Hávamál
The Words of Odin the HIgh One

Another poem introducing some of the more remarkable and interesting myths is Hávamál, or The Words of the High One. It has been subjected to almost more discussion than any other poem of the Edda, but all the ingenuity of critics and scholars has not cleared it from mystery and confusion. It has served rather to show how superficial and fragmentary is our knowledge of the history, the myths, and the soul-life of the early Germanic races. For although this poem, with its wisdom of yesterday and to-morrow, myths which are purely Scandinavian, ideas which can only be Christian, may belong to different periods, it seems to be archaic in the main. The same half obsolete words occur in the various parts, and the teaching is traditional, proverbial, such as might have been handed down by word of mouth. Moreover, Odin or Woden appears, not as the War-father of the Skalds, but in his more universal character as the god of culture. As such he was best known to all the Germanic tribes and to the Romans, who identified him with their god Mercury—Wednesday or Woden’s day corresponding with “dies Mercurii.”

The varying metre and style of the poem, its discrepancies, and abrupt changes of subject prove it to be a collection of once separate fragments. Attempts have been made to distinguish between these, but there are only three well-marked divisions: 1 (st. 1–108), the Guest-rules, in which are included ethical laws and Odin’s love adventures; 2 (st. 108–136), the Counselling of Stray Singer; 3, Odin’s quest after the runes. Parts II. and III. are linked together by the entrance of Stray Singer into both, and all the three by a poetical fiction in which it is assumed that Odin, the High One, is speaker throughout, and that the precepts are given with divine authority. It is, indeed, in the person of Odin himself that a real unity can be claimed for the poem. It would seem that its final author, who was more teacher than poet, possibly a Christian monk with a taste for antiquarian knowledge, had a mind not merely to collect the wise sayings of heathen lore, but to show forth Odin, the heathen god, in a higher and more spiritual aspect than that of the War-father. He had none of the poetic imagination of the author of Grimnismál, to picture in rainbow strophes the manifold nature of the god. In a loose and inartistic way he has associated traditional sayings and mythical stories, freely admitting the later and more Christian-seeming ideas to a place beside the old. He has not, however, altogether failed in his aim. For notwithstanding the signs of Christian influence, which have caused the poem to be rent in pieces by criticism and held as a haphazard collection of fragments new and old, Odin reveals himself still a heathen, and emerges from a web of heathen thought steeped in the magic of old charms and runes. In the whole teaching of the poem, which is filled with sober beauty and wisdom, there is no creed save that of humanity.

In Part I. Odin comes as guest to a hall, and, it is assumed, gives friendly counsel to those assembled within. In his character of Wind-wanderer he often passes thus unrecognised through all the worlds. With Loki and Hönir he is often found adventuring in Giant-land, and comes to the dwellings of men calling himself “Gest.” The Sagas tell how he visited many kings and rulers of Norway under this title. To the Christian king Olaf the Holy he was an object of terror and hate, as the dread heathen god of enchantments who still lived and could be exorcised only by the more potent spell of the mass-book. But, unlike the teaching of the Eastern prophet, there is nothing of religious duty, no aspiring after an ideal of perfection. The sober precepts of common sense are never interrupted by sudden upward soarings and yearnings of passion. The wisdom of Odin, in this Part, is the wisdom drawn from experience.

Historically, the poem is of immense value. We are taken far back into real life, and meet people no longer in a world of myth and speculation, but on the firm ground of daily existence. Customs, manners, social duties, and relations are brought before us, corresponding closely sometimes with what Tacitus wrote in the Germania about the race in the first century, and it is seen from his descriptions that sts. 11, 17, 41, allude to what was especially characteristic of the old Germans. St. 155 also refers to a curious practice mentioned by him. The German warriors advanced to meet their foes, like the giant Hrym (p. 293), with shields lifted to the level of their lips as a sounding board for their song. They sung gently at first, letting the sound swell out until it became like the roar of the sea, inspiring terror and rousing their own courage. Other customs are typically Northern. The word for court mentioned in st. 61 is þing, a name for the great assembly or parliament of the Norsemen, which was most democratic in character. Here were settled the laws of the land, and private cases were tried with no lack of ceremony and red tape, though matters frequently ended in a duel or a free fight between the two parties.

In st. 84 we come to the love quests of Odin, in which the High One has descended from his height, and laid all dignity aside. His love is not even the idealised love of the mediæval knight errant, but like that of Zeus, the pastime of the god. There may once have been some underlying motive in these tales of Odin and his giant wives, explaining his conduct as that of some fickle power of nature, but here he figures only as the favourite of the skalds, the love adventurer, who knew as well as any the chances and mischances of love. We may imagine that our author selected one of these skaldic poems which contained the famous story of how Odin won the art of poesy for men by making love to the giantess Gunnlod, but unfortunately for the dignity of the god, he included also the other episode with Billing’s daughter. But here, too, he may be intending to record one of the most important incidents in Eddic mythology, which led to the birth of Vali, Baldr’s avenger. We have allusion in the Edda (pp. 159, 243) to Odin’s courtship of Rind. Saxo Grammaticus tells more fully of his ardent wooing in a story which so closely resembles the above as to suggest that Billing’s nameless daughter is Rind, although the one is seemingly of dwarf kind, the other, according to Saxo, a giantess.* [* Mr. A. F. Major has pointed out that this theory of Rydberg’s has some foundation.] The tale of this crafty maiden, who thrice outwitted Odin, is here told in delicately suggestive scenes, enlivened by amused disappointment or passionate regret, according as we choose to regard it.

For the explanation of the other story Snorri’s help is required, although, as usual, we find a myth so disguised by later additions that any interpretation is doubtful. In the peace treaty between Æsir and Vanes the gods created a wise being called Kvasir, who was slain by certain dwarfs, and from whose blood was brewed the mead of poetic inspiration called Soul-stirrer. This passed into the hands of Suttung, a giant of the underworld, who gave it into the care of his daughter Gunnlod to guard deep down in the earth. Odin, in the character of Bale-worker, hired himself to Suttung’s brother, and was promised the mead as his wage. He must fetch it, however, for himself, and after boring his way through the rock with Rati, the awl, he gained admittance to Gunnlod. Three nights he lay with her, and three draughts she gave him of the mead, in which he drank the whole. Then, disguised as an eagle, he bore it safely to Asgarth, despite the giant who followed so hard after him that a few drops of the precious liquid were spilt, and thenceforth deemed worthy only for the makers of bad poetry. Snorri does not finish the story, nor tell how the Frost-giants came storming to Asgarth knowing that Bale-worker was there who had stolen the mead. It was thus that poesy was won for gods and men, and was given the name so often used by skalds, “Odin’s craft” or “Odin’s drink;” and thus, as ever, a great power is first found in possession of the Jötuns, and must be won by the gods before it becomes serviceable to man. In Soul-stirrer we meet with the most primitive ideas: a drink producing a divine madness is found among many peoples, and familiar is the notion that intellectual or spiritual powers can be gained by drinking the blood of their owners.

Odin’s discourse is now broken off by the writer of Part II., who states that while listening in the most sacred spot, the Well of Weird, he was able to see and hear what went on in the world of men and in the High One’s hall, where Odin was giving instruction to a mythical poet called Loddfafnir or Stray Singer. But the Well of Weird is the fount of Wisdom, known to all poets and seers, a secret place of communion with the divine, where all the strands of life—present, past, and future—are revealed, and the writer is merely claiming divine authority for his words by the use of mythological language. He describes inspired moments when things hidden to others were made known to him. The counsel to Stray Singer is of much the same character as the last set of maxims, though in expression they seem less archaic. Especially when compared with strophes such as 80–82, 84, 86, they sound more like skaldic verses than the saws of old time, which are again heard in the charms of st. 136.

Very different in tone is the solemn opening of Part III. In the midst of half-humorous, half-serious words of warning and advice, a recital of love tales and charms, we come suddenly upon this awful and mysterious scene of a god offering himself in sacrifice upon the World Tree in order to attain the maturity of his wisdom and power.

The whole passage is full of mystery, which we have not attempted to elucidate by rearrangement or ingenious translations. Nor is this the place to discuss the vexed question as to whether (with all the earlier authorities) in some old and mystic legend we are entering the very sanctuary of heathendom, or whether (with Bugge, Meyer, Golther) it is merely a scene borrowed from the Christian sacrifice, where Tree and spear must be identified with cross and lance. There is no other record of the deed in Northern mythology except an old song from the Shetland Isles, quoted by Bugge in confirmation of his own theory; whether it is genuinely archaic we cannot say:—

Nine days he hang pa da rutless tree,
For ill wis da folk, in gud wis he.
A bludy maet wis in his side,
Made wi a lance ’at wid na hide.
Nine lang nichts in da nippin rime
Hang he dare wi’ his neked limb.
Some dey leuch,
Bitt idders gret.

[* On the discovery of this song, see article by Dr. Karl Blind, Saga Book, vol. i., p. 166.]

This, without doubt, is a description of the crucifixion, but leads to no conclusion as to which of the two has borrowed its details from the other. The sacrifice depicted resembles in many points the human sacrifices that were offered to Odin. In this, if we may take that of King Vikar described in Gautreks S., c. 7, as typical, the victim was hung on the branch of a tree and stabbed with a spear, which is as intimately associated with Odin as the hammer with Thor.* [* See “Cult of Odin,” by H. M. Chadwick.]

There will be better hope of an explanation of this passage, or at least of more fruitful result, when the discussion no longer centres around the exact meaning of Yggdrasil, and of the “windy tree.”

The labours of research will then perhaps be given to finding the origin of a strange and world-wide legend, without which no mythology seems complete. This legend, in outline, is of a god—call him Odin, Baldr, Osiris, Ishtar, Adonis—who must be sacrificed or voluntarily die in order that he may rise again in fulness of power, or even give place to some new god. Sometimes it is clear that he typifies the beneficent powers of nature, whether as the sun or the spring or summer fruitfulness; but occasionally, as here, his significance is more doubtful. When our knowledge of comparative mythology is extended, and when all these legends have been arranged in due order, beginning with the early superstitious rite of savages, ending with the reinterpreted idea of philosophy, some rightful place will then be claimed for the myths of Baldr and of Odin.

The sacrifice of the god was made for the sake of attaining the Runes. By this word is usually understood the letters of the old Germanic alphabet, but its earliest meaning must have been something softly spoken, whispered, or “rounded” in the ear; it was especially used for those metrical charms which preserved from all danger whosoever whispered or chanted them. As civilisation advanced and the art of writing was learned, these charms were inscribed in characters cut in stone or wood, and thus seemed to lend to the characters themselves a magic power. The transmission of thought by writing must have seemed strange and supernatural to the uninitiated, and the name of runes was soon applied to letters of the alphabet.

Among many nations of the past there has been a lawful and unlawful use of the supernatural, a distinction between “white magic” and “black magic.” To the latter class belonged the evil spells which one man wrought for the destruction of another (st. 150). Such practice of magic was the unpardonable sin in the old ethical code of the Germans, and was punished by burning. According to Saxo, Odin himself was banished for a while from Asgarth because he won Rind, his giant wife, by magic craft. But the use of supernatural power was permitted in prayer, or in the divine rites performed by priests; and in this passage runes also seem to have been a lawful agent through which a power above nature could be compelled and used by the individual. Kauffmann suggests that runes of this kind were mystic names for objects which expressed their essence and being, and which gave control over nature to the initiated.

In strophes 138, 139, are recorded Odin’s attainment of three kinds of wisdom upon which he grew and throve: 1, the runes; 2, Mimir’s wisdom, for which he pledged his eye; 3, Soul-stirrer, the mead of song. With regard to the last it is clear that we have here some variant and perhaps older myth than that of 103–108. A passage in the heroic poem of Sigrdrifumál, although it cannot be fully explained, throws suggestive lights on the subject, and shows the intimate connection of the threefold wisdom and the purpose of Odin’s sacrifice. With the help of moisture from Hoddrofnir—that is, a draught from Mimir’s well—Odin is said to have read, graved, and thought out the runes. Then they were cut off and mingled with Soul-stirrer, or the gift of song, and “sent on far ways, where they are found with the gods, and found with the elves, some with Wanes, and some with men.” In the different accounts there seems to be one fundamental idea. By self-sacrifice and toil Odin drew a shapeless and unordered knowledge from nature upon which he grew and throve, and then gave it back through the medium of his divinity interpreted and rendered serviceable to all beings. It is unlikely that the earliest thinkers ever arrived at a defined notion of this kind, but they uttered in the language of fairy tale their belief that the gods were saving, ordering powers who stood between them and nature.

With the spells which begin in st. 145 there is change of tone and style, suggesting that they belong to a once separate poem. St. 158, where Odin can hardly be the speaker, seems to confirm this view. The second poem was added to supply the “nine mighty rune-songs” alluded to in st. 139, although eighteen are thus given. The songs mentioned below, whose words are unknown, must have been such as those sung by Gróa to Day-spring (p. 159), or like the old Merseburger Spruche, which is found in a German MS. of the tenth century. In this Odin or Wodan heals the foot of Baldr’s foal, singing:—

Bone to bone,  blood to blood,
limb to limb as if they were limed.

St. 158 seems the utterance of the poet himself, if Müllenhoff’s explanation is correct, that Folk-stirrer is the dwarf who day by day is surprised and vanquished by the dawn, and who in some wondrous song of praise announces the conquering powers of light and life. The poet himself claims knowledge of this mystic song to give dignity to his own.

The reappearance of Stray Singer in st. 162 is a clumsy device of the author to unite the different parts, and st. 164 an epilogue such as those with which skalds were wont to end their recitals.