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Valravns - Behavior

This is just my personal take on valravns. Many elements present here are not found in the source material and instead are inferences or were wholly invented by me. Feel free to use these ideas for your own valravn or valravn-inspired characters!

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By the nature of their existence, valravns are intelligent and dangerous creatures. A hunger for human hearts does not easily lend itself to a charitable personality. Their hunger dictates their every action.

They are experts at fighting in their many forms, striking precisely where and how they need to. Most of the time, however, valravns pick alternatives to outright violence. A clever predator does not need to hunt prey, all it needs to do is trap it.

A valravn always has some sort of deceptive plot in mind. They have a habit of using trickery in their words or only telling half-truths when making deals with mortals. Unlike the fae, this is not a case of magic compelling them to do so. They simply have a sick sense of humor, taking joy in the despair of the mortals they have tricked.

Valravns can either be nomadic or have a set territory. Typically, younger ones are nomadic while older ones settle, but this is by no means definite. Nomadic valravns fly from one bloodied battlefield to the next, something that is easy for their keen senses to find. Settled valravns typically take up some remote locale, like a forest or island, and reign it with iron claws and beak.

Valravns, much like mundane ravens, are mostly solitary. They may take on a mate, typically another valravn, but sometimes some other monster, or rarely even a human. Valravns are fiercely loyal to their mate, to the point of madness. Anything less than perfect for their other half is unacceptable and must be corrected. A valravn separated or, gods forbid, denied their mate would be a truly twisted and insane monster indeed.

Valravns may also be accompanied by their young. These chicks may be naturally born, humans they turned into their own, or even a mix of both. Their young typically accompany their parents until they reach maturity, at which point they leave their parents' side and strike it out on their own.

Im still alive. I just dont know what to paint nowadays, head empty

Quick thingie to illustrate one of the novel published in the furry fanzine I’ve been organizing with friends. I’ll probably share infos about it later ! Stay tuned ;D

Valravnen is less of a vættr and more of a fairytale creature. It's only known from medieval folk songs, and only from Denmark.

Valravnen shows up in two folk songs: The appropriately titled "Valravnen" and a version of "Germand Gladensvend," where Gammen is replaced by Valravnen. In the self-titled song, valravnen is a human who has been cursed to become a raven and is only returned to his human body when he drinks the blood of a baby. In Germand Gladensvend, valravnen is a monstrous bird who helps the main characters, but asks for their first-born in return, whom he then eats - he is, however, killed by the child's mother before it is revealed why he ate the child.

Even in the song commonly known as "Valravnen," this word only shows up in two of the nine versions of the song. In the other versions, the character is referred to as Wild Raven, Salmand Raven, or Verner Raven (Salmand and Verner being human names).

According to folklorists Holbek & Piø, "valravn" (battlefield raven) is not the original name for this figure, but is instead a misunderstanding of the more prevalent name "vilde ravn" (wild raven), as the figure never appears to have had anything to do with the battlefield, and "wild raven" is a far more common moniker in medieval sources.

However, during the early-1800s nationalistic romanticist wave, poet Adam Oehlenschläger showed a clear preference for the name "valravn" and chose to exclusively use that name in his reworkings of the folksongs. By the time folklorist Svend Grundtvig started his work, by the mid-1800s, "valravn" had overtaken the earlier "vilde ravn" name in popularity.

It is Holbek & Piø's opinion that valravnen is closely related to the werewolf, since they're both transformed humans who can be freed by drinking the blood of an infant, a belief that seems exclusive to Southern Scandinavia.

According to some modern authors, valravnen is a raven that haunts the battlefield, but I have not been able to trace back the origins of this belief. It seems fairly recent, and appears to be a result of the creature's name, more than its actual folkloric presence.

The heraldic combination of a wolf and a raven has been referred to as a valravn. This has seemingly nothing to do with the folkloric valravn, just as a heraldic antelope has nothing to do with a real life antelope. It does lend some credence to the idea that the valravn and the werewolf are related, though. The werewolf is also rarely described as "varulv" in folk songs, but is more often described as "vilde ulv" (wild wolf) or "grå ulv" (grey wolf).

Sources:

Holbek & Piø (1967) "Fabeldyr og Sagnfolk"

Poul Lorenzen (1960) "Vilde Fugle i Sagn og Tro"

Trust?

Or a deathwish?

Maybe a bit of both. But how far are you willing to go to help your best friend

“Valravn’s Keep.”

Valravns - Appearance

This is just my personal take on valravns. Many elements present here are not found in the source material and instead are inferences or were wholly invented by me. Feel free to use these ideas for your own valravn or valravn-inspired characters!

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The valravn is a liminal being, and each one is unique in appearance. Some appear as gigantic, eight-foot-tall raven raptors, while others are griffon-like hybrids of ravens and wolves. To complicate this matter, valravns are shapeshifters and have numerous forms for different occasions. They may blend into the environment and travel unseen as a mundane raven, then later take on a monstrous form to attack prey. The only consistency between all valravns' true forms is that they all have corvid traits in some way. They may have wolf traits as well, but this is not always the case.

Some valravns are capable of taking on a human form. They tend to give themselves armor when they do so, giving the impression that they are turning into a knight. This guise is not perfect, as there will always be something slightly unsettling and not quite right about them. While a valravn disguised as a raven can remain unassuming indefinitely, a valravn disguised as a human will inevitably be found out.

The Crow King

Print: https://pauhami.bigcartel.com/product/the-crow-kings-bride

mythology aesthetics

VALRAVN

In Danish folklore, a valravn is a creature originating from ravens who consume the bodies of the dead on the battlefield, and are capable of turning into the form of a knight. When a king or chieftain was killed in battle and not found and buried, ravens came and ate him. The ravens became valravne, and the valravne that ate the king’s heart gained human knowledge and superhuman powers.