Hávamál
Do you know how to write?
A string of eight questions on what you know how to do, followed by advice not to give more than the gift deserves, and a closing line about Odin.
Reference: stanzas 143–144 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 143–144
143.
Dost know how to write, dost know how to read,
dost know how to paint, dost know how to prove,
dost know how to ask, dost know how to offer,
dost know how to send, dost know how to spend?
144.
Better ask for too little than offer too much,
like the gift should be the boon;
better not to send than to overspend.
........
Thus Odin graved ere the world began;
Then he rose from the deep, and came again.
- 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 143–144 (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
Eight questions: do you know how to write, to read, to paint, to prove (to test)? Do you know how to ask, to offer, to send, to spend?
Then the advice: it is better to ask for too little than to offer too much; the gift should match what is asked for. It is better not to send than to spend too much. The last two lines say that Odin graved before the world began, then rose from the deep and came again.
- 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 143–144 (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.
The text of stanza 144
Stanza 144 has a gap before its last two lines. The text we follow marks it with a row of dots. In the last two lines the speaker speaks of Odin in the third person (“Thus Odin graved”).
- 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 143–144 (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. Bellows calls the formula about carving, staining, asking and sacrificing a stanza in a different metre (málaháttr) of uncertain origin, clearly an interpolation here. In the next stanza he assumes a gap in the manuscript, notes that Vigfússon and Powell expanded some lines into eight, and says the last two lines are almost certainly misplaced; Bugge proposed moving them to follow the stanzas on the origin of the runes. Thundr is another name for Odin.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Today the questions are often read as being about using knowledge, not just having it. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Which of the eight can you do well? Which would you most like to learn?