A price the gods expect never to pay
Early in the gods’ settlement, a builder offers to construct a strong enclosure that will protect them from giants. His proposed payment is immense: Freyja, the sun, and the moon. The gods agree only after sharply restricting the time and assistance available. He must finish within one winter, without help from another man. On Loki’s advice they allow him to use his stallion, Svaðilfari.
The allowance changes everything. The horse drags huge stones by night and contributes far more than the gods expected. As winter approaches its end, the work is nearly complete. The gods confront the possibility that their sworn arrangement will cost them celestial light and a goddess whom they have treated as a negotiable reward. Their calculation depended on the builder’s failure, rather than on willingness to honor the stated price.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XIII, §43 in Anderson
Loki changes the conditions
With three days left before summer, the gods hold an anxious council. They identify Loki as responsible for allowing the horse and threaten him with a terrible death unless he prevents completion. Loki promises a solution. That evening a mare emerges from the woods and attracts Svaðilfari. The stallion breaks away, and the builder follows as the horses run through the forest.
The interruption consumes the night and prevents the necessary work. Realizing that he cannot meet the deadline, the builder reveals a giant’s fury. The gods then abandon the protection of their oaths and call Thor, who has been away. Thor kills him with his hammer. The settlement of the contract is thus coercive and violent: the gods first arrange an obstacle and then destroy the claimant when the bargain collapses.
Source: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) · Gylfaginning, chapter XIII, §43 in Anderson
A horse born from the bargain
The mare was Loki. After the encounter with Svaðilfari, Loki gives birth to a gray, eight-legged foal, Sleipnir, whom the prose calls the finest horse among gods and humans. The tale finishes with an extraordinary new creature as well as a defeated builder. Loki’s capacity to change shape has consequences that persist long after the immediate trick has worked.
Snorri connects the episode with verses from Völuspá about a compromised pledge, the threat of giving Óðr’s beloved to giants, and Thor’s violent response. Those compressed verses should not be treated as though they independently narrate every detail of the prose contract or Sleipnir’s birth. The extended account belongs to this prose witness. Its conflicts also complicate a simple division between trustworthy gods and deceitful giants: the gods seek protection for their community while manipulating an oath and bargaining over someone else’s future.
Sources: The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing); The Poetic Edda (1923 translation) · Gylfaginning, chapter XIII, §43; Völuspá 25–26 in Bellows
- Period / witness
- Medieval Old Norse literature; the Poetic Edda survives chiefly in thirteenth-century copies, and Snorri’s Edda was composed around the 1220s. Mythic events have no historical date.
- Recording context
- Preserved through medieval Icelandic writing and later copies, in a Christian literary culture. Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda dates to c.1270. These recording circumstances do not locate the origin of an oral story.
A recording location is not necessarily a story’s origin. Dates of texts, copies, and translations answer different questions.
Explore time & place →Read the sources
These references support the explanation above. Rights and edition notes are recorded individually.
The Younger Edda / Prose Edda (1901 printing) ↗
Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241); translated by Rasmus B. Anderson (1846–1936) · 1901 printing of Anderson’s translation (copyright 1879); medieval work composed in Iceland around the 1220s
Edition & rights noteThe Poetic Edda (1923 translation) ↗
Anonymous Old Norse poets; translated by Henry Adams Bellows (1885–1939) · 1923 translation; medieval poems preserved principally in manuscripts of the thirteenth century
Edition & rights note