Huginn and Muninn

• 1. Introduction

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  Huginn and Muninn, the two ravens of the god Odin, do something that no ordinary birds can do: they fly across all of Midgard every single day, and return by dinner-time to whisper everything they have seen into his ears. Their names translate roughly as "mind" and "will", though scholars have argued for centuries over exactly what those words mean. What would drive a god to fear for a bird's safe return? And why do these two ravens appear not only in medieval Icelandic poetry, but on Migration Period gold jewellery, Viking Age helmet plates, a silver figurine unearthed in Denmark in 2009, and even in an Old Saxon retelling of the New Testament? The ravens are everywhere. The question is what they represent.

• 2. Names That Resist Translation

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  Huginn is the definite accusative singular of hugr, a word that carries a dense cluster of meanings: thought, perception, comprehension, mood, desire, and choice, among others. Muninn comes from munr, which spreads across affection, intent, will, curiosity, memory, and prediction. The two words are not simple opposites; scholars regard them as having been close to synonyms, sharing several overlapping senses and blurring at the edges.

  The English word "mind" offers a useful illustration of the problem. As a noun it captures the sense of Huginn; as a verb, as in to mind something, it tilts toward Muninn. Neither word maps cleanly onto the other language. Cognates for hugr appear in Old English as hige, and in Old Swedish as hugher and hogher. Cognates for munr include the Old English myne and the Old Swedish mon and mun. The names carry genealogical weight across the Germanic languages.

  Benjamin Thorpe translated the Poetic Edda passage about the ravens this way: Odin says he fears for Hugin that he come not back, yet more anxious he is for Munin. Henry Adams Bellows rendered the same verse slightly differently, but both translators preserve the asymmetry in Odin's anxiety. He worries more about Muninn than about Huginn, which is to say he fears losing memory more than losing thought.

• 3. Texts and Their Witness

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  The Poetic Edda was compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources, and it is here, in the poem Grímnismál, that Odin appears in disguise as Grímnir. Speaking to the young prince Agnarr, Odin describes his ravens flying daily across the entire world before admitting his fear for their return.

  The Prose Edda, also compiled in the 13th century, fills in more detail in its book Gylfaginning, chapter 38. There the enthroned figure of High tells the disguised king Gylfi that Huginn and Muninn sit on Odin's shoulders. Each dawn, Odin sends them out; by dinner-time they return to report everything they have seen and heard. It is from this relationship that Odin earned his byname Hrafnaguð, meaning raven-god.

  The Heimskringla provides a euhemerized account of Odin in its Ynglinga saga, treating him as a historical human rather than a deity. Chapter 7 records that Odin gave his two ravens the gift of speech. The ravens flew all over the land, gathering information, which caused Odin to become "very wise in his lore."

  The Third Grammatical Treatise, compiled in the 13th century by Óláfr Þórðarson, preserves an anonymous verse in which the ravens fly from Odin's shoulders: Huginn toward the hanged, and Muninn toward the slain. This stark battlefield imagery places the ravens not only as information-gatherers but as birds of carrion, drawn to the dead.

• 4. Objects in Metal and Stone

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  Migration Period gold bracteates from the 5th and 6th centuries show a human figure above a horse, holding a spear, flanked by one or two birds. These bracteates have been found in Denmark, Sweden, Norway, and in smaller numbers in England and areas south of Denmark. Austrian Germanist Rudolf Simek suggests they may depict Odin and his ravens healing a horse, and proposes that this indicates the ravens were originally not simply battlefield companions but also helpers in Odin's veterinary function.

  Vendel era helmet plates from the 6th or 7th century, found in a grave in Sweden, show a helmeted rider flanked by two birds. A pair of identical bird-shaped brooches from Bejsebakke in northern Denmark, dating to the Germanic Iron Age, has been studied by archaeologist Peter Vang Petersen. Each brooch is shaped like a bird with a powerful beak, fan-shaped tail, and feathers composed of animal heads that together form a mask on the bird's back. They were worn one on each shoulder. Petersen notes that "raven-shaped ornaments worn as a pair, after the fashion of the day, one on each shoulder, make one's thoughts turn toward Odin's ravens and the cult of Odin in the Germanic Iron Age". He adds that because Odin is associated with disguise, the masks on the ravens may be portraits of the god himself.

  Thorwald's Cross, a partly surviving runestone erected at Kirk Andreas on the Isle of Man, depicts a bearded human holding a spear downward at a wolf, with a large bird on his shoulder. The Scandinavian Runic-text Database dates the cross to 940, while another scholar dates it to the 11th century. Andy Orchard notes that the bird could be either Huginn or Muninn. The scene has been interpreted as Odin during Ragnarök, being consumed by the wolf Fenrir.

  In November 2009, the Roskilde Museum announced the discovery of a niello-inlaid silver figurine found in Lejre, Denmark, which they dubbed "Odin from Lejre". The figurine shows a person seated on a throne flanked by two birds. The museum identifies this as Odin on his throne Hliðskjálf, with Huginn and Muninn at his sides.

• 5. Shamans, Souls, and Symbols

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  John Lindow links Odin's capacity to send out Huginn and Muninn to the trance-state journey of shamans. He argues that the Grímnismál stanza, in which Odin fears the ravens may not return, is consistent with the danger a shaman faces while journeying in a trance, when the travelling soul may fail to come back.

  Rudolf Simek is critical of this reading. He argues that interpreting the ravens as personifications of Odin's intellectual powers can only be inferred from the names themselves, and that those names were unlikely to have been invented much before the 9th or 10th centuries. The ravens as companions, he maintains, derive from much earlier times. Simek instead connects Huginn and Muninn to broader raven symbolism across the Germanic world, including the raven banner described in English chronicles and Scandinavian sagas. That banner was woven in a way that caused the depicted raven to appear to beat its wings when the banner fluttered in the wind.

  Anthony Winterbourne connects the ravens to two Norse concepts. The first is the fylgja, which carries three characteristics: shape-shifting abilities, good fortune, and guardian-spirit function. The second is the hamingja, a ghostly double of a person that may appear in animal form. Winterbourne argues that Odin's ravens gain another symbolic dimension as a Norse soul concept, and that the names Huginn and Muninn demand more explanation than scholars usually provide.

  Biologist Bernd Heinrich approaches the ravens from a different direction entirely. He theorizes that Huginn and Muninn, along with Odin and his wolves Geri and Freki, reflect an observed natural symbiosis among ravens, wolves, and humans on a hunt. In Heinrich's reading, Odin lacked depth perception (being one-eyed) and was uninformed and forgetful; the ravens compensated by serving as his eyes, mind, and memory, while the wolves provided meat. Heinrich wonders whether the Odin myth is a metaphor that encapsulates ancient knowledge of a prehistoric hunting alliance, one whose meaning became obscured as cultures shifted from hunting to herding and agriculture.

• 6. A Christian Echo

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  The Heliand is an Old Saxon retelling of the New Testament, composed in the 9th century. It departs from the standard gospel account in one striking detail: a dove sits not merely above Christ at his baptism, but directly on his shoulder. G. Ronald Murphy reads this as a deliberate parallel. The Heliand author, Murphy argues, placed the dove on Christ's shoulder to evoke the image of Odin with his ravens. By doing so, the author portrayed Christ as a new Woden, a Germanic god into whose ears the Spirit of the Almighty whispers.

  Murphy reads the gesture as pastoral strategy. The author seems aware that the dove, an unwarlike bird, sits awkwardly in this warrior-god framing, but presses on regardless. The intent, Murphy suggests, was to offer those mourning the loss of Woden a familiar image through which to accept the new faith. The raven on the shoulder of a god became the dove on the shoulder of Christ. The two traditions shadow each other across the 9th century, and the silver figurine from Lejre, discovered in 2009, shows how persistently the image of the enthroned figure flanked by two birds travelled through time.

• 7. Into the Present

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  In January 2024, the European Space Agency sent two astronauts to the International Space Station on missions bearing the ravens' names. Andreas Mogensen of Denmark flew on the mission called Huginn. Marcus Wandt of Sweden flew on the mission called Muninn. The pairing was deliberate: thought and memory, dispatched to orbit, gathering information and returning.