Gná and Hófvarpnir: An Errand Across Sky and Sea

Gna, the thirteenth, is the messenger that Frigga sends into the various worlds on her errands. She has a horse that can run through air and water, called Hofvarpnir. Once, as she drove out, certain Vanir saw her car in the air, when one of them exclaimed, “What flieth there? What goeth there? In the air aloft what glideth?” She answered, “I fly not though I go, And glide through the air On Hofvarpnir, Whose sire’s Hamskerpir, And dam Gardrofa.”

Gylfaginning names Gná among the goddesses who serve Frigg: she is the one sent on errands into the various worlds. Her horse Hófvarpnir runs through air and over the sea. One day some Vanir saw her passing overhead and asked in verse what flew by. Gná replied that she did not fly, though she travelled and glided through the air on Hófvarpnir, whose sire was Hamskerpir and whose dam was Garðrofa.

The translations differ in a detail: Blackwell has the Vanir see her car in the air, while Anderson has her riding the horse. The passage does not say what her errands were or whom she visited. The Vanir only see her go by, so the scene is not placed in Vanaheimr.

Gylfaginning adds, in Anderson’s wording, that from Gná’s name anything that fares high in the air is said to “gna”. Thorpe’s index glosses Hófvarpnir as a horse that plies its hoofs well, a good goer. The meaning of Gná’s own name is not settled in the sources used here. Her horse’s sire Hamskerpir and dam Garðrofa are named in this verse and in the translators’ indexes.

Gná belongs to the group of Frigg’s attendants that Gylfaginning lists one after another, among them Hlín and Snotra. Her role as a go-between, carrying Frigg’s errands between worlds, is the only thing the passage says about her. The Vanir named in the verse are a separate matter from the realm Vanaheimr, which has its own page here.