Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 17 Jun 2018, 11:20
Picture credit: my brother Simon Walker
Odin,
in Old Norse, Woden in Old English, traditionally had a pair of ravens,
one perched on each shoulder. According to the Poetic Edda they were
named Higgunn and Minun; 'Thought' and 'Memory'. Other traditions say he taught his birds to talk.
Each day they went out gathering intelligence for Odin's ears, but he was anxious. In the Poetic Edda we read
Huginn ok Munin fljúga hverjan dag Jörmungrund yfir; óumc ek of Hugin at hann aftr né comiþ, þó siámc meir um Munin.
Even
though a thousand years has passed since this was written down, and in Old Norse, modern
English speakers can get the gist. The verse has been translated many
times by modern scholars and poets, but here is my attempt. I have tried
to show how we can recognise the words of long ago still in our modern speech, and identify with the thoughts and emotion of the original.
Huginn and Munin
Fly every day
The great world over
I fear for Hugin
That after he won't come
Though I fret more on Munin.
Huginn
and Munin would have been common ravens, a large crow found all over
the Northern Hemisphere. Recent genetic research has suggested this bird
has two species that may have started diverging before a million years
ago. But even more recent research indicates these lineages are coming
together again!
We
mostly think of evolution as divergence, as in the left-hand sketch above. But it's perfectly possible for species to reunite, as in the
right-hand sketch. And common ravens are apparently interbreeding, and
doing just this. [1]
It
looks like we (humans) also did this, with Neandertals and Denisovans.
In their DNA is enough evidence to classify them as separate species
from us; but in our DNA enough traces to show there was interbreeding.
And so, like the ravens, we show that species can merge, as well as
diverge.
There Were Two Ravens
Picture credit: my brother Simon Walker
Odin, in Old Norse, Woden in Old English, traditionally had a pair of ravens, one perched on each shoulder. According to the Poetic Edda they were named Higgunn and Minun; 'Thought' and 'Memory'. Other traditions say he taught his birds to talk.
Each day they went out gathering intelligence for Odin's ears, but he was anxious. In the Poetic Edda we read
Huginn ok Munin
fljúga hverjan dag
Jörmungrund yfir;
óumc ek of Hugin
at hann aftr né comiþ,
þó siámc meir um Munin.