Hávamál

verses 138-145 Rúnatal [present state: verse 139, 142]

*** 139. ***

ON Text and its word-for-word pseudo English translation

139.

Við hleifi mik sældu With a loaf me blessed

né við hornigi, nor with horn-none [not with a drinking horn]

nýsta ek niðr, pried I down [I pried (or enquired) down]

nam ek upp rúnar, took I up the runes,

æpandi nam, howling (I) took,

fell ek aftr þaðan. Fell I after thence. [thereafter I fell].

Bellows’ translation

140. None made me happy | with loaf or horn,

And there below I looked;

I took up the runes, | shrieking I took them,

And forthwith back I fell.

Commentaries 

The double negation in the second line is apparent only. The word né does not double the –gi of horni-gi (a negative suffix) since it applies to (blessed), meaning that Ódhinn was not blessed with a loaf of bread. The meaning of these two lines is: They did not bless me of a loaf of food, (and) not with a drinking horn.

Note also that people tend to translate by ‘to look’, ‘to scrutinize’ the verb nýsa’ which actually means ‘to pry’, ‘to ask’, ‘to enquire’. Thus, the poem does not say that Ódhinn only used is eyes to pry for the runes.

Evans’ Commentaries

139

If this strophe is taken to be in ljóðaháttr, the last line lacks alliteration, and BMO therefore emended þatan (so CR) to ofan. But the strophe is in fact clearly in fornyrðislag.

1 sældu - seldo in CR can stand for seldu ‘gave’ (which makes no sense), sældu ‘blessed’ or sœldu ‘refreshed’, either of which is defensible. It is needless to emend to heldu ‘maintained’ (Holthausen 156) or söddu ‘sated’ (Gering in SG).

*** 142. ***

ON Text and its word-for-word pseudo English translation

Rúnar munt þú finna The runes (rúnar) you will find

ok ráðna stafi, and counseling (ráðna) carved-staffs (stafi),

mjök stóra stafi, very great carved-staffs,

mjök stinna stafi, very unyielding carved-staffs,

er fáði fimbulþulr that painted, drawn Fimbulthulr (Powerful Wise-one),

ok gerðu ginnregin and made, ‘acted’ (them) the Ginnregin (Supreme-holy power),

ok reist Hroftr rögna. and carved, (them) Hroptr (the Crier = Ódhinn) of the Gods.

[… -staffs, that Fimbulthulr has painted, drawn, and that Ginnregin has done, made, ‘acted’ and that the Gods’ Hroptr has carved.]

Bellows’ translation

143.

Runes shalt thou find, | and fateful signs,
That the king of singers colored,
And the mighty gods have made;

Full strong the signs, | full mighty the signs
That the ruler of gods doth write.

[143. This and the following stanza belong together, and in many editions appear as a single stanza. They presumably come from some lost poem on the authorship of the runes. Lines 2 and 3 follow line 4 in the manuscript; the transposition was suggested by Bugge. The king of singers: Othin. The magic signs (runes) were commonly carved in wood, then colored red.]

Commentaries about the vocabulary

stafi. The primary meaning of stafr is ‘staff, rod’. Staffs were used as tools on which the runic signs were carved, thus the secondary meaning of ‘written letters’. Further extension of the meaning leads to ‘wisdom writing’ and ‘magical letters’. In the present verse, the word ‘staff’ brings no contradiction since the first two lines may mean: “You will find the runes and the (rune carved) counseling staffs. Hence my translation of stafi by carved-staffs.

stinna. The word stinnr means ‘stiff, unbinding, severe, heavy’. The meaning ‘heavy’ comes out as in “paying a heavy fee” et the word ‘severe’ as in “a severe wound.”

fáði. The verb fá may mean ‘to fetch’ but its past tense is then fékk. When its past tense is fáði, it means ‘to draw, to paint’. I kept both meanings in my translation.

fimbulþulr. Refer also to Evans’ long commentary. The word fimbul means ‘great, powerful’. A þulr is a (wise) saying and a wise person.

gerðu. The verb göra shows here a past tense that can be singular or plural. The final ‘u’ however hints at a plural. . It means: to ‘do, make, build, make ready, act, avail, arbitrate’.

ginnregin. The declension of this word speaks of a singular, and I kept this fact in a word for word translation. It is however usually considered as a plural (such is ‘people’) pointing at a group of persons. The prefix ginn- means ‘great, saint’. The word regin indicates together the Gods, the World, and the Universe. Its meaning is wider than the one of ‘God’, this is why I translated by power, meaning ‘powers’.

reist. The verb rísta means to ‘cut, slash, slice, carve, scratch’ and is also used for “carving runes on a wooden staff.”

hroptr or hroftr. Means ‘crier’ as there have been “street criers” to announce the news or sell wares. It also means ‘prophet’, mad, frantic. Shouting is now considered as being vulgar or even unbearable. This explains why some translators use the word ‘singer’. It is indeed a little insane to let oneself to public shouting. This is not a disturbance since the root of Ódhinn’s name, the word óðr, has two very different meanings. One is ‘spirit, good sense’ but the other is precisely ‘mad, frantic’. Other Germanic languages are less ambiguous and associate only the idea of madness to the equivalent word the root of which is ‘wod*’. In addition, we have already seen that, in famous stanza 139, Ódhinn speaks of himself and tells that he took the runes while being æpandi (shouting, howling). The name of rögna hroptr thus perfectly suits him.

Commentaries about the meaning

The first three lines describe the basic properties of the runes. They also show that the word stafr clearly can allude to magic. This meaning must be kept in view when understanding a text, unless the context rejects any allusion to the runes. Runes are carved signs which are also 1. good counselors, 2. great, powerful, 3. severe. This third feature most often is not taken into account and a frivolous or relaxed use of the runes is quite standard.

The last three lines explain where runes come from. Many people attribute the ‘invention’ of the runes to Ódhinn. We just saw that this verse says that he carved them because rögna hroptr is an obvious name for him. Now, in order to be creator of the runes he has to also be Fimbulthulr and Ginnregin. We know very little of these two divinities, thus anything can be said about them. Nevertheless, as long as the name Ginnregin seems to designate a group of entities, Gods and the Universe, they cannot be identified with Ódhinn. The Ginnregin are said here to have ‘done, made, built, made ready, acted, availed, arbitrated’ the runes, it seems they are the ones who conceived them. There is then no good reason to identify Fimbulthulr and Ódhinn. Fimbulthulr is the one who invented their shape and color. All this does not oppose the very justified repute of Ódhinn as being the most skillful rune master: he uses them.

Evans’ Commentaries

142

5-6 are almost identical with 80/4-5.

fáði ‘coloured’. References to ‘colouring’ runes also occur in 144 and 157, and this same verb appears in a number of Scandinavian runic inscriptions from the early period, e.g. the Einang stone (Norway, c. 400) has [ek Go]dagastir runo faihido ‘I, Godagast, coloured the runes’, the Rök stone (Sweden, c. 800) has uarin faþi, and similarly au aiR faþi on two early ninth-century inscriptions from Denmark. (But in some of the inscriptions the context suggests that fá may already have come to be used sometimes merely to mean ‘came’ or ‘cut’, as in later Icelandic, cp. Blöndal s.v. and Jansson 166.) Guðrúnarkviða II 22 speaks of hvers kyns stafir (evidently runes) as ristnir ok roðnir ‘carved and reddened’, and one of the stones at Överselö (Sweden) states Hér skal standa steinar þessir, rúnum roðnir, reisti Guðlaug (spelling normalised). The verb steina ‘to paint’ is also found in runic inscriptions in the same connection, e.g. from Gerstaberg (Sweden): Ásbjörn risti ok Úlfr steindi. Traces of colour still survive on some Swedish stones. For discussion and further instances see de Vries 5, s.v. fá 2, Jansson 162-8, and H. Arntz Handbuch der Runenkunde (Second Edition, Halle-Saale 1944) 285-6.

fimbulþulr ‘the mighty sage’. Only here and in 80 above. Doubtless a name for Óðinn, cp. Fimbultýr Vsp. 60.

ginnregin ‘mighty gods’, a compound found several times elsewhere. The element ginn- seems to have intensive force: it occurs also in the expression ginnheilög goð in Lokasenna II and Vsp. 6 etc., and is probably to be identified with the first element in the early seventh-century runic Danish ginoronoR, ginArúnaR on the Stentoften and Bjorketorp Stones respectively; see DR 653-4 and Moltke 147, n. 28 for references. The intensifying pref. gjøn- in modern Norwegian dialect perhaps derives frorn ginn-.

7 Hroptr (or Hróptr?) is widely evidenced as a name for Óðinn. The etymology is obscure and disputed, nor is the problem made any simpler by the occurrence of Hroptatýr (as in 160) as another Óðinn-name. Its governing of the gen. rögna has sornetimes been thought to present a puzzle, which some editors have sought to resolve by printing hroptr as a common noun (though the meaning of such a noun is purely speculative). Most probably the phrase simply means ‘Hroptr arnong the gods’, cp. Yggjungr ása Vsp. 28 and, in OE, Bēowulf Scyldinga (so Bugge 1, 395 and 2, 253, cp. NN §805B). For a (somewhat divergent) discussion of the phrase see also Vogt. The expression rúnar … reist … Hroptr occurs also in Sigrdr. 13.