Hávamál
Night-time, and a place outside
The first of the counsels to the Stray-Singer: do not get up in the night unless you are keeping watch or looking for a place outside.
Reference: stanza 111 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanza 111
111.
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:
rise never at nighttime, except thou art spying
or seekest a spot without.
- 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), stanza 111 (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 first counsel opens with a refrain: accept my counsels, they will be your boon if you obey them and work your weal if you win them. Then the advice: never rise at nighttime, unless you are spying or looking for a place outside.
- 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), stanza 111 (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 refrain
From stanza 111 to stanza 136, most stanzas open with the same three-line refrain: “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.” The stanzas without it (113, 117, 122, 123, 132 and 135) follow on from the advice just before them.
- 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), stanza 111 (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 counsels to Loddfáfnir begin in earnest. Bellows (his stanza 112) says the first lines work as a formula Odin repeats to introduce each piece of advice, and that Loddfáfnir is the one quoting him. He notes the advice often echoes the first 80 stanzas of the poem.
He also observes that several of the later counsels have four lines after the formula rather than two. The poem survives in the Codex Regius, c. 1270.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Read today, the stanza is plain caution about wandering at night; it gives no reason of its own. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- What counsel have you been given that you ignored? What did it cost?