Focus on The Wild Hunt of Odin and analyze the Subject and composition.
The Wild Hunt of Odin shows a hunting party of airborne horsemen who move across a dark sky. They are accompanied by ravens and owls and seem to emerge from clouds in the background. All horses are black except for one white horse at the front. Spearheading the hunt is a helmeted man, possibly Sigurd, and two bare-breasted valkyries. The rest of the hunters appear to be men, with the addition of three captured nude women. The party members are armed with spears and other weapons. Two men at the front wear pelts over their heads, indicating they are berserkers. Behind the immediate frontline, the hunt is led by the god Thor, who towers above the rest in his chariot pulled by two goats, raising his war hammer and wearing a crown.The Wild Hunt of Odin was painted in Paris in 1872. Most directly, it is based on Johan Sebastian Welhaven's poem Asgaardsreien, with the opening "Through the nightly air stampedes a train of frothing black horses". The poem is about a Christmas wedding that turns violent and is visited by the Wild Hunt. The painting's compositional arrangement, with its diagonal movements, is close to Arbo's Kunstakademie Düsseldorf work Saint Olav at the Battle of Stiklestad (1859). Another visual influence was Bråvallaslaget (1860–62) by Malmström, which depicts the Norse gods in the sky above a battlefield. The way the mythological subjects are treated aligns with Johann Joachim Winckelmann's position, which stated that Germanic deities should be depicted according to the conventions of Greco-Roman subjects. As a consequence, Arbo's Thor wears a crown, and his hammer looks different from historical Scandinavian depictions. The valkyries are half nude and have untamed hair, whereas in Old Norse poetry they are described as wearing their hair pulled back and carrying horns of ale.
war hammer valkyrie Thor Johan Sebastian Welhaven berserker Bråvallaslaget Wild Hunt Johann Joachim Winckelmann Paris Kunstakademie Düsseldorf Sigurd Odin