Huginn and Muninn were the two ravens of Odin — the birds named “Thought” and “Memory” who flew across all the worlds each day and returned to whisper into the All-Father's ears all that they had seen and heard. Through them Odin knew everything that happened in the Nine Worlds, and they are among the most iconic emblems of the god of wisdom, gracing his shoulders in image after image.
Thought and Memory
Huginn and Muninn (Old Norse Huginn, “thought”; Muninn, “memory” or “mind”) were a pair of ravens belonging to Odin, who perched upon his shoulders. Their names reveal their deep meaning: they are Thought and Memory, the two faculties of the mind, the powers by which knowledge is gathered and held. As the god of wisdom, Odin was fittingly attended by these two birds, the living embodiments of the mental faculties through which all understanding comes.
The Daily Flight
Each day at dawn, Odin sent Huginn and Muninn flying out from Asgard, and the two ravens soared across the entire world — over all the Nine Worlds, over Midgard and the lands of men, over the realms of giants and the dead — observing everything that happened. Then, at day's end, they returned to Odin and perched again upon his shoulders, and there they whispered into his ears all the news of all the worlds, everything they had seen and heard in their flight. By this means the All-Father, though seated in Asgard, knew all that passed everywhere — the ravens were his eyes and ears across the whole cosmos, the source of his vast and constant knowledge of the world.
Odin's Fear
So bound up was Odin's wisdom with his ravens that he expressed, in one famous verse, a poignant fear about them: he sends Huginn and Muninn out each day over the wide world, and he confesses that he fears for Huginn, that he may not return — but he fears even more for Muninn. That is, he fears the loss of Thought, but fears still more the loss of Memory. The verse is a profound meditation: even the god of wisdom dreads, above all, the failure of memory — for a mind that loses its thoughts is impaired, but a mind that loses its memory loses itself. Odin's greatest fear is the loss of Muninn, of Memory.
The Eyes of the All-Father
Huginn and Muninn endure as among the most iconic images in all of Norse myth — the two ravens upon Odin's shoulders, Thought and Memory, the birds that fly across the world and bring all knowledge back to the god of wisdom. They earned Odin one of his many names, “raven-god,” and the raven became one of his great emblems and a bird of omen and battle in the Norse world. They embody the Norse vision of wisdom as something gathered from the whole world and held in mind — thought ranging far and memory bringing it home — and the deep truth, voiced by Odin's own fear, that of all the mind's powers, memory is the one we can least bear to lose.
Thought and Memory fly out over all the worlds each dawn and return at dusk to whisper everything into the god's ears — and Odin fears, above all, the day Memory does not come back.