Hávamál
Stopping an arrow, turning a curse
The fifth song stops an arrow in flight if he can glimpse it; the sixth turns a runic curse back onto the one who cast it.
Reference: stanzas 149–150 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 149–150
149.
A fifth I know: when I see, by foes shot,
speeding a shaft through the host,
flies it never so strongly I still can stay it,
if I get but a glimpse of its flight.
150.
A sixth I know: when some thane would harm me
in runes on a moist tree's root,
on his head alone shall light the ills
of the curse that he called upon mine.
- 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 149–150 (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 fifth song: when he sees a shaft shot by foes speeding through the host, however strongly it flies, he can still stay it if he gets but a glimpse of its flight.
The sixth song: if a thane would harm him with runes cut on a moist tree’s root, the ills of the curse that the man called on him will light on that man’s own head.
- 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 149–150 (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 explains the charm about a root cut with runes as reflecting a belief that sending such a root could kill: the Icelandic outlaw Grettir the Strong is said in his saga to have died this way. The Ljóðatal gives only the uses of the charms, not their words.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Today these are usually read as pictures of defence and of harm returning to its source. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- What harm aimed at you have you let land on your own head? What would stopping it have looked like?