Gullfaxi
mythical horse
Gullfaxi (Old Norse: [ˈɡulːˌfɑkse]) is a horse in Norse mythology. Its name means "golden mane".
It was originally owned by Hrungnir, and was later given to Magni by Thor as a reward for lifting off the leg of Hrungnir, which lay over the unconscious Thor and strangled him:
'And I will give thee,' he said, 'the horse Gold-Mane, which Hrungnir possessed.'
Then Odin spake and said that Thor did wrong to give the good horse to the son of a giantess, and not to his father.
—Skáldskaparmál (17)
Gullfaxi is equally fast on land, in the air and on the water, but not quite as fast as Sleipnir, Odin's horse.
Folk tale
Gullfaxi is also the name of a horse in the modern Icelandic folk-tale The Horse Gullfaxi and the Sword Gunnfoder collected by Jón Árnason, translated into German by Josef Poestion, then rendered into English and included in the Crimson Fairy Book (1903) compiled by Andrew Lang.
The public source identifies “Gullfaxi” as mythical horse. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Gullfaxi, mythical and horse.
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This entry incorporates text from “Gullfaxi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.