Sleipnir spear, which may be a valkyrie, and a female figure greets the rider with a cup. The scene has been interpreted as a rider arriving at the world of the dead. The mid-7th century Eggja stone bearing the Odinic name "haras" (Old Norse 'army god') may be interpreted as depicting Sleipnir. John Lindow theorizes that Sleipnir's "connection to the world of the dead grants a special poignancy to one of the kennings in which Sleipnir turns up as a horse word," referring to the skald Úlfr Uggason's usage of "sea-Sleipnir" in his "Húsdrápa", which describes the funeral of Baldr. Lindow
Gná and Hófvarpnir the Vanir and Gná "strange" and points out that it's unclear why it should specifically be the Vanir that witness Gná flying through the air. Ulla Loumand cites Hófvarpnir and the eight-legged horse Sleipnir as "prime examples" of horses in Norse mythology as being able to "mediate between earth and sky, between Ásgarðr, Miðgarðr and Útgarðr and between the world of mortal men and the underworld." In the 19th century, Jacob Grimm proposed a cognate in the personified rumor in Roman mythology; Fama. However, Grimm notes that unlike Fama, Gná is not described as winged but rather that Hófvarpnir, like