Horse Head Gables
On farmhouses in Lower Saxony and Schleswig-Holstein, Northern Germany, horse head gables were referred to as "Hengist and Hors" as late as around 1875. Rudolf Simek notes that these horse heads gables can "still be seen today" (from a 2007 edition of a work first published in 1984) and says that the horse head gables confirm that Hengist and Horsa were originally considered mythological, horse-shaped beings. Martin Litchfield West comments that the horse heads may have been remnants of pagan religious practices in the area.
-
Sketch of horses' heads carving on a farmhouse gable in Northern Germany
-
Horse head gables in Wedemark, Hannover, Northern Germany
-
Horse head gables in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Northern Germany
-
Horse head gables on German author Thomas Mann's cottage in Nida, Lithuania
-
Horse head gables in Arnhem, the Netherlands
Read more about this topic: Hengist And Horsa
Famous quotes containing the words horse and/or head:
“We would not always be soothing and taming nature, breaking the horse and the ox, but sometimes ride the horse wild and chase the buffalo.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We worship not the Graces, nor the Parcæ, but Fashion. She spins and weaves and cuts with full authority. The head monkey at Paris puts on a traveller’s cap, and all the monkeys in America do the same.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)