The raven between Apollo, Odin and the Bible: the story of an omen
The raven turned black by Apollo, Odin's Huginn and Muninn, the raven of Noah and of the Roman augurs: a bird poised between prophecy and ill omen.
Black, intelligent and able to imitate sounds and voices, the raven has always caught human attention. Ancient cultures considered it a prophetic bird, a messenger between the world of the gods and that of mortals, and for this very reason an ambiguous one: whoever brings news may announce victory as well as ruin. Its fame as a bird of ill omen is only part of a much richer story that runs through Greek mythology, Norse mythology and the biblical tradition.
The bird of Apollo
In the Greek world the raven was sacred to Apollo, the god of prophecy. Ovid, in the second book of the Metamorphoses, relates that the raven was once as white as snow: when it told the god that his beloved Coronis was unfaithful, Apollo, distraught, killed her and then punished the messenger by turning its feathers black. The myth explains the colour of the bird and at the same time warns against those who bring painful news.
In Rome the raven belonged to the oscines, the birds whose cries were interpreted by the augurs. Livy relates that in 349 BC the tribune Marcus Valerius, during a duel against a Gallic warrior, was helped by a raven that settled on his helmet and struck the enemy in the face. According to tradition, the surname Corvinus borne by his family derived from that episode.
The ravens of Odin
In Norse mythology two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, whose names are linked to thought and memory, fly over the world every day and return to tell Odin what they have seen. The Eddic poem Grímnismál has the god say that he fears for both, but above all for Muninn. Snorri Sturluson, in the thirteenth century, describes them perched on the god's shoulders, whispering news into his ears.
The raven thus became a warrior emblem. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records, under the year 878, the capture of a Viking banner called the Raven. For Scandinavian warriors the bird that feeds on battlefields was a sign of Odin's presence rather than a mere omen of death, and its image also appears on coins and objects of the Viking age.
The raven in the Bible and in Christian legend
In Genesis the raven is the first bird Noah releases from the ark after the flood; unlike the dove it does not return, and Christian commentators often interpreted it as a figure of the sinner who lingers among worldly things. In the First Book of Kings, by contrast, it is ravens that bring bread and meat to the prophet Elijah, hidden by the brook Cherith.
Hagiography also gives it a positive role. Gregory the Great, in the second book of his Dialogues, tells how a raven fed by Saint Benedict carried away, at his command, a poisoned loaf sent to him by a hostile priest. For this reason the raven often appears in Benedictine iconography. More recent is the tradition of the ravens of the Tower of London, tied to the legend that the kingdom would fall if they ever left the fortress.
On the whole, the raven is less an animal of ill omen than a bird of knowledge. It sees from above, remembers and reports: this is its function in almost every myth that concerns it. Its bad reputation arose from its link with battlefields and with death, but alongside it European tradition has preserved the image of a divine messenger, faithful and wise.