Cut in Stone

Almost everything the Norse sources say about Sleipnir was written down in thirteenth-century Iceland or later, generations after anyone there worshipped Odin. On Gotland there are two eighth-century picture stones, Tjängvide and Ardre VIII, and carved on both is a rider on a horse with eight legs, met by a figure holding something out to him. No caption, no text, no poem attached. It is not proof that the carvers told the story Snorri tells. It is proof that four or five hundred years earlier somebody was already drawing that horse.