Hávamál
On the runes, silence is best
Whatever is asked of the runes that came from the gods will prove true, and then silence is surely best.
Reference: stanza 79 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems); Notes to the Hovamol (The Poetic Edda)
The text, stanza 79
79.
All will prove true that thou askest of runes --
those that are come from the gods,
which the high Powers wrought, and which Odin painted:
then silence is surely best.
- 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 79 (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
Whatever you ask about the runes will prove true: the runes that came from the gods, which the high Powers made and Odin painted. Then, the speaker says, silence is surely best.
The stanza does not say who is asking, or what is being asked.
- 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 79 (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 runes return later
The runes come back in “Odin’s Quest after the Runes” (stanzas 137 to 144), where the speaker hangs on a windy tree and lifts the runes (see the passage “Odin on the windy tree”), and in “The Song of Spells” (stanzas 145 to 164).
- 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 79 (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
Bellows calls this stanza “certainly in bad shape, and probably out of place”. It is irregular in form, as if something had been lost or added, though the Codex Regius shows no gap. Because it speaks of runes as magic signs, he thinks it belongs with the collection of charms later in the poem, the Ljóðatal, rather than among these counsels. The editor Gering filled the assumed gap with a conjectural line.
In the manuscript it also sits in a different place: Bellows gives the order 77, 78, 76, 80, 79, 81, so his stanza 79 follows the one on the fool’s pride.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936), Notes to the Hovamol
Modern interpretation
Some modern readers take this as a reminder that some knowledge is kept, not shown. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- What do you know that you have learned to keep to yourself? When is silence the better answer?