Yggdrasil · Giants and Dwarves
Dvalinn and the Runes
Hávamál names Dvalinn as the one who carved runes for the dwarfs, as Odin did for the gods.
In Thorpe’s translation
145. Odin among the Æsir, but among the Alfar, Dain, and Dvalin for the dwarfs, Asvid for the Jotuns: some I myself graved.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Hávamál, stanza 145 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ) Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
What the sources say
In Hávamál, as Thorpe renders it, the speaker says that very potent runes were depicted by the great speaker, formed by the high powers and graved by the powers’ prince, and then names who worked with them. Odin did so among the Æsir, Dain among the elves, Dvalin for the dwarfs and Asvid for the giants. The speaker adds that some of them he graved himself.
The stanza makes Dvalin a figure tied to the dwarfs and to runes. It does not say where he lived, and it does not say how he learned or carved them.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Hávamál, stanzas 144–145 (Thorpe’s numbering; other editions differ) Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).
Names and background
Dvalin is also the name of a dwarf in the catalogue of Völuspá, where the dwarfs of “Dvalin’s band” are reckoned in Thorpe’s stanza 14. Whether the dwarf in the catalogue and the rune-carver in Hávamál are the same figure is not stated in either text.
Other editions of Hávamál print the last line differently; the allocation of the last name in the list is difficult. The numbering also differs by edition. The dwarf entries, including the creation of the dwarfs, give the wider setting.
- Benjamin Thorpe (translator), The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson (the Poetic Edda) (opens in a new tab) (19th c.; Norroena ed. 1906), Hávamál, stanzas 144–145 Rights: Public domain. Nineteenth-century translation, in the public domain. Text as published online by Project Gutenberg (ebook #14726).