Owl and Raven: A Folktale of Beauty and Reciprocity

Photo credit: Tina Nord on Pexels. You can see snowy owls in Massachusetts in Nantucket, Salisbury State Park, and Plum Island to name a few coastal areas where they are found. .

It’s that time of year again in Massachusetts! First frost. . .when the landscape initiates us into wintering. November is the month when snowy owls migrate from the Arctic south to coastal Massachusetts where they stay until April. . .inspiring this multi-block linocut print of a snowy owl and raven, two endearing characters from an Inuit Folktale.

Here is a synopsis of the story:

Starting the carving of the second (black) layer.

Owl and raven were once white, so they decided to decorate each other. Owl sat still long enough for raven to paint him with hundreds of spots which owl was pleased with, and raven felt wonderful, too, having created a masterpiece. To show his gratitude, Owl offered Raven a pair of kamik boots. However, Raven was so enamored with the boots he couldn’t sit still enough for Owl to do a good job painting him in return. So Raven ended up completely black which he was very upset about. Since then they remained enemies (and to this day corvids and owls do not get along).

On the surface this story appears to be about how raven got to be black and how snowy owl is speckled, or perhaps how ravens and owls became enemies, but I believe the story has deeper significance.

The folktale reveals a value system about body decor that is different than what you find prevalent in the media today. Today more often than not, when someone is “beautiful” the credit is entirely given to that individual, whereas in this story the only reason why owl is beautiful is because raven had the skills and took the time to paint owl, and owl was patient enough to sit still through the whole process. In other words, “beauty” is a result of cooperation, reciprocal exchange and valuing each other’s gifts.

Printing up the second (black) layer of a multilayer print. The first layer carving is in the background and I chose here to use an olive green as the background color and black as the foreground layer.

Usually today when people buy adornment (whether it is clothing, shoes, jewelry) they do not necessarily think about, congratulate or have a relationship with the person who made the adornment. We simply have brand names which often hide the exploitation of individuals who created the adornment. This system distances the one adorned from the creator, and as a consequence, we only recognize body decor in isolation, how it beautifies the person who afforded the adornment, rather than celebrating the relationship between two people, or the collaborative effort, skill, time, patience that was required for that beauty to come into being.

In this ancient story, however, beauty is about mutual thriving and celebrating, sharing in beautifying each other… and when raven is not patient, and does not offer owl the chance to share his gifts, they both lose.

Another version of this print with a color gradient background.

Since I carved this linocut I have learned that there are many aspects of snowy owls and ravens that suggest they are quite opposite each other. For example, they have contrasting coloring (ravens are black and snowy owls are white), owls are solitary creatures whereas ravens travel in flocks, and owls and ravens are often observed as enemies in nature. What this folktale shows is how people observed this relationship between owls and ravens in the wild, and then reflected and pondered about how that mimics human relationships. I think folktales are often used precisely for this purpose: to using a defining feature of a creature from the wild, or aspect of the local landscape, to better understand and work through human psychology, and ultimately better enhance human connections.

In the words of Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee, Founder and Executive Director of Emergence Magazine, “Stories are a technology that have allowed us to hold things larger than ourselves”. I definitely feel as though observing characteristics of the local landscape or witnessing relationships of wild creatures and weaving them into our stories as a way to better understand ourselves is a super kind of technology. It is an eco-psychology! It’s a way we can delve deeper, and think more critically of how we relate to human-to-human, while at the same time understanding our deep and intimate connection with the wild.

This handmade linocut includes owl and raven with a paintbrush in his beak. I have designed it like the Yin Yang symbol because it is a story that demonstrates the contrasting characteristics of owls and ravens as observed in the wild (owls being solitary, ravens often are in flocks), and the contentious nature of their observed behavior. The Yin Yang symbol also resonates with one of the points the folktale makes about how there are two contrasting ways of thinking about adornment and beauty. One is how beauty is the result of a collective, collaborative effort, and the opposite is the idea that beauty is attributed to an individual and there is no reciprocity or relationship that brings beauty into being. I’m hoping that showing how the owl’s spots can also be a flock of ravens flying inside the owl shows how the beauty of one is inside the other, just like the wisdom contained in this story.

You can watch this folktale retold in the Inuit language with the voices of Toojatogak Itoach and Elatak Nakashook (including English subtitles), directed by Co Hoedeman and uploaded by KingInukshuk on YouTube in a puppet show stop motion video format:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xhWWdGm8fE

Check it out, it’s so fun!

Inuit culture varies and ranges from Siberia to Greenland to Canada. I am no expert in Inuit folklore, but simply wanted to share what I learned from this folktale, the meaning and significance it has for me, and explain how it inspired the design and creation of this handcrafted linocut. Most of all, I love how this folktale, and all the others featured on my website, reminds us of our ancient, intimate and enduring kinship with the wild.

Reference:

Lake, Meredith (Host). “Awakening a wondrous world through storytelling (with Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee)”. Soul Search. November 2, 2023. Apple Podcasts.

More Blog pOsts