Yggdrasil · The World Tree and Its Places
Odin’s Hanging
Odin hangs nine nights on a windswept tree and takes up the runes.
What the sources say
In the Hávamál, Odin tells of hanging for nine nights on a windswept tree, wounded by a spear. The poem does not name the tree, but scholars almost universally accept that it is meant to be Yggdrasill.
- Hávamál (kept in a 13th-century manuscript (Codex), stanzas 138-139 (Bellows numbering)
- Wikipedia contributors, Yggdrasil (opens in a new tab)
Names and background
The only surviving full text of Hávamál is in the 13th-century Codex Regius, and the poem is a compilation of originally separate pieces, so no single date applies; estimates run from about 900 to 1000. The tree is never named in the poem. Commentators often identify the windy tree with Yggdrasil, and the name Yggdrasil, tied to a byname of Odin, supports the link. The scene has often been compared with the crucifixion: a god hanging on a tree, wounded by a spear. Scholars such as Sophus Bugge have debated whether the likeness is chance or whether pagan imagery influenced Christianity. Stanza numbers differ by edition (Bellows has 165 stanzas, others 164).
- Wikipedia contributors, Hávamál (no own article found: Odin's self-sacrifice returned 404) (opens in a new tab)
Evidence beyond the Eddas
The younger Jelling stone, raised by Harald Bluetooth about 970, shows Christ's crucifixion with the figure hanging in the branches of a tree rather than on a cross; Wikipedia’s article offers it as a visual parallel. A nineteenth-century Shetland verse from Unst, recorded by Bugge in 1889, tells of a nine-day hanging and a spear wound, suggesting the motif lived on in folk memory.
- Wikipedia contributors, Hávamál (no own article found: Odin's self-sacrifice returned 404) (opens in a new tab)
Related
- Odin on the windy tree The same story, told from the poem’s side and from the tree’s side
- Yggdrasill, the World Tree