Sleipnir, whose name translates into English as “The Sliding One”, is the iconic, eight-legged horse ridden by Odin, one of the principal gods in Norse mythology. His eight legs have been said to represent all the directions of the world, including inside and outside or, alternatively, the legs of pallbearers carrying the dead to the grave. Either way, they serve to emphasis his ability to to transcend normal physical boundaries and thereby carry Odin through all the realms of existence, including the underworld, Hel.
The birth of Sleipnir is the result of a ruse by the trickster god Loki, intended to prevent a giant, who remains unnamed in the myth, from completing the walls around Asgard, the dwelling place of the gods, in a single winter and thereby winning the hand of Freyja, the goddess of love, beauty, youth, and fertility, in marriage. The giant has agreed to be aided only by his stallion, Svaðilfari, so Loki shapeshifts into a mare to distract him from his work. The plan works, only too well, and the product of their coupling is Sleipnir, who, unsurprisingly, is blessed with mythical abilities.
Grey in color, Sleipnir is said to be capable of outrunning any creature on land, on water or in the air and, akin to Shadowfax in ‘The Lord of the Rings’ by J.R.R. Tolkien, is considered “the best among horses”. He serves as a symbol of strength, speed, and agility and, beyond that, of invincibility in battle. His story is detailed in the ‘Prose Edda’, written by Icelandic historian Snorri Sturlusson in the first half of the thirteenth century, and his name is mentioned again in the slightly later ‘Poetic Edda’, an anonymous collection of Old Norse poems, which contains material derived from earlier oral tradition and is sometimes known as the ‘Elder Edda’.