Again, in Odin’s fierce Raven Song, Hugin goes “to explore the heavens.” Jupiter’s two eagles, sent east and west, will be recalled by readers of classic tales.
As the eagle of Jove became the standard of the Roman legions, so Odin’s bird was inscribed on the shields and the banners of his warrior sons. You may see such banners illustrated in the Bayeux tapestry. The Dane called his standard landeyda (land-waster), and had faith in its miraculous virtues. The original ensign, that is, the one brought to England by the first invaders, is described in St. Neot’s biographical Chronicles (9th century). In 878, it records, a wild Danish rover named Hubba came with twenty-three ships on a raid into Devon: but the people rose and killed or drove away all the vikings.
“And there got they [that is, the Devon men] no small spoil, wherein they took, moreover, that banner which men call the Raven. For they say that the three sisters of Ingwar and Hubba, the daughters, sooth to say, of Lodbrock, wove that banner, and made it all wholly ready between morn and night of a single day. They say, too, that in every fight wherein that flag went before them, if they were to win the raven in the midst thereof seemed to flutter, as if it were alive, but were their doom to be worsted, then it would droop, still and lifeless.”
Britain came to know well that portentous flag—
The Danish raven, lured by annual prey,
Hung o’er the land incessant,
as Thomson laments. Finally Harold hurled the power of Canute from England’s shores forever, and Tennyson sings Harold’s paean:
We have shattered back
The hugest wave from Norseland ever yet
Surged on us, and our battle-axes broken