Raven symbolism

Odin’s bird in Norse myth, and a bird of death and war in Norse and later Norwegian belief. In the Bible ravens feed the prophet Elijah; in Haida tradition Raven brings the first people out of a clamshell; and at the Tower of London, legend says the kingdom will fall if the ravens leave.

Bird symbolism. Also called raven meaning, raven spiritual meaning, raven symbolism.

Meaning

Store norske leksikon says that in Norse society the raven was linked with death and war, probably because ravens eat carrion, and that the idea of the raven as a bird of death lasted in Norwegian folk belief into recent times. Odin, whose two ravens are Huginn and Muninn, was called the raven god. English writers heard its croak as an omen of death, and Edgar Allan Poe chose it for “The Raven” as “the bird of ill omen”. Other traditions give it a better part: ravens feed the prophet Elijah in the Bible, and in the Haida story Raven brings the first people out of a clamshell on Haida Gwaii.

Origin and history

In Norse myth Huginn and Muninn are Odin’s two ravens; they follow him everywhere and sit on his shoulders, and so one of his many names is “the raven god” (Ravneguden), Store norske leksikon says. The raven was also the emblem of the raven banner. The encyclopedia explains the raven’s darker side by what it eats: they were birds of death and war because they eat carrion, and belief in the raven as a death bird (dødsfugl) was still alive in Norwegian folk belief in recent times.

Is the raven in the Bible?

Yes, twice. In Genesis 8:7, Noah “sent forth a raven, which went forth to and fro, until the waters were dried up from off the earth”; then he “sent forth a dove”. In 1 Kings 17, the prophet Elijah is told, “I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there”, and “the ravens brought him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening”. Pennant, in his Zoology, quoted by John Brand, says “a vulgar respect is paid to the raven” in England because of Elijah.

Ravens as omens in English writing

Brand’s Popular Antiquities (1853) collects the raven’s bad name. Bishop Hall’s superstitious man, “if he heare but a raven croke from the next roofe he makes his will.” Spenser calls it “the hoarse night raven, trompe of doleful dreere”, beside “the ill-fac’d owle, death’s dreadful messenger”. Macaulay, in his History of St Kilda, reports that “of inspired birds, ravens were accounted the most prophetical”, and that in Greece and Italy they were sacred to Apollo, “the great patron of augurs”. The same omen crossed the Atlantic: the Frank C. Brown collection of North Carolina folklore has “If a raven lights on top of the house and caws, someone in the house will die.”

Raven in Haida tradition

In the Haida story as the Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia tells it, Raven, alone on Rose Spit beach on Haida Gwaii, finds a clamshell full of small creatures and coaxes them out: they “emerged from the partly open clamshell to become the first Haida”. The Haida artist Bill Reid, whose mother was Haida from Skidegate, carved the scene from laminated yellow-cedar beams as The Raven and the First Men, now in the museum.

The raven in Cherokee belief

James Mooney, collecting among the Cherokee in the late 1880s, found that the raven (kâ’lanû) was “not prominent in folk belief, excepting in connection with the grewsome tales of the Raven Mocker”, and that in former times its name was sometimes taken as a war title.

The Tower of London ravens

Historic Royal Palaces tells visitors that “the kingdom and the Tower of London will fall if the six resident ravens ever leave the fortress”, and that Charles II is thought to have been the first to protect them. Boria Sax, who studied the legend, disagrees: “the tower ravens are entirely a Victorian institution”, he writes, though he finds that the tale “has some authentic basis in legend”.

Poe’s raven

Poe explained in “The Philosophy of Composition” that he first thought of a parrot to repeat “Nevermore”, but chose a raven as “infinitely more in keeping with the intended tone”, and that by the poem’s last line he meant the bird to stand for “Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance”.

Related birds

The Crow symbolism shares the raven’s omens in English writing, and the Owl symbolism appears beside it in Spenser’s line. On the Norse side, see Huginn and Muninn.

Sources

Hugin og Munin (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, vol. 3 (John Brand, ed. Henry Ellis, 1853), John Brand, Observations on the Popular Antiquities of Great Britain, arranged and revised by Sir Henry Ellis, vol. 3 (London: Bohn, 1853), Internet Archive (University of Toronto copy), The Raven, pp. 210-212
Genesis 8:7-8 (King James Version), Genesis 8:7-8, Bible Gateway, Genesis 8:7-8
1 Kings 17:4-6 (King James Version), 1 Kings 17:4-6, Bible Gateway, 1 Kings 17:4-6
The Ravens (Tower of London, Historic Royal Palaces), Historic Royal Palaces, Tower of London visitor page, Historic Royal Palaces, The legend of the Tower Ravens
The Tower Ravens: Invented Tradition, Fakelore, or Modern Myth? (Boria Sax), Boria Sax, Storytelling, Self, Society 6, no. 3 (2010), Wayne State University Press (Digital Commons), Abstract
The Raven and the First Men: From Conception to Completion (Museum of Anthropology at UBC), Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, 2020, Museum of Anthropology at UBC, A Haida Legend of the Raven and the First Men
The Raven, and The Philosophy of Composition (Edgar Allan Poe), Edgar Allan Poe, The Raven and The Philosophy of Composition, Project Gutenberg, The Philosophy of Composition
The Frank C. Brown Collection of North Carolina Folklore, vol. 7 (Wayland D. Hand, ed., 1964), Popular Beliefs and Superstitions from North Carolina, part 2, ed. Wayland D. Hand (Durham: Duke University Press, 1964), Internet Archive (Duke University Library copy), Nos. 5320, 7289
Myths of the Cherokee (James Mooney, 1900), James Mooney, Myths of the Cherokee, Nineteenth Annual Report of the Bureau of American Ethnology, part 1, Project Gutenberg, Introduction; notes on bird lore

Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.

Last reviewed September 30, 2026 by Rory Hansen. How we research

Report a problem