Hávamál

File:The Stranger at the Door.jpg

"The Stranger at the Door" (1908) by W. G. Collingwood

(Template:IPAc-en Template:Respell; Template:Langx, classical pron. , Modern Icelandic pron. , ‘Words of Hávi [the High One]’) is presented as a single poem in the Codex Regius, a collection of Old Norse poems from the Viking age. A scholarly estimate of 's age dates the poem to between 900 and 1000 A.D. The poem, itself a combination of numerous shorter poems, is largely gnomic, presenting advice for living, proper conduct and wisdom. It is considered an important source of Old Norse philosophy.

The verses are attributed to Odin; the implicit attribution to Odin facilitated the accretion of various mythological material also dealing with the same deity.

For the most part composed in the metre , a metre associated with wisdom verse, is both practical and philosophical in content. Following the gnomic " proper" comes the , an account of how Odin won the runes, and the , a list of magic chants or spells.

Name

The Old Norse name is a compound of the genitive form of , which is the inflexionally weak form of Odin's name ('High One'), and the plural noun (from older ), and means 'Song (or Words) of the High One'.Template:SfnTemplate:Sfn

Textual history

The only surviving source for is the 13th century Codex Regius, with the exception of two short parts. The part dealing with ethical conduct (the ) was traditionally identified as the oldest portion of the poem by scholarship in the 19th and early 20th century. Bellows (1936) identifies as the core of the poem a "collection of proverbs and wise counsels" which dates to "a very early time", but which, by the nature of oral tradition, never had a fixed form or extent.

To the gnomic core of the poem, other fragments and poems dealing with wisdom and proverbs accreted over time. A discussion of authorship or date for the individual parts would be futile, since almost every line or stanza could have been added, altered or removed at will at any time before the poem was written down in the 13th century. Individual verses or stanzas nevertheless certainly date to as early as the 10th, or even the 9th century. Thus, the line ('cattle die, kinsmen die') found in verses 76 and 77 of the can be shown to date to the 10th century, as it also occurs in the by . The has been described as a 10th-century poem in some sources.

Structure

The is edited in 165 stanzas by Bellows (1936). Other editions give 164 stanzas, combining Bellow's stanzas 11 and 12, as the manuscript abbreviates the last two lines of stanzas 11. Some editors also combine Bellow's stanzas 163 and 164. In the following, Bellow's numeration is used.

The poems in is traditionally taken to consist of at least five independent parts,

1. the , or proper, (stanzas 1–80), a collection of proverbs and gnomic wisdom
2. a dissertation on the faithlessness of women (stanzas 81–95), prefacing an account of the love-story of Odin and the daughter of Billingr (stanzas 96–102) and the story of how Odin got the mead of poetry from the maiden Gunnlöð (stanzas 103–110)
3. the (stanzas 111–138), a collection of gnomic verses similar to the , addressed to a certain Loddfáfnir
4. the (stanzas 139–146), an account of how Odin won the runes, introductory to the
5. the (stanzas 147–165), a collection of charms

Stanzas 6 and 27 are expanded beyond the standard four lines by an additional two lines of "commentary". Bellow's edition inverses the manuscript order of stanzas 39 and 40. Bellow's stanza 138 () is taken from the very end of the poem in the manuscript, placed before the by most editors following Müllenhoff. Stanzas 65, 73–74, 79, 111, 133–134, 163 are defective.

Stanzas 81–84 are in , 85–88 in . The entire section of 81–102 appears to be an ad hoc interpolation. Stanza 145 is also an interpolation in .

Contents

The first section , the "guest's section". Stanzas 1 through 79 comprise a set of maxims for how to handle oneself when a guest and traveling, focusing particularly on manners and other behavioral relationships between hosts and guests and the sacred lore of reciprocity and hospitality to the Norse pagans.

The first stanza exemplifies the practical behavioral advice it offers:

Number 77 is possibly the most known section of :

On women

File:Billingr's girl, bitch, and Odin by Frølich.jpg

Billingr's girl watches on while Odin encounters the bitch tied to her bedpost (1895) by Lorenz Frølich.

Stanzas 83 to 110 deal with the general topic of romantic love and the character of women.

It is introduced by a discussion of the faithlessness of women and advice for the seducing of them in stanzas 84–95, followed by two mythological accounts of Odin's interaction with women also known as "Odin's Examples" or "Odin's Love Quests". The first is an account of Odin's thwarted attempt of possessing the daughter of Billing (stanzas 96–102), followed by the story of the mead of poetry which Odin won by seducing its guardian, the maiden Gunnlöð (stanzas 103–110).

The (stanzas 111–138) is again gnomic, dealing with morals, ethics, correct action and codes of conduct. The section is directed to .

Rúnatal

File:Odin's Self-sacrifice by Collingwood.jpg

"Odin's Self-sacrifice" (1908) by W. G. Collingwood.

File:Jelling gr Stein 3.JPG

The younger Jelling stone (erected by Harald Bluetooth Template:Circa) shows the crucifixion of Christ with the victim suspended in the branches of a tree instead of on a cross.

or Óðins Rune Song, (stanzas 139–146) is a section of the where Odin reveals the origins of the runes. In stanzas 139 and 140, Odin describes his sacrifice of himself to himself:

The "windy tree" from which the victim hangs is often identified with the world tree Yggdrasil by commentators. The entire scene, the sacrifice of a god to himself, the execution method by hanging the victim on a tree, and the wound inflicted on the victim by a spear, is often compared to the crucifixion of Christ as narrated in the gospels. The parallelism of Odin and Christ during the period of open co-existence of Christianity and Norse paganism in Scandinavia (the 9th to 12th centuries, corresponding with the assumed horizon of the poem's composition) also appears in other sources. To what extent this parallelism is an incidental similarity of the mode of human sacrifice offered to Odin and the crucifixion, and to what extent a Pagan influence on Christianity, has been discussed by scholars such as Sophus Bugge.

The persistence of Odin's self-sacrifice in Scandinavian folk tradition was documented by Bugge (1889) in a poem from Unst on the Shetland Islands:

Nine days he hang' pa de rütless tree;
For ill wis da folk, in' güd wis he.
A blüdy mael wis in his side —
Made wi' a lance — 'at wid na hide.
Nine lang nichts, i' de nippin rime,
Hang he dare wi' his naeked limb.
Some dey leuch;
Bid idders gret.

The last section, the enumerates 18 songs (), sometimes called "charms", prefaced with (stanza 147):

The songs themselves are not given, just their application or effect described. They are explicitly counted from "the first" in stanza 147, and "a second" to "an eighteenth" in stanzas 148 to 165, given in Roman numerals in the manuscript.

There is no explicit mention of runes or runic magic in the excepting in the twelfth song (stanza 158), which takes up the motif of Odin hanging on the tree and its association with runes:

Nevertheless, because of the preceding the list, modern commentators sometimes reinterpret the as referring to runes, specifically with the 16 letters of the Younger Futhark.

Müllenhoff takes the original to have ended with stanza 161, with the final three songs (16th to 18th) taken as late and obscure additions.

Influence

Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, leader of the Icelandic , published his performance of a number of Eddaic poems, including the , chanted in rímur style.Template:Better citation needed

The opera Gunlöd by Peter Cornelius takes its plot from the ; detailing Odin's theft of the mead of poetry.

The German viking-pagan metal band Falkenbach formed in 1989 and recorded their first demo, titled , and incorporate lines from the poem into lyrics.

Editions and translations

• editio princeps: Peder Hansen Resen, Edda. Islandorum an. Chr. 1215 islandice conscripta, 1665 (Google Books).
• Peter Andreas Munch, Carl Rikard Unger, Den Ældre Edda: Samling af norrøne oldkvad, indeholdende Nordens ældste gude- og helte-sagn, Christiania: P. T. Malling, 1847 (Internet Archive)
• Benjamin Thorpe, Edda Sæmundar Hinns Froða: The Edda Of Sæmund The Learned, 1866 (online transcription Template:Webarchive).
• Sophus Bugge, Sæmundar Edda hins fróða. Christiania: P. T. Malling, 1867.
• Olive Bray, The Elder or Poetic Edda, commonly known as Sæmund's Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems, London: Printed for the Viking Club, 1908, pp. 61–111 (online transcription).
• H. A. Bellows, The Poetic Edda, 1936, "Hovamol: The Ballad of the High One" (online edition).
• Carolyne Larrington, The Poetic Edda, Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Jackson Crawford, The Poetic Edda, Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2015.
• Jackson Crawford, The Wanderer's Hávamál, 2019

See also

• Nine Herbs Charm
• Noleby Runestone

External links

• Hávamál, original text, edited by Guðni Jónsson, 1954
• Hávamál, translation by W. H. Auden and P. B. Taylor
• Hávamál, translation by Olive Bray
• Parallel versions of Odin's Rune Song with the Bellows, Hollander, Larrington and Orchard translations