Apart from that, it looked like the all-black North Atlantic ravens (C. c. varius morpha typicus),[3] which remain widespread in the Faroe Islands and are also found in Iceland.

In modern Faroese, the bird is called hvítravnur ("white raven"), older name gorpur bringu hvíti ("white-chested corbie").

[5] The first record of the pied raven seems to be in the pre-1500 kvæði Fuglakvæði eldra ("The elder ballad of birds") which mentions 40 local species, including the great auk.

During the nineteenth century, the pied birds were selectively shot because they could fetch high prices; the sýslumaður (sheriff) of Streymoy, Hans Christopher Müller once paid two Danish rigsdaler for a stuffed specimen from Nólsoy.

Such sums, a healthy amount of money for the impoverished Faroe farmers, made shooting a pied raven a profitable enterprise.

In the mid-eighteenth century, every Faroe male of hunting age was ordered by royal decree (see Naebbetold) to shoot at least one raven or two other predatory birds per year or be fined four skillings.

[4][11] Because ravens with a diluted, all-whitish plumage have been sighted in the Faroes, also in recent decades, the alleles for that aberrancy still exists in the archipelago, but this is unlikely to be the same genes involved in the pied pattern.