Stories often draw inspiration from multiple writing styles, including classic texts of modern literature. This is especially important when creating a fictional culture or race to create a sense of believability and help readers visualize how the setting and characters will appear in their minds. Stories can sometimes influence how other characters are portrayed in the author's writing. An excellent example that uses ancient stories to create differentiating cultures is JRR Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. His novel displays a large number of examples of inspiration drawn from mythological tales and legends. He incorporates his interest in Celtic and Norse mythology through characters that reflect figures such as Odin, the god and ruler of Asgard. The god is known to be associated with war, battle, victory, death, wisdom, magic, poetry, prophecy and hunting. While Tolkien may have other sources of influence from other writings, his use of Norse and Celtic mythology can be seen in many ways; characters strongly parallel to the god Odin and his ravens give some influence to the story. During the War of the Ring Saruman used crebains, large black birds (relatively a counterpart to real-life ravens and ravens), as spies. A flock of Dunland Crebain first appeared while the Fellowship was traveling to Hollin and hid from them to avoid detection. Since they are seen working for Saruman, the black birds are initially considered a group of creatures associated with evil and have a certain level of intelligence. Similarly with Odin, the Norse god has two ravens: one called Huginn and the other Muginn who act as messengers and bring him information. An example of a raven... center of paper... radley JJRR Tolkien's sanctifying myth: understanding Middle-earth. [Wilmington, Del.]: ISI, 2002. Print. Hammond, Wayne G. and Christina Scull. The Lord of the Rings: reading companion. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.Tolkien, JRR The Lord of the Rings. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005. Print.The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy. Dir. Pietro Jackson. Perf. Elijah Wood, Ian McKellan, Viggo Mortensen, Liv Tyler, Sean Astin, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan, Orlando Bloom, Christopher Lee, Hugo Weaving. New Line Cinema, 2004. DVD.Wettstein, Martin. "Norse Elements in the Work of JRR Tolkien (Martin Wettstein) - Academia.edu." University of Zurich, Switzerland - Academia.edu. Network. June 20 2011. .