Hávamál
In the reeds, and Billing’s daughter
The speaker waits in the reeds for his love, and says she was all he wanted. He finds Billing’s daughter asleep, fairer than sunlight, and lordship seems worth nothing beside her.
Reference: stanzas 94–95 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 94–95
94.
This once I felt when I sat without
in the reeds, and looked for my love;
body and soul of me was that sweet maiden
yet never I won her as wife.
95.
Billing's daughter I found on her bed,
fairer than sunlight sleeping,
and the sweets of lordship seemed to me nought,
save I lived with that lovely form.
- 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 94–95 (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 remembers sitting outside in the reeds, looking for his love. That sweet maiden was body and soul to him, yet he never won her as a wife.
He found Billing’s daughter on her bed, fairer than sunlight, sleeping. The sweets of lordship seemed nothing to him unless he could live with that lovely form.
- 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 94–95 (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.
Who is speaking
Odin is not named in these two stanzas. The next passage, stanza 96, is where the speaker is addressed as Odin. The text gives Billing’s daughter no name of her own, and nothing more about who Billing is.
- 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 94–95 (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
Here the story of Billing’s daughter begins, in stanzas Bellows numbers 96 to 102. He remarks that nothing is known of her outside this account. The whole poem survives in the Codex Regius, c. 1270, and Wikipedia’s summary calls the stretch from 81 to 102 an ad hoc interpolation into the poem.
Bellows suggests the tale was drawn in by the preceding passage on women’s faithlessness, which it serves as an example. He describes the section as showing the poem’s piecemeal, disorderly growth rather than a single planned composition, and cautions that labelling parts “interpolations” is of limited use when the whole poem grew by joining unrelated fragments.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Read today, this is a story of longing so strong that nothing else seems worth having. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Think of something you wanted so much that nothing else seemed worth anything. Looking back, what did it cost?