shags, corvorants, gulls of different kinds,
gannets, stormy petrels, auks, and puffins,
are likewise plentiful, and the latter might
often afford the natives a salutary and
Thus in days of yore she sang,
When the din of battle rang;
When the hour of death drew nigh,
And mighty chiefs were doom d to die.
THOR.
The Raven croaks; the warriors slain
With blood her dusky wings distain;
Tir’d her morning prey she seeks,
And with blood and carnage reeks.
Thus, perch’d upon an aged oak.
The boding bird was heard to croak;
When all the plain with blood was spread,
Thirsting for the mighty dead.
“ The Raven was also sacred to Odin, the Hero and
God of the North. On the sacred flag of the Danes
was embroidered this bird. Odin was said always to
have been attended with two, who sate on his shoulders,
whence he was called the God o f Ravens: one was
styled Huginn or Thought; the other Muninn or Memory.
They whispered in his ear all they saw or heard. In the
earliest dawn he sent them to fly round the world, and
they returned before dinner, fraught with intelligence.
Odin thus sang their importance J
Welcome meal, but that, being destitute of
fire-arms, they have no means of killing
them. The eggs and the feathers of many
of these birds they turn to considerable
account. Poultry of all kinds are quite unknown
to the Icelanders, except that a few
are now and then conveyed to the country
by the Danes, who are obliged at the same
time to bring with them a sufficient supply
of necessary food for their support, the island
itself furnishing none.
Indigenous quadrupeds, likewise, as has already
been remarked in a previous part of
my journal, are wholly Wanting.
Among the domestic animals in the island,
the dog deserves the first place, not only as the
companion and solace of the natives as well
as the guard of their houses, but as being of
“ Huginn and Muninn, my delight!
Speed through the world their daily flight;
From their fond lord they both are flown,
Perhaps eternally are gone.
Though Huginn's loss I should deplore,
Yet Muninn"s would afflict me more.”
Pennant’s Arctic Zoology, Introduction, p. 72.