Huginn and Muninn
Odin’s two ravens in Norse myth. Their names mean “thought” (or “mind”) and “memory”, and each day they fly over the world and bring Odin news of all that happens.
Meaning
Snorri’s Edda says the two ravens sit on Odin’s shoulders; at dawn he sends them out over the whole world, and they come back by breakfast time, so that he learns about many things, “and hence he is called Rafnagud (raven-god)”. In the Eddic poem Grímnismál Odin himself speaks of them: “For Hugin I fear | lest he come not home, But for Munin my care is more.” The Danish encyclopedia Lex gives the names as “the Mind” and “the Memory”, and says they have been understood as those qualities of the god in bird form.
Origin and history
The ravens appear on objects older than the written myths. The National Museum of Denmark shows Viking Age clothes pins with Odin and his two ravens, and Lex shows a stamped plate from a 7th-century warrior’s helmet found at Uppsala, readily read as a helmeted Odin riding out with Huginn and Muninn. Store norske leksikon notes that Norse society saw the raven, an eater of carrion, as a bird of death and war, and that the idea of the raven as a death bird lived on in Norwegian folk belief into recent times.
Two ways to read the ravens
Lex sets out two readings: the ravens can be tied to battle and death, as carrion birds, or to the idea of the shaman’s free soul, which can travel in all dimensions in the shape of a bird. It adds that both fit Odin.
Read next
- Next in Norse and Viking symbolsYggdrasilThe world tree of Norse myth: an evergreen ash that stands at the centre of the world, its branches spreading over everything and its three roots reaching into the realms of gods, giants and the dead.
- In Animal symbolismWolf symbolismIn Roman legend a she-wolf nursed Romulus and Remus, the founders of Rome; in Norse myth the wolf Fenrir swallows Odin at the end of the world. To the Ojibwe, Ma'iingan the wolf is the brother of the first man, and whatever happens to one happens to the other.
See also
Raven banner, Raven symbolism, Owl, Odin, Mjölnir (Thor’s hammer), Gungnir.
Sources
- Hugin og Munin (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- Hugin og Munin (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
- The Viking gods, National Museum of Denmark
- The Younger Edda (Anderson translation), Snorri Sturluson, trans. Rasmus B. Anderson, 1880, Project Gutenberg
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Grimnismol, stanza 20 and note
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from curves and waves.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed September 26, 2026. How we research
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