Partly out of desperate grief - and partly in defiance of the harshness of the Norns or fates: Odin begs Hermod to ride his own steed, Sleipnir, down to Hell and beg Hela to release Balder.
It has also been suggested that the man on horseback, who has a beard and helmet and is riding a stallion, is the god Odin with his spear Gungnir on his horse Sleipnir.
The contents of the pictures are much debated, some characters have a pagan content, featuring the detailed look of Odin's horse Sleipner, while other characters are clearly part of Christian imagery.
It is said that it originates from the black (heathen) and white (Christian) horse the Saxon leader Widukind rode on, or Odin's horse Sleipnir.
He notes that the carving depicts a single rider on a single horse, but that the horse appears to have more than four legs, possibly depicting Sleipnir, the eight-legged mount of Odin.
Sleipnir |
O'Brien (1982) reconstructs a horse goddess with twin offspring, pointing to Gaulish Epona, Irish Macha (the twins reflected in Macha's pair, Liath Macha and Dub Sainglend), Welsh Rhiannon, and Eddaic Freyja in the tale of the construction of the walls of Asgard, seeing a vestige of the birth of hippomorphic twins in Loki in the form of a mare (in place of Freyja) giving birth to eight-legged Sleipnir.