InNorse mythology,Gná (Old Norse) is agoddess who runs errands inother worlds for the goddessFrigg and rides the flying, sea-treading horseHófvarpnir (Old Norse "he who throws hishoofs about",[1] "hoof-thrower"[2] or "hoof kicker"[3]). Gná and Hófvarpnir are attested in theProse Edda, written in the 13th century bySnorri Sturluson. Scholarly have proposed that Gná is a "goddess of fullness" and, in the 1800s, as potentially cognate toFama fromRoman mythology. Hófvarpnir and the eight-legged steedSleipnir have been cited examples of transcendent horses in Norse mythology.
In chapter 35 of theProse Edda bookGylfaginning, the enthroned figure ofHigh provides brief descriptions of 16ásynjur. High lists Gná thirteenth, and says that Frigg sends her off to different worlds to run errands. High adds that Gná rides the horse Hófvarpnir, and that this horse has the ability to ride through the air and atop the sea.[3] High continues that "once someVanir saw her path as she rode through the air" and that an unnamed one of these Vanir says, in verse:
- "What flies there?
- What fares there?
- or moves through the air?"[4]
Gná responds in verse, in doing so providing the parentage of Hófvarpnir; the horsesHamskerpir and Garðrofa:
- "I fly not
- though I fare
- and move through the air
- on Hofvarpnir
- the one whom Hamskerpir got
- with Gardrofa."[4]
The source for these stanzas is not provided and they are otherwise unattested. High ends his description of Gná by saying that "from Gna's name comes the custom of saying that somethinggnaefir [looms] when it rises up high."[4] In theProse Edda bookSkáldskaparmál, Gná is included among a list of 27 ásynjur names.[5]
Rudolf Simek says that theetymology that Snorri presents inGylfaginning for the nameGná may not be correct, yet it is unclear what the name may otherwise mean, though Gná has also been etymologically theorized as a "goddess of fullness."[6]John Lindow calls the verse exchange between the Vanir and Gná "strange" and points out that it's unclear why it should specifically be the Vanir that witness Gná flying through the air.[7]
Ulla Loumand cites Hófvarpnir and the eight-legged horseSleipnir as "prime examples" of horses in Norse mythology as being able to "mediate between earth and sky, betweenÁsgarðr,Miðgarðr andÚtgarðr and between the world of mortal men and the underworld."[8] In the 19th century,Jacob Grimm proposed a cognate in the personifiedrumor inRoman mythology;Fama. However, Grimm notes that unlike Fama, Gná is not described as winged but rather that Hófvarpnir, like the winged-horsePegasus, may have been.[9]
