the horseplay in NorsePlay.

The original punditry of this blog's name aside, the sagas talk about the sport of horsefighting or Skeid/Hestavíg. In this competition stallions are shown a mare which gets them excited, then they are prodded and egged on by their owners with long sticks to attack each other, and the last horse standing wins. These horse bouts lasted into the 20th century CE, but if we examine this tradition and a hypothesis of where it comes from, we can eventually find implied links to the story of Loki & Svaðilfari. This last point is our addition to this.

Following the Icelandic settlers back to Norway where Skeid continued until it was banned in 1820 CE, not for the sake of the horses, but because during the raucous & usually violent festivals surrounding it, someone was stabbed.

Going further back, the status of the horse as a ruling class animal can be seen in burials where valuable horses were sacrificed for inhumation in Viking Age ship burials and Vendel Period large mounds. The association of the horse as a symbol of rulership for its strength, plus in the Norse Lore of the higher Gods, only Odin rides a horse while Freyr (despite having an association with horses, rides a boar), Thor (goats), and Freya (cats) use differing animals for transportation.

Tracing this even further back, the Proto-Indo-Europeans, who later ran riot conquering and migrating across Europe using the advantage of horse-drawn chariots, possibly had a ritual where a mare was mated with the king, the mare then sacrificed by the king, and the king distributing the horsemeat to his people, all of which showed his power, virility, mastery, right to rule, and allowed him to share that fortune with those he would then lead. There's later derivative & variant rituals in Rome, Greece, India, and among the Celts that seem to corroborate the structure of this ritual and some ancient rock carvings:

 

[carving in Hoghem, Sweden, possibly depicting ritual horse copulation.]

And if we examine the instance horse love in the Norse Lore's Gylfaginning, we find this seeming inversion of the worthiness to lead, since Loki's underthinking places the Æsir in a dire situation of betting the Master Builder (a jötunn in disguise) as payment for his on-time wall the untenable cost of the Sun, Moon, and Freyja.

In Loki's trying to trick his way out of this corner, the Master Builder's stallion Svaðilfari (ironically meaning "unlucky traveler" or "disaster/ill-fated") gets the better of Loki's temptress mare-form, and from this event is born the 8-legged superhorse Sleipnir, gifted to Odin, the actual ruler of worth.

The provocation of horses by a mare would seem to call back to this story, and perhaps be a ritual practice that made its way into an equine competitive sport, all linked with the idea of leadership status.

[We have to thank & acknowledge Survive The Jive's YT video for first bringing some of this to our attention, and we skimmed details from Kaliff & Oestigaard's The Great Indo-European Horse Sacrifice (2020 CE).] 

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Guillermo Maytorena IV knew there was something special in the Norse Lore when he picked up a copy of the d'Aulaires' Norse Gods and Giants at age seven. Since then he's been fascinated by the truthful potency of Norse Mythology, passionately read & studied, embraced Ásatrú, launched the Map of Midgard project, and spearheaded the neologism/brand NorsePlay. If you have employment/opportunities in investigative mythology, field research, or product development to offer, do contact him.