The Hávamál — A Modern Reading (Study Edition)
Why this exists
This is a plain-language reading of the Hávamál, built for study. It aims for vocal clarity with each stanza rendered so it can be read aloud, sat with, argued with, and annotated. The renderings are my own paraphrase, worked up from Henry Adams Bellows’ public-domain 1923 translation and the sense of the original. Adapt it freely.
The Hávamál is old, and it shows. It speaks in the voice of a Viking-Age honor culture: patriarchal, often suspicious, comfortable with slavery and blood-feud. It is addressed throughout to free adult men; “he” and “the man” were simply the default pronouns of the day. Much of it is still strikingly humane and useful. Some of it is glaringly not, and to pretend otherwise would be both harmful and dishonest.
Where a stanza carries values I judge should not survive into a modern, inclusive reading, I’ve added a marked note ⚑. These notes name the thing for what it is, then either show where we have moved past the old value or restate it through a modern lens; shaped by my own study and life experience. Treat them as starting points for engaging with the text honestly, not as final answers.
Whose lens is this?
It’s worth separating two things that are easy to blur: when the poems were composed, and when the manuscript was written down. They’re centuries apart, and the gap matters. The poems are generally dated to roughly 900–1100 CE and were carried for generations by oral tradition; the guest-counsels of Section I, is often considered the oldest layer, reaching back into genuinely heathen roots. But nearly everything we have survives through a single source: the Codex Regius, written down in Iceland around 1270; some 270 years after Iceland’s conversion to Christianity around the year 1000. So, this is old pagan material, preserved by Christian scribes in a Christian society with an antiquarian interest in its own past.
That recording culture shaped the text mostly by curation rather than authorship. Which poems were preserved at all (much was surely lost), how stanzas were selected and ordered, the prose links a compiler added, and the stray stanzas that crept in over centuries of recitation. The Hávamál is openly a patchwork, stitched together from at least five distinct elements. What the Christian lens did not do here is overwrite the worldview. Odin hanging on the tree for the runes, the blood-feud reciprocity, the rune-charms, the sacrifices to the old gods all remain markedly pre-Christian, without the moralizing layered on top that you find in some other sources. One honest caveat: dating Eddic poetry is genuinely contested. “From the 900s” is a well-supported scholarly position, not a settled fact.
The upshot for a study like this one: the text has already passed through at least three societies before reaching us:
- the oral pagan culture that composed it,
- the 13th-century Christian scribes who chose and arranged it, and
- the 19th- and 20th-century translators (Bellows among them) who rendered it into English,
Each carrying its own era’s assumptions in its word choices. A modern reading is simply the next evolution in that stack. That’s a more honest thing to hold in mind than “here is what the Vikings believed.”
A disclaimer
Know this before you continue: I will be explaining my own understanding of the text, rewriting it in my own words, from the perspective of my own beliefs, understanding, and life experience… and I will be abandoning some stanzas completely to the past where they belong, after explaining why, as they do not fit into our modern understanding or an inclusive society. I encourage you to do the same work. That is how what was once said continues to grow and evolve.
If that isn’t something you can stomach, no ill will or hard feelings.
My intent here is to set moving again what our ancestors started centuries ago. Take each stanza, strip it to its underlying claim, weigh that claim against what we now understand, keep what still serves, retire what doesn’t, and set down a version honest to our own moment. That way it can be handed on in turn. What was is not what is, and what is can always be better through thought and reflection.
A necessary caution, though. I can only carry this so far. These verses were never meant to be one person’s verdict on morality and good living; they were meant to be reviewed and revised by the community that held them. Whatever I set down here is a living draft; not a ruling, not a mandate, but an invitation to the people who keep these words, so they can be argued with, weighed, and carried forward. No single voice should be the authority on what is just and right. That was true when these poems were first spoken, and it is just as true here.
How to read the flags
⚑ marks a point worth pausing on — typically gender, power, violence, or status — where the poem reflects its time rather than a value that should be carried forward.
I. The Counsel of the Guest (Gestaþáttr) Stanzas 1–80
30 June 2026
- Before you walk through any door, look around carefully — you can never be sure where an enemy might be sitting inside.
The wisdom of the stanza:
This advice is not a recommendation for the reader to embrace fear and suspicion in navigating life. Rather, it recommends observation and reflection in the moments just before crossing into a new environment. Every threshold, whether a physical doorway, the choice to take a new job, enter a new relationship, accept an obligation, etc. represents the limit of our ability to see into the unkown. We can only make an educated assessment based on our level of experience and willingness to gather information. The door is the moment of commitment; once on the other side choices and options begin to narrow.
The counsel is not to scan every single new space with paranoid suspicion. If we do attemp knowing every hazard inherent to every choice, we will exhaust ourselves into paralysis and accomplish very little. However, we should make an effort to calibrate our steps into the unknown. Let experience determine how extensive the obsevation need be to leave ourselves room to react to what we couldn’t foresee.
There is no substitute for life experience or acquired wisdom. There is no magic pill or aincient text that can prepare us for every possible unknown variable. The paradox is that wisdom and experience are typically found in unfamiliar spaces. Without new expereinces and exposing ourselves to possible, or probable, danger and failiure we cannot become more capable navigators of the transitions in life.
The stanza doesn’t advise against walking through new doors before you have all the facts. It instead cautions the listener against aproching transitions carelessly.
It is also worth realizing that unfamiliar doors tend to keep us naturally alert. A healthy step into the unknown teaches us to expect and anticipate the unknown. It is just as dangerous to cross a threshold, assuming you all of the possibilities on the other side, as it is to enter an unfamiliar space with no consideration at all. This practice of “look before you leap, but still leap” is twofold: measure your attention against legitimate experience, and periodically audit crossings you may have stopped noticing at all.
Questions for reflection:
What thresholds do I cross so often that I no longer see them as thresholds — and when did I last truly look for new hazards?
When I enter something unfamiliar, what does “looking around” mean for me: what questions would close the gap between what I know and what I’m walking into?
Where has my confidence been earned through real experience, how did I earn that experience, and where is my confidence based on shaky wisdom that could use a second look?
What would it cost me to pause one breath longer at the doors that I’ve passed through the most?
The stanza re-written:
Danger does not announce itself. Before you cross a threshold, take its measure. Unfamiliar doors deserve your attention; the familiar, an experienced glance. The strange room rarely catches a careful traveler; it’s the unguarded who fall.
3 July 2026
- Hail to the host! A guest has arrived — where should he sit? The man left standing in the doorway is anxious to find his place.
The wisdom of the stanza:
Where stanza 1 spoke to the one crossing the threshold, this stanza turns to the one who holds power over the space.“Hail to the host!” is more than a greeting, it names the party with power at the moment a person in need appears, binding that power to an obligation. Notice what the question asked is not “shall he sit?” but “where shall he sit?” The guest’s arrival has already established an obligation; the host’s discretion covers the how. Hospitality, in this reading, is not a favor the powerful may grant or withhold, it is a duty that attaches the moment someone in need enters a space you control.
The second half of the stanza explains the urgency of the duty duty. It names the harm. The person left standing in the doorway is admitted but not received, and that limbo creates a psychological injury. A refused guest at least has an answer they can act on. They can be angry, can move on, can seek another door. The unplaced guest has nothing. They cannot leave without insult, cannot sit without presumption, cannot speak with any footing. Every option risks offense, so they simply stand and continue to wear down, while no one bears visible blame. That is the stanza’s sharpest insight.
Refusal is an answer; silence can cause damage. Delay is not a slower form of welcome, it is a mechanism for harm. The old world enforced this duty with hard stakes. A traveler left outside could die, and the myths of the day even warned the stranger at your fire could be a god in disguise. The modern world removed both enforcements, and the practice quietly collapsed with them. The application pending for months, the message left on read, the candidate never told yes or no, the newcomer admitted through the door but never introduced. Most modern limbo is administered by systems rather than persons, which lets everyone holding any share of the power claim they were a bystander. However, the psychological harm never depended on the stakes. The anxiety of the unplaced person is the same in a great hall or an inbox. To “seat” someone today costs little and is routinely withheld. An introduction, a defined role, a timeline, a straight answer; even a clear no returns a person’s agency, and is itself a form of hospitality. The duty is not to give everyone everything; it is to leave no one in limbo.
The genius of the stanza is its narrowness, and that narrowness is what makes it livable. You do not owe the world. You owe the person standing in YOUR doorway. Extended past the mead hall, the principle still holds. Power and means do not obligate you to everyone in need. They obligate you to those whose need has arrived before you, that you have the power and capacity to meet.
It is also important to note that how you handle these needs is telling. Even the person unmoved by a sense of duty tends to flinch at being revealed. When need arrives before your power, the quality of your answer or your silence reveal your character more plainly than anything you claim when there are no needs to meet, and small behaviors in low-cost circumstances tend to expose one’s true character.
Questions for reflection:
Where do I hold the host’s position: a space, a process, a decision someone is waiting on, and who is currently standing in my doorway?
Is there anyone I have admitted but never received: someone I let in, but never introduced, never answered, never gave a place or a timeline; someone I just left hanging?
Where am I withholding a clear “no” because silence feels kinder or easier, and what is that silence actually costing the person waiting?
When I am the one left unplaced, do I recognize my own anxious urge to overreach and prove myself; and can I name it as the doorway’s pressure rather than my own failing?
Of the needs that have arrived before me, which ones do I actually have the capacity to meet; and am I answering those, or letting them wait while I tell myself I’m powerless?
The stanza re-written:
Power over a space is a duty to meet those who enter it. The question should not be whether to receive a guest; but rather how, and how soon. Answer people plainly and place them quickly. A clear no is a kindness; an open question is harm done. Power does not bind you to all in need, but to those whose need stands within your hall, while you hold the means to meet it. Your answer, or your silence, betray who you are.
18 July 2026
- Someone in from the cold needs a fire; his knees are frozen. A traveler down from the mountains needs food and dry clothes.
The Wisdom of the Stanza
A person may arrive in your care in a diminished state, having come from a harsh environment, whether physical, emotional, or circumstantial. Cold stiffens the knees; hardship stiffens the will. In a lot of ways the harshness of life can rob the traveler of their ability to function; weighed down or frozen by what they have seen and experienced.
The stanza teaches that the host’s first obligation is not conversation, not questions, not assessment, but restoration of function. Provide warmth for the frozen, food for the hungry, dry clothes for the soaked. These are the ordinary means by which dignity is returned to someone who has had it stripped away by an uncaring environment.
The wisdom is twofold.
First, needs are named, not negotiated. The stanza presumes the giving. It only instructs on what to give. Hospitality in this frame is a matter of perception: seeing accurately what a person requires to return to themselves, rather than deciding whether they merit it. Like the previous stanza, if one has the means to provide for a need before them, they are obligated to respond by virtue of their ability to respond.
Second, the remedies are within reach. Fire, food, dry clothes: nothing here demands wealth or heroics. The stanza asks the host only for what is already within their sphere of control. The measure of the giver is not the grandeur of the gift but the accuracy and readiness of it.
The unspoken truth beneath both is that restoration takes time. A frozen joint does not bend the moment it nears warmth. Someone who has come through trauma may need to simply sit in the warmth of a safe environment before they can move confidently in their own life again. The host provides the conditions for recovery; the recovery itself belongs to time.
Questions for Reflection
When someone comes into my sphere of control depleted, regardless of who it may be, do I first assess needs, or their worthiness?
What are my ‘fire, food, and dry clothes,’ the basic restorative things genuinely within my ability to provide? Am I ready to provide them without being asked?
Have I ever mistaken the frozen stiffness of hardship, the withdrawal, the slowness, the guardedness, for a character flaw rather than a condition awaiting warmth?
When I was the traveler down from the mountains, what did someone provide that returned me to functionality? What did it teach me about what to keep ready at my own hearth?
Can I provide warmth without demanding the guest recover on my timeline?
The stanza re-written:
The one who comes in from the cold needs warmth; the harshness has settled into their bones. The one who comes down from hard country needs food, dry clothes, and time. See what is needed, and place it within reach.
20 July 2026
- A new arrival needs water, a towel, and a warm welcome. Treat him well and he’ll speak well of you and come back again.
The Wisdom of the Stanza
The poem widens it’s scope here. The frozen traveler of the previous stanza was an emergency; the new arrival here is anyone at all. Water, a towel, and a warm welcome are not specifically crisis interventions. They are the small courtesies of ordinary arrival, and the stanza’s quiet claim is that the same ethic governs both. Hospitality is not a virtue reserved for dramatic need. It is a posture toward every person who crosses into your sphere of control, whether they arrive desperate or merely arrive.
The items themselves are instructive in their modesty. Water is the universal need, common to every living person. The towel is not survival but comfort: the means to dry off from the road, the work, or the weather. The warm welcome binds them together. None of this costs the host anything of consequence. What it provides the guest is the signal that they were expected, or at least that room was made for them, and that their comfort was worth a moment of someone’s attention. Dignity, again, delivered through small and ready things.
Then the stanza also does something the previous three did not: it names the return. Treat the arrival well and the welcomed will speak of you and come back. This is the first appearance of reciprocity in the poem’s hospitality sequence, and it reflects the concept of maegen, the strength and standing a person accumulates through their deeds. Your actions build your reputation whether you tend it or not, and those actions speak in rooms you may never enter. The host does not spread word of their own generosity; humility leaves the telling to the guest. Good treatment builds community through good will, and poor treatment travels just as far on the same roads. The stanza is not teaching hospitality for the sake of reputation. It is observing that reputation is the natural harvest of how you treat people, and letting the wise reader draw the conclusion.
Questions for Reflection
Do I extend the same quality of welcome to the ordinary arrival as to the person in obvious need, or does my hospitality require a crisis to activate?
What are my “water and towel,” the small, low-cost courtesies I can keep ready that signal to a person that room was made for them?
When I treat someone well, do I leave the telling to them, or do I find ways to make sure my generosity is noticed?
What do people say about my hearth in rooms I will never enter? Am I comfortable with the answer?
Have I built my community through good will, or do I expect community to form around me without tending it?
The Stanza Re-written
The one who arrives needs water, a towel, and a warm welcome. Treat them well, your deeds carry you into rooms you may never enter. Good will find its way back, and binds a community together.
20 July 2026
- You need your wits about you when you travel; everything’s easier at home. The man who knows nothing gets laughed at among people who do.
The Wisdom of the Stanza
The poem turns to the traveler with a warning. When you are away from home, you are at a disadvantage, and true wisdom begins with respecting that fact.
Read “home” and “travel” in their broadest sense. Home is not merely the building you live in; it is everything you know. The job you have done for twenty years, the field you trained in, the community whose customs you absorbed, the skillset you have worn smooth with use. That is your home turff. You can speak with authority because you have earned authority, through training, experience, and long familiarity. That confidence is legitimate. But it is legitimate in its place.
Travel, then, is every step beyond what is familiar. The new job site. The conversation on a topic you have only brushed past. The classroom or workshop where others have years on you. The unfamiliar culture, whether it belongs to a country or a company. Every person travels constantly in this sense, and often without noticing they have left home. That is the hazard the stanza names. Confidence does not travel to new ground like you do.
The second half names the cost of disregarding that reality. The person who knows nothing, yet speaks as though they know, gets laughed at by those who do. Note carefully what earns the laughter. Not the ignorance itself, but the failure to recognize it. Every traveler is ignorant of the new territory they enter; that is what makes them a traveler. The fool is not the traveler who lacks knowledge but the one who will not admit the lacking. The person mistakes competence in their own familiar circumstances for competence everywhere. When a person speaks with borrowed authority in someone else’s space, those who hold real knowledge weigh them immediately, and the judgment travels the same reputation road traveled in the previous stanza.
False confidence and ego hide nothing from those who hold real experience.
The wits the stanza calls for are therefore not cleverness but calibration. Know where you are, know what you do not know, and defer to those whose house you are in, whether that house is a hall, a trade, or a body of knowledge. Silence in unfamiliar territory is not weakness; it is the posture of someone gathering what they do not have to become better. The admission “I do not know” is not the mark of a fool. It is the beginning of wisdom, and the people around you who do know will measure you by whether you have the strength to say it or the weakness to pretend you do not need what they can offer.
Questions for Reflection
Where is my home ground — the spaces, skills, and subjects where my confidence is earned? Do I notice the moment I step outside of it?
When I enter unfamiliar territory — a new workplace, a conversation beyond my depth, a skill I am just beginning — is my first instinct to establish credibility or to gather understanding?
Can I say “I don’t know” without flinching? When did I last say it out loud, in front of people who did know?
Have I ever watched someone speak with false authority in a space I knew well? What did it cost them in my eyes, and what does that tell me about my own conduct as a guest in someone else’s expertise?
Do I treat silence in unfamiliar territory as weakness to overcome or as the working posture of someone who is learning?
The Stanza Re-written
Keep your wits about you when you travel; it’s easy to be confident at home. Confidently accept you can’t know what you don’t know. Empty confidence and ego hide nothing from the experienced; humility and arrogance are weighed by those who listen.
21 July 2026
- Don’t show off how clever you are — keep it to yourself. Trouble rarely finds the quiet, careful guest; there’s no more reliable companion than good judgment.
The Wisdom of the Stanza
The previous stanza taught the traveler how to carry what they do not know. This one teaches them how to carry what they do. Together they form a matched pair, and the instruction is the same on both sides: calibration versus performance.
Notice first what the stanza does not say. It doesn’t tell you to hide your cleverness, abandon it, or refuse to use it. It cautions against showing it off, deploying knowledge not to help but to elevate yourself above the people around you. Skill and knowledge come with time and experience, and everyone starts somewhere. That another person lacks what you have is not a measure of who is better; it is a measure of who has spent time doing the work of learning. Holding your cleverness over others damages the very relationships and community that knowledge is supposed to serve. There is also a sharper edge here when read against stanza 5: the person beside you who admits “I do not know” has just done the difficult, honest thing their circumstances ask of them. To answer that admission with superiority or mockery is to punish the courage the whole tradition is trying to build. The clever person never rewards humility with humiliation.
The second line names the practical benefit. Trouble rarely finds the quiet, careful guest. This isn’t because quietness is timidity, but because the watchful person is continuously reading the room. Alert to their surroundings and their company, they see where their knowledge is needed and where it is not, where they command the ground and where they should be gathering or building wisdom from others. The same attentiveness protects them twice over: it keeps them from playing the know-it-all where they are strong, and from being the fool where they are not.
The closing line binds the pair of stanzas together: there is no more reliable companion than good judgment. Wealth can be lost, strength fades, and even friends may be absent when needed, but the ability to weigh yourself accurately against your circumstances and your company travels with you everywhere. It is the skill beneath every other skill. It integrates you into new company, opens the door to knowledge you do not yet have, builds the relationships that become community, and steadily grows your ability to shape the circumstances you find yourself in. Know where you stand, and act accordingly.
Questions for Reflection
When I hold knowledge others in the room lack, what do I use it for — to lift the conversation, or to lift myself above it?
Have I ever answered someone’s honest “I don’t know” with superiority instead of help? What did that teach them about being honest around me?
Do I remember my own starting point in the skills I now command? Do I treat beginners as people earlier on the same road, or as people beneath me on it?
Is my quietness in a room watchful or checked-out? Am I actually reading my company and circumstances, or just waiting to speak?
When did my judgment last tell me to hold back something clever I wanted to say? Did I listen?
The Stanza Re-written
Don’t show off what you know; keep your cleverness in hand. Trouble rarely finds the quiet, watchful guest. Never reward humility with humiliation. No companion is more reliable than good judgment.
21 July 2026
- A sharp guest arrives and keeps quiet, paying attention — listening, watching. That’s how the wise stay alert.
The Wisdom of the Stanza
The sharp guest arrives and does not announce themselves; they keep quiet and pay attention — listening, watching. This is calibration as a default position in an unfamiliar environment. Sharpness here is not cleverness on display but readiness. To arrive dull-witted in unfamiliar circumstances is to be vulnerable and reactive, moved by events instead of reading them. The sharp guest is building a map before they move: whose company they are in, what competence surrounds them, who holds their best interest at heart and who holds their worst. None of that can be learned while talking.
The second line quietly overturns an assumption. We tend to treat silence as absence — of contribution, of engagement, of confidence. The stanza says the opposite: this is how the wise stay alert. The silence of the sharp guest is not passivity but activity turned inward; call it being actively passive, consciously aware. It is awareness running in both directions at once. Outward toward the room, and inward toward yourself: your limits, your strengths, how you are presenting, and how your words will land in this company rather than in the company you are used to. The wise person remains in that state of open calibration for as long as unfamiliarity lasts, and what it buys them is choice. When they finally speak or act, it is intentional — the right word, in the right context, to the right people — because they gave themselves the space to know what right looks like here. The dull guest reacts to the room; the sharp guest, having read it, moves through it.
Questions for Reflection
When I enter a new room, is my first energy spent on being noticed or on noticing?
What am I actually gathering when I’m quiet — or is my silence just waiting for my turn to talk?
Can I name a time when watching first showed me something about a room that speaking first would have cost me?
Do I know how I present in unfamiliar company, or only how I intend to present?
How long can I comfortably stay in calibration before the urge to establish myself wins? What usually breaks first — my attention or my patience?
The Stanza Re-written
The sharp guest arrives and keeps quiet, listening, watching, learning the room. Silence in unfamiliar circumstances is not absence of thought; it is how the wise stay alert.
21 July 2026
- You’re fortunate if you earn genuine goodwill and a good name. It’s far riskier to stake yourself on what’s hidden in someone else’s heart.
The Wisdom of the Stanza
Fortunate: having good luck, blessed with unexpected advantages, experiencing a positive outcome by chance. The stanza opens by telling you what a good name actually is — not a wage, not a possession, but a stroke of fortune. That framing does two things at once.
First, it teaches gratitude to the person who has goodwill and a good name. If these things arrived partly by chance — the right community, the right timing, people generous enough to see your work clearly — then holding them is not proof of superiority. It is being blessed with an advantage you did not fully author. The person with a good name should carry it the way you carry any luck: gladly, humbly, and without mistaking it for something you built alone. Others did the granting. Chance did some of the arranging. You did your part, and your part mattered, but the outcome was never guaranteed by it.
Second, it releases the person still waiting. If a good name comes partly by chance, then its absence is not a verdict. You can do everything right and stand in a room not yet ready to see it. The stanza never scolds the person without a reputation; it simply calls the person with one lucky. That is quiet mercy for everyone doing honest work without recognition — the work is yours, the harvest is weather.
Then the second line draws the comparison that gives the stanza its point. As uncertain as earned goodwill is, there is something far more uncertain: what is hidden in someone else’s heart. Earned goodwill, whatever chance went into it, is at least visible — demonstrated in how people treat you, what they say, what they do. The hidden heart offers no evidence at all. So the stanza ranks your foundations: build on goodwill that has shown itself, and count yourself lucky to have it; do not build on interiors you cannot see, however warm the surface. If the first is fortune, the second is blind gambling — and the wise know the difference between accepting luck you can see and betting on luck you can’t.
Questions for Reflection
What goodwill am I holding right now that I’ve been treating as fully earned? How much of it was timing, circumstance, or someone’s unexpected generosity?
When I see someone without the reputation their work deserves, do I assume something is wrong with them — or can I see the missing luck?
Do I carry my good name with the humility of someone holding fortune, or the entitlement of someone collecting a debt?
What in my life is currently built on demonstrated goodwill, and what is built on goodwill I’ve only assumed? Can I tell them apart?
If my luck turned tomorrow — new community, new room, no reputation — what would remain? Is the work itself enough for me?
The Stanza Re-written
Count yourself blessed if people truly wish you well and speak well of you; you did your part, but fortune did the rest. Build on the goodwill you can see. What hides in another’s heart is a gamble, not a foundation.
9. You’re fortunate to carry your own wisdom and good name, because leaning on someone else’s advice has steered many people wrong.
Notes —
10. There’s no better thing to carry on a journey than wisdom. It’s worth more than money in unfamiliar places, and a refuge when things go badly.
Notes —
11. There’s no better thing to carry on a journey than wisdom — and nothing worse to pack than too much ale.
Notes —
12. Ale does far less good than people claim. The more a man drinks, the less hold he keeps on his own mind.
Notes —
13. Drink calls down the “heron of forgetfulness,” which steals your wits. I was caught in that bird’s feathers once, in Gunnloth’s house.
Notes —
14. I was drunk — blackout drunk — at wise Fjalar’s place. The best kind of drinking is the kind you walk away from with your mind still intact.
Notes —
15. A leader should be quiet, thoughtful, and brave in a fight — but everyone should stay glad and good-humored right up to the day they die.
Notes —
16. The coward thinks he’ll live forever if he just avoids the fight — but old age will catch him even when weapons don’t.
Notes —
17. The fool stares and stammers, or just goes silent, somewhere new — but give him a drink and you’ll see exactly what’s in his head.
Notes —
18. Only someone who has traveled widely and seen the world really grasps how other people think. That person is wise.
Notes —
19. Don’t refuse the mead, but drink in measure. Say something worth saying or stay quiet — and no one will fault you for turning in early.
Notes —
20. A greedy man with no self-awareness will eat himself sick; among thoughtful people, his appetite makes him a joke.
Notes —
21. Even cattle know when to head home and leave the field — but a foolish man never learns the limits of his own appetite.
Notes —
22. A small-minded, mean-spirited person sneers at everything — and never grasps the one thing he ought to: that he’s far from flawless himself.
Notes —
23. The fool lies awake all night fretting over everything. By morning he’s worn out, and his problems are exactly where they were.
Notes —
24. A foolish man thinks everyone who laughs along with him is a friend — never noticing, among sharper people, that they’re mocking him.
Notes —
25. A foolish man thinks everyone who laughs along with him is a friend — then finds, when he needs backing in public, that almost no one will speak for him.
Notes —
26. An ignorant man thinks he knows everything as long as he’s tucked into his own corner — but he has no idea what to say the moment someone asks him a real question.
Notes —
27. A clueless person is best off staying quiet in company. No one will know how little he knows unless he opens his mouth too much. (Though a man too ignorant to know when he’s overdone it won’t manage even that.)
Notes —
28. You’ll seem wise if you can ask good questions and answer them well. But you can’t keep anything secret among people — word always gets out.
Notes —
29. Someone who never shuts up talks a great deal without saying anything. An unchecked tongue often sings its owner into trouble.
Notes —
30. Don’t make a mockery of anyone, even a guest just passing through. Plenty of men seem wise as long as no one questions them and they’re left in peace.
Notes —
31. A guest thinks he’s clever, mocking someone and slipping away — but he doesn’t realize how little he knows, joking in a room that may be full of his enemies.
Notes —
32. Plenty of people are friendly enough until the feast, where they turn on each other. There will always be friction between people — guest against guest.
Notes —
33. Eat early; don’t show up to a feast starving. Otherwise you sit there gnawing your food, too busy to join the conversation.
Notes —
34. The road to a bad friend is long and crooked, even if he lives right on the highway. But the way to a real friend is short and straight, however far you travel.
Notes —
35. Keep moving; don’t outstay your welcome anywhere. Affection turns to resentment when you settle in too long under someone else’s roof.
Notes —
36. Better a home of your own, even a humble one — at least there you’re your own master. A couple of goats and a patched roof beat begging.
Notes —
37. Better a home of your own, even a humble one — at least there you’re your own master. It breaks a man’s heart to beg for every meal.
Notes —
38. Don’t go even a step into open country without your weapon — you never know when you’ll suddenly need a spear out on the road.
Notes —
39. If you’ve earned some wealth, don’t let yourself go without. You often hoard for an enemy what you meant for a friend — things go worse than you expect.
Notes —
40. I’ve never met anyone so generous they’d turn down a gift, or so free with their money that being repaid annoyed them.
Notes —
41. Friends should give to each other — tools, clothing, whatever they can. Mutual generosity makes the longest-lasting friendships.
Notes —
42. Be a friend to your friend, and match each gift with a gift. Repay laughter with laughter — and betrayal with betrayal.
⚑ Through a modern lens — This is the reciprocity ethic of an honor culture: kindness for kindness, but also harm for harm. It’s clear-eyed about fairness, but “repay betrayal with betrayal” is a feud logic, not a forgiveness one. Worth weighing against where you’d actually want to draw the line.
Notes —
43. Be a friend to your friend, and to his friend too — but never befriend your friend’s enemy.
Notes —
44. If you have a friend you truly trust and want good to come of it, open your mind to him, trade gifts, and visit him often.
Notes —
45. But if you have another you barely trust and still want something from, speak to him warmly while thinking otherwise — and pay back his deceit with your own.
⚑ Through a modern lens — Stanzas 45–46 advise calculated two-facedness toward people you distrust but still need. It’s survival advice for a treacherous world; held up today it reads as a description of manipulation, not a model for it.
Notes —
46. Same with anyone you distrust and suspect of lying: talk and laugh with him, but keep your real thoughts to yourself, and only ever repay him in kind.
Notes —
47. I was young once, traveling alone, and I lost my way. I felt rich the moment I found a companion — people are gladdened by other people.
Notes —
48. The brave and generous live best; they rarely feed their sorrows. The coward is afraid of everything, and the miser hates having to give.
Notes —
49. I once gave my clothes to two scarecrows in a field. Dressed, they looked like men — but a naked person is nobody. (The barb: appearances are what people judge by.)
Notes —
50. A lone fir on a bare hillside withers, with nothing to shelter its needles and bark. A person no one loves is the same — why would such a life last long?
Notes —
51. Between false friends, friendship burns hot for about five days — then on the sixth it goes cold, and the whole thing is over.
Notes —
52. You don’t have to give something big; often a small thing buys goodwill. Half a loaf and a half-filled cup have won me a firm friend.
Notes —
53. A small sea for a small shore — and small minds to match. Not everyone is equally wise; most people are only ever about half-wise.
Notes —
54. Be wise in moderation — never too wise. The people who live happiest are the ones who know just enough.
Notes —
55. Be wise in moderation — never too wise. A truly wise heart is seldom a glad one.
Notes —
56. Be wise in moderation — never too wise. Better not to know your fate ahead of time; you’ll live more easily for not knowing.
Notes —
57. One flame lights another and burns until it’s spent; fire kindles fire. A person grows wise by talking with others — and foolish by keeping to himself.
Notes —
58. If you mean to take another man’s life or property, get up early — a sleeping wolf rarely catches its meat, and a sleeping warrior wins no victory.
⚑Through a modern lens — A frank artifact of a raiding culture: the “early bird” maxim is literally about being first to steal or kill. Useful to read alongside the hospitality stanzas — the same poem prizes both the welcomed guest and the early raider.
Notes —
59. If you’ve no one working for you, get up early and get to work yourself. The late sleeper loses more than time — for the early riser, half the wealth is already won.
Notes —
60. Know how much seasoned wood and bark you need for firewood and thatch, and how much timber will see you through a month or half a year.
Notes —
61. Go out washed and well-fed, even if you can’t afford good clothes. Don’t be ashamed of your worn shoes and trousers — or your horse, even if it’s not much of one.
Notes —
62. A hungry eagle, sighting the sea, snaps its beak and cranes its neck. That’s how a man looks in a crowd of strangers with no one to speak up for him.
Notes —
63. If you want to be thought wise, learn to ask and answer well. Tell your secret to one person, never two — once three people know, everyone knows.
Notes —
64. A wise person uses their power in moderation. Among the brave, you discover that no one is the bravest of all.
Notes —
65. (Some lines are lost here.) You’ll often be repaid in kind for the words you say to others.
Notes —
66. I’ve shown up too early to some gatherings and too late to others — the drink was already gone, or not yet brewed. A man people dislike rarely arrives at the right moment.
Notes —
67. People would invite me over — as long as I didn’t actually need feeding, or as long as I’d hang two hams in a stingy host’s house for every one I ate.
Notes —
68. Fire is the finest gift for people, and so is sunlight — along with good health, if you can keep it, and a life lived without disgrace.
Notes —
69. No one is completely wretched, even in poor health. Some find joy in their children, some in family, some in wealth, and some in work done well.
Notes —
70. Better to be alive, whatever the circumstances, than dead — only the living enjoy anything. I once saw a fire blazing for a rich man, and there he lay, dead outside his own door.
Notes —
71. A lame man can ride, a man without hands can herd, a deaf man can fight and win. Better even to be blind than burned on a pyre — a corpse is of no use to anyone.
Notes —
72. Better to have a son, even one born late, even one born after you’re gone. You rarely see memorial stones by the road except where a kinsman raised one for his own.
Notes —
73. Two will beat one; your own tongue can get your head taken off. Under every cloak, I expect a hidden weapon.
⚑ Through a modern lens — Pure honor-culture wariness — assume everyone is armed and outnumbered is a threat. It captures real danger of the era, but as a life posture it’s corrosive; worth contrasting with the trust the friendship stanzas hold out.
Notes —
74. The man with enough to eat welcomes the night. (A ship’s deck is cramped.) Autumn nights are unpredictable — the weather can turn in a week, and far more in a month.
Notes —
75. A man who knows nothing doesn’t know that money can make fools of people. One man is rich, another poor — and neither is to blame for the other.
Notes —
76. I’ve seen well-stocked farms among Fitjung’s sons — now they carry a beggar’s staff. Wealth vanishes in the blink of an eye; it’s the most faithless friend of all.
Notes —
77. Cattle die. Family dies. You die too. But a good name never dies, for the one who earns it.
Notes —
78. Cattle die. Family dies. You die too. One thing I know that never dies: the reputation a person leaves behind.
Notes —
79. What you seek from the runes is reliable — they were made by the great gods and painted by the Master-Poet… silence is the safest course.
Notes —
80. When a foolish man comes into a woman’s love or a little money, his pride swells but his wisdom never does — he just blunders forward, full of himself.
Notes —
II. On Love and the Ways of Women · 81–95
⚑ Read this whole section in context. Stanzas 81–95 are the poem’s notorious “faithlessness of women” passage — generalized warnings that treat women as inherently fickle and untrustworthy. It’s a medieval male grievance trope, the product of a patriarchal society, and it’s stated as if it were settled fact. It is not. Read it as a historical artifact and a window into the era’s gender attitudes, not as wisdom to carry forward — and notice that the poem itself turns the charge around in stanza 91. The honest move is to name the bias plainly learn to be better, and let the rest stand as a record of how far society has come from when these things were once said without shame.
81. Don’t praise the day until evening; don’t praise a blade until it’s been tested, a young woman until she’s wed, ice until you’ve crossed it, or ale until it’s been drunk. The original adds: don’t praise a wife until she’s on her funeral pyre.
⚑ Through a modern lens — The structure is sound — “don’t call it good until it’s proven.” But the closing example, withholding praise of a wife until her death, treats a spouse as something that can only be safely judged once she can no longer disappoint you. Keep the maxim; retire the example.
Notes —
82. Chop wood in a strong wind, sail in fair weather, court at dusk (the day has many eyes). Value a ship for its speed, a shield for its cover, a sword for its edge — and, in the original’s list, “a woman for her kiss.”
⚑ Through a modern lens — The last item slots a person into a list of tools valued for their use. Fine for ships and swords; a person is not an instrument with a single worth.
Notes —
83. Drink ale by the fire and skate on the ice; buy a lean horse and a tarnished sword. Fatten your horse at home, and keep your dog at the house.
Notes —
84. Don’t trust the promise of a young woman or anything a woman says — the original claims their hearts were shaped on a spinning wheel, with inconstancy built into them.
⚑Through a modern lens — This is the bluntest line in the poem: an outright claim that women are fickle by nature. It’s a flat sexist generalization, and stating it is the point of naming it. There’s nothing here to rehabilitate — only to recognize as the period’s prejudice. (And note the poem contradicts it five stanzas later.)
Notes —
85. Things not to be trusted: a bow about to break, a flickering flame, a howling wolf, a cawing crow, a squealing pig, an uprooted tree, a swelling sea, a boiling kettle,
Notes —
86. a flying arrow, a crashing wave, ice only one night old, a coiled snake, a bride’s pillow talk, a broken sword, a playing bear, a king’s son,
Notes —
87. a sick calf, a stubborn enslaved worker, a flattering witch, a freshly killed enemy —
⚑ Through a modern lens — Two things sit in this catalogue of “untrustworthy” things: an enslaved person (“thrall” in the original) and a “witch.” The first is a reminder that this is a slaveholding society listing human beings among unreliable objects; the second is the recurring fear of women’s spiritual power. Both belong to the era, not to us.
Notes —
88. your brother’s killer, even if you meet him in the open; a half-burned house; a horse that’s too fast (one lame leg and it’s useless) — never be so trusting that you rely on all of these.
Notes —
89. Don’t count on an early harvest, or trust your child too soon. Weather shapes the field and whim shapes the child — and neither stays the same.
Notes —
90. The original likens a fickle woman’s love to riding unshod over ice on a half-broken colt, or steering a rudderless ship through a storm, or chasing reindeer on slick rock with a lame leg.
⚑ Through a modern lens — A vivid stack of images, all in service of the same prejudice as stanza 84: a woman’s affection as something chaotic and dangerous to a man. The craft is real; the premise is the era’s, not a truth about people.
Notes —
91. I’ll be honest, since I know both sides: men are false to women too. We speak most beautifully when we’re lying hardest — deceiving even wise women.
⚑ Through a modern lens — This is the turn worth dwelling on. After ten stanzas blaming women, the speaker admits men are the practiced deceivers — that male charm is often a weapon. It quietly undercuts the section’s own thesis and is the closest the passage comes to honesty.
Notes —
92. A man who wants a woman’s love should speak gently, offer gifts, and praise her — the more devoted the courtship, the better his chances.
⚑Through a modern lens — Courtship framed as a campaign to be won. Read with stanza 91 it gets uncomfortable — “speak beautifully” can shade into “speak deceptively.” The healthy version keeps the warmth and drops the conquest framing.
Notes —
93. Never fault anyone for falling in love. Beauty that stirs desire often snares the wise while fools go free.
Notes —
94. Never fault anyone for something that happens to so many people. Powerful love turns even wise men into fools.
Notes —
95. Only you know what’s in your own heart when you’re alone. For a thoughtful person, nothing is worse than having nothing to love.
Notes —
III. Odin and Billing’s Daughter · 96–102
⚑ Context for the section. This is Odin telling, in the first person, the story of trying to seduce “Billing’s daughter” — and being outwitted and humiliated by her. It’s important to notice who the text holds up as the schemer here: the god himself. The closing stanza generalizes his personal failure into a charge against all women, which is exactly the move worth flagging — a man’s thwarted manipulation reframed as women’s deceit.
96. I learned this myself, waiting in the reeds for the one I loved. I cared for that clever woman as much as my own life — and never had her.
Notes —
97. I found Billing’s daughter on her bed, asleep and bright as sunlight. A nobleman’s whole estate felt worthless to me without her.
Notes —
98. “Come back this evening, Odin, if you want to win me — it would be bad if anyone but the two of us knew about such a scandal.” (her words)
Notes —
99. I rushed off, expecting joy, ignoring wiser counsel — certain I’d soon have everything I wanted from her.
Notes —
100. When I came back that night, the warriors were all awake, torches lit and held high — and I was shown my miserable way out.
Notes —
101. When I returned at dawn and everyone was asleep, I found a dog tied to her bed in her place. (She’d outwitted him completely.)
Notes —
102. Many a fine woman, if you test her, turns out false to a lover — that’s what I learned when I tried to seduce a clever woman by cunning. She heaped scorn on me, and I won nothing.
⚑ Through a modern lens — Here’s the sleight of hand: Odin sets out to manipulate a woman, gets cleverly rebuffed, and concludes that women are deceitful. The failure is his; the generalization is unearned. A modern reading flips it — the story is really about a woman protecting herself from a manipulative suitor.
Notes —
IV. Odin and the Mead of Poetry · 103–110
⚑ Context for the section. Odin recounts how he won the mead of poetry from the giant Suttung — by seducing Suttung’s daughter Gunnloth abd drinking the mead. The poem does not hide that this is a betrayal; stanza 110 openly questions whether Odin can be trusted. Read it as myth that is candid about its god’s faithlessness, with Gunnloth as the wronged party.
103. Be glad at home and welcoming to guests, but stay sharp. If you want a name for wisdom, speak well — the man who can never say anything is called a fool, and that’s the mark of one.
Notes —
104. I visited the old giant, and now I’m back. Silence gained me little there — I had to talk my way to what I wanted in Suttung’s hall.
Notes —
105. Rati’s drill bored my way through, gnawing a path in the stone; the giants’ passages ran above and below me — I risked my neck recklessly.
Notes —
106. Gunnloth, on a golden seat, gave me a drink of the precious mead — and I repaid her trusting, troubled heart badly.
⚑ Through a modern lens — The text itself states the wrong plainly: Odin took advantage of Gunnloth’s trust. Notably, this is the god confessing, not boasting. The myth treats the betrayal as a stain, not a triumph.
Notes —
107. I made good use of the prize I’d won; the wise man lacks for little. So Othrörir — the mead of poetry — has now been brought up among humankind.
Notes —
108. I doubt I’d have made it home out of the giants’ land if Gunnloth, that good woman, hadn’t held me in her arms and helped me.
Notes —
109. The next day the frost-giants came to Odin’s hall asking after “Bolverk” — whether he was back among the gods, or Suttung had killed him. (Bolverk, “evil-doer,” was Odin’s alias.)
Notes —
110. I think Odin swore an oath on his ring — but who can trust Odin? He left Suttung deceived after the feast, and left Gunnloth grieving.
⚑ Through a modern lens — A remarkable line: the poem names its own chief god an oath-breaker. Worth sitting with — this tradition does not pretend its gods are moral exemplars, which is itself a kind of honesty.
Notes —
V. The Counsels to Loddfáfnir (Loddfáfnismál) · 111–138
111. It’s time to speak from the sage’s seat, beside the Well of Urth. I watched and stayed silent, watched and thought, and listened to the High One’s words. I heard talk of runes — there was no shortage of counsel there in the High One’s hall. This is what I heard:
Notes —
112. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel — you’ll profit if you learn it, gain if you remember it: Don’t get up in the night unless you’re keeping watch on enemies or need the outhouse.
Notes —
113. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Don’t fall asleep in a sorceress’s arms — she’ll bind your limbs.
Notes —
114. She’ll enchant you so completely that you’ll lose all interest in gatherings or counsel; you won’t want food or the company of friends, and you’ll go to sleep heavy with sorrow.
⚑ Through a modern lens — The “sorceress who ensnares men” is a recurring figure here — women’s allure recast as a dangerous, almost magical threat to a man’s autonomy. It’s the same anxiety as the “faithlessness” section, dressed as the supernatural.
Notes —
115. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Never try to seduce another man’s wife, or chase her in secret.
Notes —
116. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: If you’re traveling over mountains or fjords, pack plenty of food.
Notes —
117. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Don’t let a bad person bring trouble on you — you’ll get no reward for any goodwill you show someone who means ill.
Notes —
118. I saw a man cut down by a malicious person’s words — a lying tongue dealt the death-blow, and there wasn’t even any truth in it.
Notes —
119. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: If you have a friend you trust, visit him often — weeds and tall grass grow over the road no one travels.
Notes —
120. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Find a good person to keep as a friend, and learn something of healing while you live.
Notes —
121. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Never be the first to break with a friend. Sorrow eats at the heart when you’ve no one to confide in.
Notes —
122. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Don’t waste words arguing with a stubborn fool who won’t see reason.
Notes —
123. You’ll never get a good return from a bad person — but a good person’s praise will raise your standing.
Notes —
124. There’s real connection when you can speak your whole mind to someone. Nothing is worse than falseness — and a true friend will tell you what he honestly thinks, not just what’s pleasant.
Notes —
125. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Don’t trade even three words in a quarrel with someone worse than you — the better man often loses when a worse one picks the fight.
Notes —
126. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Make shoes or spear-shafts only for yourself; if the shoe is badly made or the shaft comes out crooked, people will think ill of you.
Notes —
127. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: When you recognize something as evil, call it evil, and give your enemies no peace.
⚑ Through a modern lens — “Give your enemies no peace” is the implacable side of the warrior ethic. The first half — name evil plainly — wears better than the second; relentless enmity is exactly the cycle the feud-culture stanzas keep feeding.
Notes —
128. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Never take pleasure in evil; let it be the good that gladdens you.
Notes —
129. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Don’t look up when you’re in a fight — men can be seized with panic — or someone may bewitch your wits.
Notes —
130. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: If you want to win a woman’s love and find joy with her, make fair promises and keep them — no one resents getting what’s good.
⚑ Through a modern lens — Still framed as “winning,” but notice it turns on kept promises and mutual gladness, not deceit or coercion. It’s the most genuinely reciprocal of the poem’s lines about love — closer to a modern ideal than most of section II.
Notes —
131. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Be cautious, but not fearful. Be most wary around drink, around other men’s wives, and third, around thieves looking to outwit you.
Notes —
132. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Never mock or laugh at a guest or a traveler.
Notes —
133. Those inside a house rarely know much about the stranger at the door. No one is so good he has no faults, and no one so bad he’s worth nothing.
Notes —
134. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Never mock an old man — the old often speak well, and sound counsel can come from a gray-bearded mouth.
Notes —
135. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: Don’t curse a guest or drive him from your gate; deal kindly with someone in need.
Notes —
136. The door-bolt that has to keep being raised to let everyone in wears out. Give a visitor something — a stingy welcome earns you ill will. (A note on hospitality and its limits.)
Notes —
137. Listen, Loddfáfnir, and take my counsel: When you drink, draw on the strength of the earth. (The old folk remedies follow — earth against drink, fire against sickness, oak against cramp, rye against rupture, the moon against rage, grass against the rash, runes against a sword-cut.) The ground soaks up the flood.
⚑Through a modern lens — This is folk medicine, not medical advice — a charm-list from a pre-scientific world. Read it as cultural history, not as anything to act on.
Notes —
138. Now the High One’s words are spoken in the hall — good for humankind, ill for the giants. Hail to whoever speaks them, and whoever learns them; may they profit whoever keeps them; and hail to all who hear them!
Notes —
VI. The Winning of the Runes (Rúnatal) · 139–146
139. I know that I hung on the wind-battered tree nine long nights, wounded by a spear, given to Odin — myself given to myself — on that tree whose roots run where no one knows.
Notes —
140. No one gave me bread or drink from a horn. I peered down into the depths; I seized the runes — screaming, I took them — and then I fell back.
Notes —
141. I learned nine powerful songs from the son of Bolthorn, Bestla’s father, and I got a drink of the precious mead, poured out from Othrörir.
Notes —
142. Then I began to thrive and grow wise; I flourished. One word led me to another word, one deed to another deed.
Notes —
143. You’ll find runes and meaningful signs — very powerful signs — that the king of poets colored, that the great gods made, that the ruler of the gods inscribes.
Notes —
144. Odin carved for the gods, Dáin for the elves, Dvalin for the dwarfs, Alsvith for the giants and for all humankind — and some I carved myself.
Notes —
145. Do you know how to carve them? How to read them? How to color them, how to test them? How to ask with them, how to make an offering, how to send, how to sacrifice?
Notes —
146. Better to offer nothing than to over-offer; better to sacrifice nothing than to sacrifice too much. (Lines lost.) So Thund inscribed it before the dawn of humankind, where he rose up and returned home.
Notes —
VII. The List of Charms (Ljóðatal) · 147–165
147. I know songs that no queen and no ordinary person knows. The first is called “help,” and it can help you through sorrow, pain, and sickness.
Notes —
148. I know a second that people need if they want to practice healing. (Lines lost.)
Notes —
149. I know a third: if I badly need to restrain an enemy, I can blunt his blade so his sword and staff won’t bite.
Notes —
150. I know a fourth: if my legs are shackled, the charm sets me free — the fetters spring from my feet, the bonds burst from my hands.
Notes —
151. I know a fifth: if I see an arrow flying at my people, it never flies so fast that I can’t stop it — as long as I can see it.
Notes —
152. I know a sixth: if someone tries to harm me by sending a cursed root, the curse falls on the one who works it before it ever reaches me.
Notes —
153. I know a seventh: if I see flames over my companions’ heads, the fire never spreads so wide that I can’t put it out — I know the song for it.
Notes —
154. I know an eighth, useful for everyone to learn: when hatred breaks out among fighting men, I can quickly set it right.
Notes —
155. I know a ninth: if I need to keep my ship safe on the water, I can calm the wind on the waves and lull the sea to sleep.
Notes —
156. I know a tenth: when I see witches riding the night sky, I can send them so far astray that they lose their true forms and their wits, and they head home.
⚑Through a modern lens — The night-riding witch again — women’s power imagined as something to be magically thwarted. By this point in the poem the pattern is clear and worth naming as a throughline rather than an isolated line.
Notes —
157. I know an eleventh: when I lead old friends into battle, I sing into their shields, and they go strong — whole into the fight, whole out of it, and whole home again.
Notes —
158. I know a twelfth: if I see a hanged man swinging high in a tree, I carve and color runes so that he comes down, walks, and talks with me.
Notes —
159. I know a thirteenth: if I sprinkle water on a young warrior, he won’t fall in battle or go down beneath the swords. (A pre-Christian water-naming rite, akin to a blessing.)
Notes —
160. I know a fourteenth: I can name all the gods and elves for people — few fools can do that.
Notes —
161. I know a fifteenth, which the dwarf Thjóðrörir chanted before Delling’s doors: power for the gods, glory for the elves, and wisdom for the High One.
Notes —
162. I know a sixteenth: if I want a wise woman’s affection, I can turn her mind and change all her feelings toward me.
⚑ Through a modern lens — This is a charm to override a woman’s will — magical coercion of her feelings. Stripped of the mythic framing, it describes treating someone’s consent as an obstacle to be spell-worked around. Name it for what it is: the poem at its least defensible on this front.
Notes —
163. I know a seventeenth, so that a young woman will be slow to leave me.
⚑Through a modern lens — The companion to 162 — binding a woman to stay rather than letting her choose. The same problem: affection as something to be compelled, not freely given.
Notes —
164. You’ll long go without these songs, Loddfáfnir — though it would do you good to get them, to learn them, to have them.
Notes —
165. I know an eighteenth that I’ll never tell to any young woman or any man’s wife — the best secret is the one only you keep. So the songs end — except for the one in whose arms I lie, or my own sister.
Notes —
← back to The Hávamál