Hávamál
A guest or wandering wight
Do not scorn or mock a guest or a wanderer in your hall. Those who sit inside cannot be sure what kind of person has come, and nobody is so good that he has no fault, or so ill that he is no use.
Reference: stanzas 131–132 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 131–132
131.
I counsel thee, Stray-Singer, accept my counsels,
they will be thy boon if thou obey'st them,
they will work thy weal if thou win'st them:
hold not in scorn, nor mock in thy halls
a guest or wandering wight.
132.
They know but unsurely who sit within
what manner of man is come:
none is found so good, but some fault attends him,
or so ill but he serves for somewhat.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 131–132 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
In plain English
Do not hold in scorn, or mock in your halls, a guest or wandering wight.
Those who sit inside know only unsurely what kind of man has come. No one is found so good that no fault attends him, nor so ill that he serves for nothing.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 131–132 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
Where it comes back
The same warning against mocking a guest is made in stanza 30 (see “Guests at the table”), and the opening of the poem is about the guest at the door.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 131–132 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
In the manuscripts and scholarship
The Hávamál is preserved in one medieval manuscript, the Codex Regius (c. 1270), where it follows the Völuspá. These stanzas belong to the Loddfáfnismál, the run of pieces of advice spoken to Loddfáfnir. Bellows thinks two lines in this stretch were probably inserted from a different poem, and records that many editors reject the last two lines of a neighbouring stanza as spurious or shuffle its lines among the stanzas around it. Editions therefore differ on exactly where these stanzas begin and end.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Read today, this is a reminder not to judge a stranger quickly. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Whom have you written off at first sight? What did you learn when you looked again?