Hávamál
Help, and the healing song
The speaker says he knows songs that no one else does. The first is Help, which helps in all woes; the second is the one a healer must sing.
Reference: stanzas 145–146 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 145–146
145.
Those songs I know, which nor sons of men
nor queen in a king's court knows;
the first is Help which will bring thee help
in all woes and in sorrow and strife.
146.
A second I know, which the son of men
must sing, who would heal the sick.
- 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 145–146 (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
The speaker says he knows songs that neither the sons of men nor a queen in a king’s court know. The first is Help, which will bring help in all woes, sorrow and strife.
A second he knows, which a son of men must sing if he would heal the sick.
- 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 145–146 (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.
How the list is counted
The speaker counts the songs he knows: first (145), second (146), third (147) and so on to the seventeenth (161). Stanza 162 breaks into the list to speak to the Stray-Singer, and the eighteenth song is in stanza 163.
- 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 145–146 (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. With these stanzas the Ljóðatal, the list of charms, begins. Bellows says the songs themselves are not given, only what each is for, and that this section runs to the end of the poem in nearly complete form. In the manuscript the numbers of the songs are written as Roman numerals. Only the twelfth charm mentions runes directly, and Müllenhoff considered the last three songs late additions.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Read today, the passage opens a list of skills for protecting and helping people. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- What is your “Help”: what do you reach for first when someone is hurting?