bronze razors from different sites in Denmark.^35 In all of the above except the
Kalleby carving the horse is facing to the right, in other words pulling the sun
in the direction in which it is seen to cross the sky.
The most spectacular of Scandinavian representations is the famous
Trundholm sun-horse, discovered in 1902 in a bog in north-west Zealand.
This is a bronze model horse about 25 cm. long, drawing behind it a bronze
disc taller than itself, 26 cm. in diameter. The whole group measures about
60 cm. in length. The disc has a bright side, covered with gold leaf, and a dull
side; the bright side is displayed when the group is viewed with the horse
facing to the right. The set was mounted on three pairs of wheels, two for the
horse and one for the sun-disc, each wheel having four slender spokes and
actually able to turn.^36 This remarkable artefact, now in the National Museum
in Copenhagen, is dated to about the fourteenth century . It is not
unique: fragments of a similar assembly, but with two horses, had been found
a few years earlier near Hälsingborg on the other side of the sound. Sun-discs
comparable to the one in the Trundholm group have been found in Ireland,
the Isle of Man, and near Bath.^37
When one knows these second- and first-millennium depictions of the
horse pulling the solar disc, it is tempting to recognize an analogous theme
on certain Aegean objects from a much earlier period. They are from Troy
and the Cyclades, from the mid-part of the third millennium; we do not
know that the populations in question were Indo-European, but there is no
historical implausibility in it, seeing that Anatolia had probably been
colonized by Indo-European-speakers well before 3000.
Thefirst item in question is an Early Cycladic II silver diadem from Syros,
on the preserved section of which we see a male quadruped facing left, with a
band of some sort round his neck, and behind him a large sun-disc with
flames radiating from centre to rim. The animal is more like a dog than a
horse, and one would not expect the horse to be known in the Aegean at this
period. It is not possible to see if the band round his neck was continued as a
link to the disc. Behind the sun is a standing figure with a bird’s head and
outspread wings. Left of the animal, on the broken edge, is another sun-disc,
which probably occupied the centre of the whole design. Symmetry suggests
(^35) F. Kaul in Meller (2004), 57, 61 (fig. centre right; first millennium ).
(^36) J. Déchelette, Revue archéologique (^4) 13 (1909), 308 f.; de Vries (1956), i. 112 f.; Glob (1974),
99–103; Gelling–Davidson (1969), 14–16, 19–21; M. Green (1991), 64–6; F. Kaul in Meller
(2004), 54–7.
(^37) Déchelette (as n. 36), 309 f.; Gelling–Davidson (1969), 16.
204 5. Sun and Daughter