Huginn and Muninn
Examples of artifacts that may depict Odin with one of the ravens include Migration Period golden bracteates, Vendel era helmet plates, a pair of identical Germanic Iron Age bird-shaped brooches, Viking Age objects depicting a moustached man wearing a helmet, and a portion of the 10th or 11th century Thorwald's Cross.
It encompasses the complex meaning of mind and sense, such as "thought, perception, comprehension, awareness, mood, sentiment, desire, choice etc".
[1][2] Cognates include Middle English: hige (with variants: huȝe, huiȝe, hiȝe, huie, hiȝ, hie), Old English: hyge, hiġe, Old Saxon: hugi, Middle Dutch: hoghe, Dutch: heug, Gothic: hugs, Old High German: hugu, hugi, with the same meaning.
He tells the prince about Odin's wolves Geri and Freki, and, in the next stanza of the poem, states that Huginn and Muninn fly daily across the entire world, Midgard.
"[14] In the Third Grammatical Treatise an anonymous verse is recorded that mentions the ravens flying from Odin's shoulders; Huginn seeking hanged men, and Muninn slain bodies.
The verse reads: Migration Period (5th and 6th centuries CE) gold bracteates (types A, B, and C) feature a depiction of a human figure above a horse, holding a spear and flanked by one or more often two birds.
The presence of the birds has led to the iconographic identification of the human figure as the god Odin, flanked by Huginn and Muninn.
[18] A pair of identical Germanic Iron Age bird-shaped brooches from Bejsebakke in northern Denmark may be depictions of Huginn and Muninn.
"[21] A portion of 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, his right foot in its mouth, and a large bird on his shoulder.
[22] This depiction has been interpreted as Odin, with a raven or eagle at his shoulder, being consumed by the monstrous wolf Fenrir during the events of Ragnarök.
The Roskilde Museum identifies the figure as Odin sitting on his throne Hliðskjálf, flanked by the ravens Huginn and Muninn.
John Lindow relates Odin's ability to send his "thought" (Huginn) and "mind" (Muninn) to the trance-state journey of shamans.
Lindow says the Grímnismál stanza where Odin worries about the return of Huginn and Muninn "would be consistent with the danger that the shaman faces on the trance-state journey.
[27] In response to Simek's criticism of attempts to interpret the ravens "philosophically", Winterbourne says that "such speculations [...] simply strengthen the conceptual significance made plausible by other features of the mythology" and that the names Huginn and Muninn "demand more explanation than is usually provided".
is an image intended to calm the fears and longings of those who mourn the loss of Woden and who want to return to the old religion's symbols and ways.
[28] Bernd Heinrich theorizes that Huginn and Muninn, along with Odin and his wolves Geri and Freki, reflect a symbiosis observed in the natural world among ravens, wolves, and humans on the hunt: "Huginn" and "Muninn" were the names for the missions of European Space Agency astronauts – respectively of Andreas Mogensen of Denmark, and Marcus Wandt of Sweden – aboard the International Space Station in January 2024.
