Triple horn of Odin
Three drinking horns interlaced at their tips, carved on the Snoldelev runestone in Denmark about 700–800. It is called the triple horn of Odin today; the stone itself names no god.
Meaning
The sign is known from the Snoldelev stone, one of Denmark’s oldest runestones, found in the 1770s near Snoldelev between Roskilde and Køge and now in the National Museum of Denmark. The Danish encyclopedia Lex describes, beside the inscription, a figure made of three drinking horns twisted together. The inscription names the man the stone is for: “Gunnvald’s stone, son of Roald, thul at Salhøje.” A thul, Trap Danmark explains, was probably a speaker or reciter; the Old Icelandic þulr means “speaker, wise man, skald”.
Origin and history
The stone does not say what the horns meant. Snorri’s Edda tells of a mead that makes whoever drinks it a poet: the dwarfs brewed it from the blood of the wise Kvasir in two jars, Son and Bodn, and a kettle, Odrerir, and Odin won it back for the gods by emptying all three “with the first draught … in the second … and in the third”. The name triple horn of Odin ties the sign to this story; the inscription itself names only Gunnvald, a thul, a reciter of verse. Lex suggests the thul may have joined worldly and cult duties in pre-Christian society.
Horns at a blót today
The National Museum of Denmark describes modern followers of the old Nordic religion meeting in the open air, where “they honour the gods by drinking a toast to them”, and personal toasts follow. Forn Sidr, the largest such society in Denmark, was officially approved in 2003.
Read next
- Next in Norse and Viking symbolsRaven bannerA Viking war banner bearing a raven. Chroniclers say the sons of Ragnar Lodbrok raided England under one, and that the raven’s look in the wind was read as a sign of victory or defeat.
- In Norse gods and their symbolsBragiBragi is the Norse god of poetry and eloquence, a son of Odin and the husband of Idun. Snorri calls him the long-bearded god and the first maker of poetry, and an Eddic poem names his tongue among the things runes were carved on.
See also
Mjölnir (Thor’s hammer), Gungnir, Sleipnir, Huginn and Muninn, Yggdrasil, Valknut.
Sources
- Snoldelevstenen (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- Snoldelevstenen (Trap Danmark), Trap Danmark, 6th edition (Lex)
- The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg, Skáldskaparmál (Bragaræður)
- The old Nordic religion today, National Museum of Denmark
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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