Step 1 of 8 · Sacrifice and What It Buys
Odin on the windy tree
Why this step
In stanzas 137 and 138 Odin says he hung on a windy tree for nine whole days and nights, stabbed with a spear, given to himself, with no food or drink. Then, crying aloud, he lifted the runes and fell back. The entry says that on this site the story is often read as a picture of learning that costs something, and that this is a modern reading, not something the poem says.
The text, stanzas 137–138
137.
I trow I hung on that windy Tree
nine whole days and nights,
stabbed with a spear, offered to Odin,
myself to mine own self given,
high on that Tree of which none hath heard
from what roots it rises to heaven.
138.
None refreshed me ever with food or drink,
I peered right down in the deep;
crying aloud I lifted the Runes
then back I fell from thence.
- 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 137–138 (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.
From the Lorebook
Odin hangs for nine nights on a windswept tree, wounded by a spear and given to himself, and takes up the runes.