However it was useful to google "raven poem Beowulf" as Ross suggested since that indicates there is tradition of using "raven" as a target word.
http://www.jstor.org/stable/27708920...n_tab_contents
This link above is owned by those awful people at JSTOR who think that scholarly knowledge should not be shared unless paid for, but in general this abstract agrees with the abstract quoted below (from the academia link directly below).
http://www.academia.edu/1728196/Hyge...-hearted_raven
Quote:
The blithe-hearted raven of Beowulf l.1801 is an interpretative crux. It appears joyfully heralding the new dawn after a peaceful night’s sleep in Heorot, the direct consequence of Beowulf’s disposal of the Grendels. Yet elsewhere in the poem (and in Old English generally) the raven is associated with death. This juxtaposition of the usually morbid bird and happy context has troubled commentators on the poem.
I propose a two-part interpretation of this scene. Firstly I show that the blithe-hearted raven fits into a larger tradition of news-bringing birds evidenced in both the Old English and Old Norse-Icelandic (e.g. in Huginn and Muninn, but also in Ynglingatal, Rigsþula, The Seafarer, Christ II ll.636-655) and that this raven in Beowulf is ambiguous and is not necessarily a bad omen – and indeed that it initially appears to be a good omen. Subsequently I argue that this positive appearance is undermined as it becomes more apparent that the raven actually looks forward to Hygelac’s death at the hands of Daeghrefn (‘day-raven’), and I show that five (of the six) raven references in Beowulf are linked with Hygelac and the image of dawn, perhaps most notably in the name of Hygelac’s slayer and his dawn-raid against Ongentheow at Hrefnesholt (‘wood of the raven’).
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It seems to me that commentators are bending over backward to find a reason for "a blithe raven", for a "joyous raven".
That is why I am curious to know what the source word(s) is/are.
However another thing that aroused my curiosity is whether Beowulf (which exists in only one copy and is said to be written in England some time between the 8th and the early 11th century) might not hark back to a more ancient oral tale. The many references to the Christian god seem (to me) to be a revisionist text and it would make much more sense that the references were to the Norse god Odin (or Woden in German parlance). And since we have no other copy than the damaged one in the British library.
Christianity did not take root in Sweden until the year 1100s and coexisted parallel with the Norse gods until the 1300s. Denmark was converted earlier. But it is striking that the Beowulf story does not have any reference to Christ but only to a powerful God. And in the breakthrough for Christianity, (setting aside for the moment, the royal feuds and politics and forced conversion of the people), the Christ figure was an important early symbol.