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
Eight-legged essay pluralistic ideology characteristic of the Tang Dynasty to a neo-Confucian ideology based on Cheng Yi and Zhu Xi's philosophy. The eight-legged essay came into existence under this background, coinciding with the shift in ideology and embodying the new orthodoxy. The essay format didn't become prevalent as a standard essay in the civil service examination until early Ming dynasty (1368-1644), when the composition of the essay was clearly specified. In the seventeenth century, Gu Yanwu stated that this form of essay-writing became standardized precisely during the 15th century, when the eight parts of the essay were determined. The term "eight-legged essay"