Step 7 of 12 · Spells, Songs and Runes
Stopping an arrow, turning a curse
Why this step
Stanzas 149 and 150 are the fifth and sixth songs. The speaker says he can stay an arrow in flight if he gets a glimpse of it, and that when someone tries to harm him with runes cut on a moist tree’s root, the curse lands on that man’s own head. So the poem imagines runes used to harm as well as to help. The entry says these are usually read today as pictures of defence and of harm returning to its source.
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.
From the Lorebook
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.