Valravnen Is Less Of A Vættr And More Of A Fairytale Creature. It's Only Known From Medieval Folk Songs,

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"