (Freyja gave Loki the cold shoulder for a while), they decided that he would be the one to sabotage the builder's work, so that he would not finish his work on time.

Loki knew that Svadilfari was crucial for the builder to work and because of that he decided to taint the majestic and strong horse by turning himself into a mare and flirting with him... but he went "a little to far" with it... Loki in his mare form, became pregnant and that's how Sleipnir was conceived.

One of the most famous characteristics of Sleipnir is his ability to bring his rider to my place (Helheim), which allowed him to come over and let me interview him and Odin, who you will get to know soon. 

There are people who believe that he can fly (I cannot assure it, since he moves his legs so fast that I don't know if he flies or runs...) and because of that they link him to shamanic tradition.

Curiosities about Sleipnir:

I : L Hilda Ellis Davidson , an expert in Nordic mythology states that there is a relation between Sleipnir and the funerary rituals of Old Nordic people. In those funerals, the body of the deceased person was put over a frame and four men brought it to its resting place (either a pyre or a burial mound). According to this, we could consider that the deceased was brought to the underworld by "an eight-legged horse", that's to say, by four men who carried the body to the pyre/burial mound.

II: Some people believe that the eight legs of Sleipnir represent the eight directions in the sky and the eight dimensions. 

III: Other fonts suggest that Sleipnir has only 4 legs, and  each leg is divided in the knee in two parts, which makes us see as if it was an eight-legged horse.
This representation could be dated around year 900, when viking horses were brought from Norway to Iceland. Those horses have 2 wars of walking besides throttle gallop and walk. One of them is Tölt, which could be defined as a walking style between walk and run, which the horse can do at any speed and is really confortable for the rider. The other walking style is the Flying Pace, really common when racing, which allows the horse to reach 30 m.p.h. An Icelandic horse walking like that produces the eight-legged optic effect (check the following video): 

 In 1:45 minute 1:45 you will see the Flying pace

References:

[1] Price, Neil S. 2002. The Viking Way: Religion and War in Late Iron Age Scandinavia. p. 320-323.

Norse Mythology for smart people

My job: identifying the newcomers (I)

Good evening everyone!

Living and working at Niflheim is really hard, and it sometimes can make even the most experimented people fail.
As I told you in my previous post, in early times, I used to walk through the streets wearing my bull disguise and looking for new Niflheim's guests.
My strategy stopped to be useful when in XVth century, people realized that as a bull, the oat was so irresistible to me that I would not take them to Niflheim if they gave me some... This rumor spread so quick that I had to change my strategy and decided to get a granny's disguise.
In the beginning I walked through villages with my granny's look and a broom or a rake, but nowadays I decided to get a more modern version of this fancy dress and I decided to adopt this look:

Hella's actual image while looking for Niflheim guests. 

Actually between IX-XIth centuries it was not that easy to know if the right guest of Niflheim was in front of you, and I had to become a gossip girl good observant to avoid mistakes.

A good technique to know where this person might roam, was to know is social status, which we could know easily thanks to his/her clothing.
Viking clothing colors were limited due to they were created through natural dyes made of ingredients like the scarce rubia tinctorum (it turns white clothing into a reddish one) or something as simple as the red onion's rind, which gives clothing a yellow-like color. Here you can see an image of Nille Glæsel, where you will appreciate the main colors that you could make thanks to natural dyes.

Check out this  link  to find more info

Reddish, purple and bluish colors were the hardest to get due the scarcity of elements to elaborate them, and as you probably have already guessed, only people with a high status owned clothes of these colors.
Another indicator of the status of a person were the jewels that he/she wore. Most of European people were fascinated by gold, but vikings preferred silver.
A woman whose brooches were made of silver, indicated that she belonged to a wealthy family and the bigger the brooches, the higher her social status was.
Here you can see a good example of silver brooches:

Brooches made by Alban Depper

As you can see in the picture, between both brooches hangs a kind of necklaces with colorful beads (they were made of different minerals and amber). 

Again more quantity means more status, so in a nutshell the more necklaces the richer its owner was. 

It means that when I had to go and pick up someone who belonged to rich family, like a jarl's daughter, I only had to look for someone with colorful clothing, who wore several layers of clothing and wearing a lot of jewels. 

On the other hand if I had to pick up someone who belonged to a humble family, I had to look for someone who did not wear silver jewelry (this person might wear bone or brass jewels), plain colored clothing (green , brown, white...) without any embroidery. 

In this picture of Clan Hávamal  reenactment group, you can appreciate 3 different social classes. On the left there is a jarl's wife, and next to her sit two Smáboendr (a social class a little bit humbler than a Boendr) ladies.

In a viking village, you could also distinguish traders or craftsmen thanks to their tools and their daily routines.

Here are a pair of examples: 

  

I would like to tell you more about how to distinguish the social class of a warrior by looking at his clothing but I must admit that it is something that I am still learning, due my "beloved" Odin is the one who always steals the fallen in battle warriors before I arrive  and pick them up... Damn! If he could only turn into a fat bull or a granny, or had to ride three legged a horse or a goat and half of his body was skull-like, we'll see who would get the best warriors!

Despite of my "love" for him, I might consider ask him to collaborate in this blog to tell you more about warriors...

Hella

Hello everybody!

My name is Hella (actually the word hell is closely related to my name and both come from Anglosaxon words like hélan or helan, which mean to cover or to hide; in old Norse slaa ihel means "to kill") and I live under one of the roots of Yggdrasil tree. 

To be more specific, I live in Helheim, the darkest side of Niflheim (I've never been a big fan of sunbathing...). 

Actually you will recognize my home easily since it is surrounded by a wall with one or more opening doors (it depends on how many visitors come to my place that day...) and the shady rivers around it, like Slid, which flows towards West through valleys full of poison, mud and swords (doesn't it sound like paradise?). 

You can arrive to my home, by walking through Helway just like the god Hermóðr did, when he came to ask me to set Baldr free, so that they could go back together Asgard. Needless to say that I refused his request due some reasons that I will tell you in future entries of this blog...  

To arrive to my home, Baldr rode Sleipnir (Odin's eight legged horse) for 9 days and 9 nights, through a downward war and always toward north... I guess that due the cool and fast cars that we have nowadays, you could make it even faster. 

If you are not in a hurry and are not that sporty or virtuous people, I can always come and bring you to my sweet home. 

You will recognize me easily: my dog Gnapapellir will bark near you as I approach, or you will see my three legged horse or my three white legged goat come to you.

I must warn you that to fight boredom (now you know why some people say to be bored like hell...), sometimes I turn myself into a bullock and go from farm to farm looking for my future guests. I must admit that I do not do it too often, since I always get halitosis when I do it... 

The other reason I do it from time to time, is that some people offered me oatmeal if I let them live longer, and as a bullock I cannot resist a good dish full of delicious oatmeal and neither my  horse and my goat can do it. 

Because of that in the middle of XIV century, as the Black Pest devastated Norway and other European regions, I had to change my strategy and turn myself into an old sorceress and knock every church door with a rake or a broom (it depended on how many guests did I want to have that day) to do my job. 

I must admit that my home is big enough to host everybody, although due Odin is faster when it comes to pick up fallen in battle men (I think that after doing that they see the best moves in battle when they reach Walhalla... just like as if they were watching a soccer match...), and because of that I always end up picking up the non-virtuous men, men without honor, adulterous, traitors... or those who die because they are too old or ill. 

If I had two normal legs instead of having a normal one and one skeleton-like, which tumbles down every now and then, then we'll see who gets the best guests home...   

Although I must confess that I have also had celebrities like Baldr who was killed by his brother Höðr,  Sigurd who killed Fafnir and who was killed by Günther or the lovely Brynhildr who arrived with her beauty cart after being burnt in her pyre.

Thanks to those important guests and the information about the Scandinavian people that I gathered for centuries (and yes, the arrival of new technologies was a great help too...), which I got through conversations with my guests or simply with the notes that my servants took during the night chit-chats next to the dying people, I decided to create this blog to share with you all weekly the traditions, art, gastronomy, mythology , etc... of Nordic people who lived between IX and XI century. 

I will also tell you about the Eddas' gossips and their main characters so that you get to know them better. 

I hope that you enjoy as much as I do, the stories about my guests that I will write here.

See you in Hel :)