Zephyr’s Bad Day.

Gealdýr — Valravn [Full Album]

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.

Crow with fangs. Yes or no?

sure.

You're gonna give me a heart attack!

Oh yeah, it's the BIG ONE. At the end of Art Fight 2021 I got the idea of making an attack of every valravn on the Art Fight website. 2022 arrived, I set out to do just that. It took the entire month, but in the end I pulled it off! This is one of the most complicated pieces I've ever drawn. Thank you to everyone that loved it, you made it all worth it ❤

You can find it on Art Fight here. Below are the tags of everyone included that's on Tumblr (if their Tumblr accounts were linked to their Art Fight accounts, anyway).

@silverspleen @braindeadmuppet @thelittleanimals-artblog @crow-fangs @ferretpeets @abilitayy

New icon time because it has BEEN a while! And I wanted some new colours!

Hooooowww did people 1) hear the folksong Valravnen about a knight who's been transformed into a bird (likely an eagle, not a raven) and can only break the curse by killing a baby, 2) see that one (1) now-extinct noble family referred to their heraldic beast, a wolf/bird, as a 'valravn', and 3) read one single 1800s countryboy's explanation that valravnen is like an evil valkyrie, and SOMEHOW extrapolate from those three wildly unrelated sources that "The Valravn" (because it's never a folkloric concept with different interpretations, it's always a single specific creature) is a were-wolf/raven who haunts battlefields to drink the blood of slain warriors????

Please stop depicting 'the' valravn when you don't even know what it is, I'm begging on my fucking knees, I hate the way recent Danish folklore-inspired popculture has latched onto this figure and keeps depicting it in wilder and wilder ways😭😭

If you want a folkloric evil bird creature in your story please just use a fucking dragon or gammen. Use a damn cockatrice or vættehane, idgaf. Please just stop muddying the already-confusing lore of valravnen. The figure has been abused enough already and you are making my hobby as a folklorist very difficult😥

The Nachtkrapp is a raven-like creature found in Germany. The Nachtkrapp is described as an eagle-sized raven, with either no eyes or holes where the eyes should be that if looked at will cause death and holes in its wings that if seen will cause illness. The Nachtkrapp is said to hunt for children at night and rip their limbs off and pluck out their hearts with its sharp beak. Nachtkrapp means “Night Raven” in German and there is even a kind version of this creature called the Guter Nachtkrapp or “Good Night Raven” that will sing children to sleep.

I tried to draw my valravn Kai. Fucked around with the brushes on Procreate to try get some good bloody effects.

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