Despite being a Wagner aficionado, I hadn’t wondered until seeing this web site if the Walkurie horses had wings.
What say you, Dopers? Wings, or not?
I don’t know if this has any mythological backing, but I picture them as having winged hooves, similar to Mercury’s sandals.
I thought they would have big ass wings likethe Thief Of Baghdad, but that would make it difficult to sling the bodies of Dead Heroes on their backs.
Siegfried rides Grane around like a regular horse, and nobody says anything about the wings. I think Brunhilde says that he can’t fly anymore, though, after Siggy rescues her from the circle of fire.
No wings.
Full disclosure, IANAV.
The wiki page has several pictures of artifacts from the Viking era which may (or may not) depict valkyries. One has a very crude picture which may (or may not) depict the valkyrie herself with wings. None of them depicts a winged horse.
Even if they were depicted with wings, that might be a symbol of their ability to fly, rather than a literal belief that they had wings. Odin’s horse was often depicted with eight legs, but many anthropologists opine that it was a symbol of speed, rather than a literal belief that it had eight legs.
“I am not a virgin”?
Horses?
No wings!
Valkyrie horses have the same number of wings as a Balrog.
It must be their hats.
Strictly my opinion:
No wings on the horses.
I never really thought of them as “flying” either, in the strict sense of “cruising the globe at high altitude” or anything - more of “galloping down from the heavens and then returning the way they came”, looking, I suppose, more like they are running up and down an invisible hill than actually flying.
Can’t say any of that has the least bit of mythological veracity though.
I actually wonder if the horses are even from the actual period or an idea that came after the fact. Hunting around for period depictions, I encountered the old Wikipedia text. Seeing as the current Wikipedia text does confirm that a Valkyrie is spoken of as riding a wolf, I think this is a plausible theory.