Spells, Songs and Runes

What does the Hávamál say words and runes can do, and how should a reader today take it? This trail follows the poem’s own claims about runes and songs through twelve entries from four collections: eight passages from the Hávamál, two runes, one tarot card and one place from the world of Yggdrasil.

The powers in these stanzas are what the poem’s speaker says he knows: healing, stopping an arrow, making the dead speak. The entries present them as claims made in a poem, and so does this trail; none of them is offered here as something that works. The rune and card entries are this site’s own readings. Hávamál stanzas are from Olive Bray’s 1908 translation. The Eddic place comes from the Poetic Edda and Snorri as given on its page. The connections are editorial choices made for this site, not a claim that the old sources formed one system.