Huginn and Muninn

The Primary Sources

[lore] The story of Huginn and Muninn survives in two main texts, both written down in Iceland in the 13th century CE but reflecting older oral tradition:

• Grímnismál ("The Sayings of Grímnir") — an Eddic poem in the Codex Regius (GkS 2365 4°), dated to c. 1270 CE. The poem itself is thought to be considerably older, probably composed before 1000 CE. Stanza 20 is the only surviving verse that names both ravens together and describes their role.¹
• Gylfaginning ("The Tricking of Gylfi") — chapter 38 of Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda, written c. 1220 CE. Snorri quotes and paraphrases Grímnismál and adds further detail, including their daily flight pattern.²

All other mentions of Huginn and Muninn in later sagas, kennings and poetry derive from or echo these two sources. No earlier written record of their names is known to survive.

Grímnismál Stanza 20 — The Key Text

The original Old Norse text of Grímnismál 20, as it appears in the Codex Regius:¹

Huginn ok Muninn
fljúga hverjan dag
Jörmungrund yfir;
óumk ek of Hugin,
at hann aftr né komi-t,
þó sjámk meir of Munin.

A close prose translation (Hrafn's own, following Larrington 1996):

"Huginn and Muninn fly every day over the vast earth; I fear for Huginn that he may not come back, yet I fear more for Muninn."

Jörmungrund literally means "the great ground" or "the vast earth" — a poetic name for the whole world. [lore] The stanza is spoken by Odin in disguise (as "Grímnir", "the Masked One"), and so its words carry the authority of the god himself within the poem's frame.

Gylfaginning — Snorri's Account

[lore] In Gylfaginning chapter 38 of the Prose Edda, Snorri Sturluson gives a fuller account of the ravens' role. The passage is in Old Norse prose; the following is a close paraphrase rather than a modern-translation quote (to respect copyright on modern translations):

Odin has two ravens, which sit on his shoulders. Huginn is one and Muninn the other. They fly across the whole world each day and come back at breakfast-time; Odin then has news of everything that has happened in the world. Hence he is called the Raven-God (Hrafnaguð). As it says in Grímnismál: [stanza 20 follows].

Snorri here introduces the epithet Hrafnaguð ("Raven-God"), connecting Odin's ravens to his identity as a deity of wisdom and knowledge.

What the Names Mean

Huginn (Old Norse: Huginn)

Derived from Old Norse hugr, meaning "thought", "mind", "courage" or "intention". The root is Proto-Germanic *hugaz, related to Old English hyge (also "thought/mind"). [lore] The name is universally translated as "Thought" in modern scholarship.³

Muninn (Old Norse: Muninn)

Most often translated as "Memory", from Old Norse muna ("to remember") or munr ("mind", "memory", "desire"). [lore] Anthony Faulkes' edition of the Prose Edda (1987, p. 33) notes that munr can also mean "desire" or "longing", making the raven's name ambiguous between memory and desire — a tension that some scholars find thematically significant, given Odin's anxiety about Muninn's return.⁴

What Scholars Say

The two ravens have attracted substantial scholarly commentary. The main lines of interpretation are:

1. Odin's intelligence-gathering function

[lore] Rudolf Simek's Dictionary of Northern Mythology (1993, p. 160) summarises the mainstream view: Huginn and Muninn are expressions of Odin's omniscience — his mind and memory flying free across the world while his body sits at Hliðskjálf (his high-seat). The anxiety about Muninn is interpreted as a fear of forgetting, which would cost Odin his power.³

2. Shamanic projection

[lore] Hilda Ellis Davidson (Gods and Myths of Northern Europe, 1964, pp. 142–44) placed the ravens in the context of Norse shamanism (seiðr): the ability to send consciousness out of the body to gather information from afar. In this reading, Huginn and Muninn are projections of Odin's mind, not separate beings.⁵

3. The "beasts of battle" tradition

[lore] Both ravens and wolves appear alongside Odin in the "beasts of battle" motif found in Old Norse, Old English and Old High German poetry — a convention in which ravens, wolves and eagles anticipate and feed on the slain. This connects Huginn and Muninn to Odin's role as god of war as well as of wisdom. John McKinnell discusses this in Both One and Many (2005).⁶

4. What we do not know

The Grímnismál poem gives us one stanza. Everything beyond that — where the ravens nest, whether they speak, what specifically they observed — comes from Snorri writing two centuries after the Viking Age. Scholars treat Snorri as a valuable but secondary source who may have systematised and embellished older, more fragmentary traditions.

Archaeology and Imagery

[lore] Two birds flanking a human or divine figure appear on a number of Migration Period and Viking Age artefacts. The most discussed examples include:

• The Thorsberg chape (Denmark, c. 200 CE) — a belt fitting showing a figure with two birds, possibly an early precursor to the Odin-raven iconography, though the identification is debated.⁷
• Several Vendel-period helmet plates (Sweden, 6th–8th centuries) show a warrior or deity with one or two birds overhead. These predate the written texts by centuries.
• The Oseberg tapestry fragments (Norway, c. 834 CE) include processional scenes with birds that some scholars identify as ravens near a figure interpreted as Odin.⁷

None of these artefacts names the birds as Huginn or Muninn. The identification rests on analogy with the textual tradition and is a scholarly inference, not a confirmed fact.