The Weekly Hávamál
On this Wednesday (Woden's day (Odin)), I come to share with you the third stanza of the Hávamál. The Hávamál is said to be wisdom transmitted directly from Odin to his people. The composition of this work is thought to be a combination of 3-6 poems. Regardless of whether you believe this to be wisdom transmitted from the High One himself or wisdom from the wise men of the Norse and Germanic peoples, the poem within certainly has much valuable and timeless advice. Much can be learned from the wisdom of our ancestors.
Hávamál (Bray translation)
The Words of Odin The High One
- He hath need of fire, who now is come,
numbed with cold to the knee;
food and clothing the wanderer craves
who has fared o'er the rimy fell.
The third stanza just addresses basic hospitality. If your guest is likely to be cold, provide him with a fire for warmth. It simply describes the necessary act of hospitality of anticipating a guest's needs and providing for them when their needs can be reasonably anticipated and met. Rimy means "A coating, as of mud or slime, likened to a frosty film." Fell means "a high barren field or moor." Put together this stanza is establishing the unknown traveler as having tread across a hostile and frosty landscape. It also is the first stanza identifying the season as being winter (or possibly early spring). The weather in Nordic countries can get pretty damned cold. Iceland, for example, reached their coldest temperature recorded at −39.7 °C (−39 °F). That's quite a winter. That is an extreme example though as some Nordic countries can get as warm as 4 °C (39 °F). That's still not very warm, but it's a Nordic winter, what else would you expect?
I'll be doing one stanza a week with a short analysis on what is contained within. It's a good way to experience and learn an esoteric work that is relatively long and dense with wisdom.
Hail the old gods!
https://www.etymonline.com/word/Wednesday
https://www.thehavamalarchive.org/
Tagging interested persons:
@goliath
@Colonial
@artemis
@fujimoto
@ryuko
It's interesting to me that many ancient cultures revered hospitality so much. Do you think the ones that didn't just died off?
I think it's more about setting standards of conduct. The ones that don't adhere to it reveal themselves to be outsiders or brigands, the ones inside it start off with a baseline that offers mutual cooperation and a basic means of communication. It's a filtering mechanism with a bonus feature. That would lend more resilience within a culture which would help it survive. Most that didn't probably did die off or never survived to be large enough to be considered a culture.
this one is also pretty straightforward. cold traveler shows up, give him fire, food and clothes. basic logic written in that weird old way that makes the obvious sound deep. cool that you keep doing these weekly @OldNorseAnarchist. thanks for posting.
Yeah, it just establishes the setting a bit.
It's a good way for me to keep up with writing and learn more about the Hávamál, potentially even build a bit of an audience for my bigger posts. If I don't write anything else for the week, I'll at least have made progress here. I think it's also just nice for a platform like stasher to have consistent OC articles. That was the point of me making the turf Substash. I genuinely think with the monerowall it could be a competitor. So far I'm the only one using the turf though. We do need more users on here though for it to really take off. I might have to end up making a substack and post these over there on a delayed schedule to help build an audience on stasher and beyond.
You're welcome and thanks for reading.