Icelandic raven

English

Noun

Icelandic raven (plural Icelandic ravens)

1. A subspecies of the common raven, Corvus corax varius (including the extinct colour morph leucophaeus), native to Iceland and the Faroe Islands.
   • 1863, Sabine Baring-Gould, Iceland: Its Scenes and Sagas, page 187:

     The Icelandic raven flits around us, and runs among the stones in a bold contemptuous manner, flinging us a disdainful croak when we pelt it.

   • 1913, Henry De Vere Stacpoole, The Children of the Sea, page 111:

     Sometimes a black flag flickered for a moment above one of the distant bastions ; it was the wing of a raven—the great Icelandic raven that kills and devours the lambs.

   • 2011, Sjón, translated by Victoria Cribb, From the Mouth of a Whale, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, page 21:

     For it was and still is my belief that the bezoar must be much more potent in the Icelandic raven than in its namesake elsewhere, on account of its affinity with that king of fools, Odin, and his heathen tribe here in the north of the world…