White horse (mythology) Poseidon was also the creator of horses, creating them out of the breaking waves when challenged to make a beautiful land animal. In Norse mythology, Odin's eight-legged horse Sleipnir, "the best horse among gods and men", is described as grey. Sleipnir is also the ancestor of another grey horse, Grani, who is owned by the hero Sigurd. In Slavic mythology, the war and fertility deity Svantovit owned an oracular white horse; the historian Saxo Grammaticus, in descriptions similar to those of Tacitus centuries before, says the priests divined the future by leading the white stallion between a series of fences
Odin giving the gift of life to the first two humans Ask and Embla. Odin has a particular association with Yule, and mankind's knowledge of both the runes and poetry is also attributed to him, giving Odin aspects of the culture hero. In Old Norse texts, female beings associated with the battlefield—the valkyries—are associated with the god and Odin oversees Valhalla, where he receives half of those who die in battle, the . The other half are chosen by the goddess for her afterlife location, . Odin consults the disembodied, herb-embalmed head of the wise being for advice, and during the