Talk:Raven banner

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Good article Raven banner has been listed as one of the History good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can delist it, or ask for a reassessment.
An entry from this article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page in the Did you know? column on January 9, 2007.
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[edit] Very cool

Great article, the best I've read in a while. It's very fascinating that the raven banner was used in 1066, ten generations after Rollo and friends left wherever and settled in Normandy. Am I reading the article correctly when I infer that Harald Hardrada's Scandinavians, Harold Godwinson's Anglo-Saxons and William the Conqueror's Normans may have each had their own raven banners in the battles of that year? The broken banners in the death scene of Harold Godwinson's brothers seems emblematic of that the Anglo-Saxons bore them at this time but without the desired results. Regarding the Anglo-Saxons and Normans, whether it was a preserved cultural tradition or whether it was indicative of Scandinavian soldiers present is a good question. "Both" seems a plausible answer.

For those without a sense of the context of the era and cultures involved, maybe the article could drop an explicit mention that by 1066 all those mentioned were at least nominally Christian and the Normans had already adopted a Romance language?

It was very cool to see what appears to be a raven banner twice on the Bayeux tapestry. The image of the same on that Hiberno-Norse coin is also very exciting (although the charge looks more like an Arabic numeral "2" to me than a bird -- probably just the picture). As the Christianized Gaelic aristocracy of early eras were familiar with the Morrigan-related raven imagery in the Ulster Cycle and other literature that was already old, I image they could infer what the raven banner implied as soon as Scandinavian-speaking people came a-viking to Ireland in the 9th century.

I know references to the raven banner are limited. Hallvard Trætteberg's article ”Merke og Fløy” (in Kulturhistorisk leksikon for nordisk middelalder, Vol. XI, Oslo, 1966) lists only a half dozen and that list has been expanded upon here. I still can't help wondering if the raven banner or related imagery was used by Tancred of Hauteville's descendants in the Crusades or if it saw any use among the Anglo-Normans or in the Kingdom of Sicily. How quickly did a sense of Christian identity make the raven banner's Odinist associations too taboo to stomach? We might never know.

Finally, kudos for calling the article "raven banner" rather than hrafnsmerki or hravenlandeye. Subjects such as these are esoteric enough without stamping them with some intimidating name. In writing articles on subjects such as the Great Book of Lecan, the Wooing of Emer and the Yellow Book of Lecan I picked those titles rather than tongue twisters like Leabhar Mór Leacain, Tochmarc Emire and Leabhar Buidhe Lecain. I wish others would do the same.

I'll definately make sure that raven banner appears on DYK. ◄HouseOfScandal► 21:05, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Thanks for your praise. In brief, it's not clear whose banner is actually depicted on the Bayeux tapestry. It could be a banner flown either by the Norman or Saxon army, or a captured Norwegian standard. There is no indication from textual sources that the raven banner was carried at Hastings, though as noted it does appear to have been carried at Stamford Bridge by Harald III.
It is hard to say for certain that the image depicted on the coin is a bird, but it does look like it and the banner is uncannily similar to the other depictions.
--Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 07:14, 7 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Coat of arms with raven

The raven is also found in the coat of arms of Shetland. In the sail if the longship.

Inge 10:44, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

  • Raven charge - After I left my last comments I thought of searching for ravens as a charge in armorial achievements, flags and clan badges that may be relevant but had other obligations and it slipped my mind. Subsequently, two of your have found examples of exactly that, which is great. My suggestion is "let's keep looking"...besides the North Sea islands, and (obviously) Scandinavia, it might be worth checking out the heraldry and vexillology of Channel Islands, Brittany, etc. It's not that I think we need multiple examples of this; it's that if we can find an example with imagery attributable to the 12th century or before, its much more indicative of a possible connection to the raven banner that just the presence of a raven, crow, rook, black bird, overgrown starling or whatever that could have been chosen (for example) in 14th century through canting and having no associations to the raven banner.
  • Broken flagstaff - About what we talked about before, although it isn't spelled out for us, it seems the presence of (what is probably) broken raven banners next to Godwinson's dead brothers seems to spell out that these were the banners used by the "team" whose member's defeat is portrayed. The image of a flag on a broken and/or cast down pole is still used as a visual code for defeat and disgrace.
  • Thanks Thanks for noting my comment about religion and language in the foot notes of the article. It's was nice to add even one more idea to an article already so well-constructed and complete. House of Scandal 11:34, 8 January 2007 (UTC)


With the Bayeux tapestry, it certainly seems that the broken standard belongs to Godwinsson's army... but is it his banner, or the one captured from Harald Hardrada? Display of an enemy's captured standards was a common custom in antiquity. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 17:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another artifact with raven imagery

This Vendel era helmet has a noseguard in the form of a raven:

Vendel era helmet, at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities.
Vendel era helmet, at the Swedish Museum of National Antiquities.

--Berig 15:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA needs

This is close to good, but there are some problems that need to be resolved first (in no particular order):

  • The first paragraph need sourcing for the "Scholars conjecture" in the first paragraph. While I don't doubt that the statement is true, it is presently unverifable. The quote from Bodvarsdottir doesn't quite say the same thing. [Added later, plus she is a single scholar, so she alone cannot count as prima facie evidence of multiple scholars +Fenevad 20:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)]
  • "possibly totemic in nature" seems to be contradicted [or at least may be +Fenevad 20:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)] by the symbol of Oðin and intent to strike fear bit, unless there was a raven clan in Old Norse society. This area needs some citing or expansion. Also pointing to animal images and asserting totemism is problematic in present scholarship since the key [source] discussions of Totemism (Freud and Durkheim) have been called into question. I don't know that the claim needs to be deleted, but recent references on totemism [and how this fits with them] would help.
  • A systematic issue is that very few of the references are to contemporary scholarship. Most are to primary sources. One of the scholarly sources is Grimm's Teutonic Mythology. While this source is very valuable, it is also highly problematic from a modern scholarly standpoint. It should be balanced with more recent works. While I am not familiar with Hjelmquist, the 1891 date is also somewhat troubling. Surely someone has looked at this subject in the last century besides Bodvardsdottir (even that is thirty years old). Again, I don't question the validity of the information, but were this undergoing peer review in folklore, these issues would be raised and more recent citations requested [, unless this is original research, which would then be problematic for Wikipedia].
  • The Lukman in the Notes is missing from the references. It needs to be added.
  • Note 13 is a link to a website. The reference should be spelled out in the notes or reference section. As it now stands, if the link goes dead, there is no way to know what it is.
  • Barraclough needs a date.
  • In the Uses in Orkney section, format the quote using <blockquote> tags, not italics, per Wikipedia style
  • In the Symbolism section, enclose the English translations of the Norse passages in quotes. Otherwise they read as if they are editors' words, not translations.
  • In the "Uses by the purported sons" sections, please add a paranthetical definition of seithr, especially since it looks like "witchcraft" is probably adequate here. Not everyone will read this online and be able to follow the link. Also, I would change the display text to seiðr since the "th" is ambiguous between þ and ð for those who don't know Old Norse (the page it refers to represents ð as d...)
  • In the lead paragraphs the article states "early Scandinavians regarded the raven as a largely positive figure", but then goes on talk about how they had "hellish associations." This is a seeming contradiction that needs to be explained (either in terms of change over time or by further explicating Norse attitudes towards life and death).
  • The final sentence needs to be sourced. Saying that scholars are divided requires some authentication. This would be a good place to bring in more recent references.

Some of these problems are really quite minor, but the problems with sourcing and citing may take some substantial legwork to resolve. The article is quite interesting and I would like to see it move to GA status. Good luck. +Fenevad 20:06, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

Criticizing Hjelmquist as a source because it is old seems both prejudiced and absurd to me since he does not talk of theories, which may be outdated, but of instances in primary sources, something which is never outdated. We could just as well skip the citations of Hjelmquist then, and cite the primary sources directly.--Berig 20:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Please don't assume bad faith here by calling me "prejudiced" and my comment "absurd". A request was made for GA review, and I am providing that. I was very clear that I liked the article. If I was prejudiced I would have done a lot more to this article than what I suggested. First off, I did not criticize Hjelmquist as a source. He may be perfectly fine, and I admitted that I did not know his work. The Swedish title alone does not inform me of what is in the source. It is, however, a secondary source, and the point was that the secondary sources cited here are quite old. They may be fine and good sources, but some of them do require more critical attention (like Grimm's work)...

+Fenevad 20:31, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I am not calling you prejudiced, but the assumption, and I know that you referred to general complaints. Hjelmquist's book is just one of those 19th century works of scholarship that are useful because they are descriptive. We are not talking of a work on phrenology or psychology, but a work that describes how nature is presented in Old Norse poetry. There is not anything modern scholarship can add or change, as the corpus is largely unchanged.--Berig 20:34, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
It seems we are really talking at cross purposes here. I meant no questioning or disrespect of Hjelmquist at all. Your explanation clarifies the point. It doesn't need to be changed. Quite frankly, when I mentioned him, I looked only at the date of the references in general, not at the specific use. -Fenevad 20:42, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes I know and I want to be clear that when I said "prejudiced and absurd" I thought of the general attitude you find among many who consider 19th century works of scholarship outdated (and which I assumed that you referred to as a possible objection). Like modern works, they need to be read with a critical eye on the POVs involved. Moreover some old works are timeless (e.g. those of Darwin and Saussure) and especially descriptive ones.--Berig 20:48, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I believe the recent edits should address virtually all of your concerns. Note, though, that a "totem" need not represent any particular clan- it is an iconic figure protecting a group. In this case the group is the king holding the Hrafnsmerki and his retinue. If you look at the sources you will see that the Hrafnsmerki is a classic totemic figure. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 21:55, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

At first glance, it looks good. I'll go through it in more detail later. I see a few minor formatting issues that weren't addressed, but I'll take care of them myself since they don't change the meaning. Good work going on here. +Fenevad 00:11, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] GA Passed

I have just passed this to GA status. Briangotts contributions in the past two days have allayed all my real concerns about the article. While I have not yet fixed the few formatting issues I mentioned, they don't materially detract from the quality of the article. The depth of citation and links to relevant resources (both primary and secondary) are now even more impressive than they were. In addition the talk page responses on some points I made clarified matters sufficiently that I see that some of my initial concerns were unwarranted (see Berig's comments above). This is a highly informative article on a topic unlikely to be covered with this breadth in other encyclopedic works and is thus a great contribution to Wikipedia. It truly allows one to understand the subject without being overly long or confusing. +Fenevad 15:04, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Could Bayeux Tapestry images be larger??

I believe that the images from the Bayeux Tapestry should be cropped larger and the images should also be larger. In Image 1, part of the banner has been cropped out. In Image 2, it is hard to see the banner, and the knight above it has been partially cropped out. Also, I see nothing on the banner in Image 2. Am I missing something? Thanks, Madman 04:46, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

If you know where I can find the full tapestry online, I will be happy to crop better images. The text indicates that banner in Image 2 has the same shape as that on Olaf Cuaran's coin and that described by the sources. It does not have a raven on it but a number of scholars, including Barraclough, have commented on its similarity to the raven banner and its absence in any other Anglo-Saxon or Norman imagery. Briangotts (Talk) (Contrib) 14:50, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ravens

Just a comment (which I don't presume has a place in the article) that the help of the ravens also has a significant role in the Old Testament book of 1 Kings, chapter 17, in the adventures of the prophet Elijah:

The word of the Lord came to him, saying, "Go from here and turn eastwards, and hide yourself ... You shall drink from the wadi, and I have commanded the ravens to feed you there." So he went and did according to the word of the Lord ... The ravens brought him bread and meat in the morning, and bread and meat in the evening ... (emphasis added)

The Raven Banner article is among the best I have seen on Wikipedia. The collaboration, as evidenced in the results and here on the talk page, is particularly encouraging when compared to the prolonged acrimony on some article talk pages. Congratulations to all of you. Athænara ✉ 03:10, 11 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Image copyright problem with Image:Coat of arms of Shetland.jpg

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