Hávamál
The gate and the bar
Do not growl at guests or drive them from the gate, but be gentle to the poor. The bar on the door is heavy to move for everyone to enter; spend your wealth, or people will wish you ill.
Reference: stanzas 134–135 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 134–135
134.
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:
growl not at guests, nor drive them from the gate
but show thyself gentle to the poor.
135.
Mighty is the bar to be moved away
for the entering in of all.
Shower thy wealth, or men shall wish thee
every ill in thy limbs.
- 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 134–135 (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
Do not growl at guests or drive them away from the gate, but show yourself gentle to the poor.
The bar that must be moved for everyone to come in is mighty. Shower your wealth, or people will wish every ill on your limbs.
- 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 134–135 (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.
Where it comes back
The speaker’s picture of welcoming a guest at the start of the poem (stanzas 2 to 4) and the warning against mocking one (stanzas 30 and 131 to 132) are the same concern as here.
- 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 134–135 (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 reads the pair as a warning against too much hospitality: a beam that is lifted again and again to let guests in grows weak, so the door needs a ring-fitting to keep it shut. He thinks the last four lines of the preceding stanza are a later addition. The passage sits in the Loddfáfnismál, one of five separate pieces Bellows sees joined to make the poem.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Read today, the passage is about the cost of keeping a door open and the cost of keeping it shut. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Who have you turned away at your gate lately? What would opening it have cost?