Odin and the Hávamál: the myth of the discovery of the runes

For the Icelandic poets of the Middle Ages the runes were not a human invention. According to myth, the god Odin won them through an extreme sacrifice, offering himself to himself. The story is found in the Hávamál, the Sayings of the High One, one of the poems of the Poetic Edda, and it is one of the most famous and most debated passages in all of Old Norse literature.

The Sayings of the High One

The Hávamál is preserved in the Codex Regius, an Icelandic manuscript written around 1270 and now kept in Reykjavík, at the Árni Magnússon Institute. The poem is in fact a collection of different sections, placed in the mouth of Odin, the High One. The longest part contains advice of practical wisdom: how to behave as a guest, the value of friendship, caution in drinking. Then come tales of the god's amorous adventures and finally the section on the runes, which scholars call the Rúnatal.

The dating of the individual poems is uncertain. Some parts may be much older than the manuscript, others composed or reworked in Christian times. The text, in short, is a precious but layered witness, to be read with caution when used to reconstruct the beliefs of the Viking Age. Many scholars nonetheless regard it as one of the sources closest to the pagan world.

Nine nights on the tree

The passage begins with famous words: “Veit ek at ek hekk vindga meiði á”, I know that I hung on the wind-swept tree. Odin tells how he hung there for nine full nights, wounded by a spear, given in sacrifice to Odin, that is, to himself, on a tree of which no one knows from what roots it springs. They gave him neither bread nor drinking horn; he looked down, took up the runes screaming, and fell back.

The tree is commonly identified with Yggdrasill, the cosmic ash that holds up the nine worlds; the name itself is often explained as “Yggr's horse”, where Yggr, the Terrible One, is one of Odin's bynames and the horse would be the gallows. The number nine recurs often in Norse mythology, and the spear is the god's weapon. Scholars have compared the scene with rites of sacrifice by hanging recorded in medieval sources, such as Adam of Bremen's account of the temple at Uppsala, and also with the Christian crucifixion, without reaching an agreed conclusion.

Runes from the gods

After the sacrifice, Odin receives wisdom and words. The poem continues with a series of stanzas listing songs or charms that the god claims to master, without, however, recording their content: a song to help, one against pains, one to quench fire. Other eddic poems, such as the Sigrdrífumál, in turn speak of various kinds of runes, from victory runes to ale runes.

The idea of a divine origin of writing is already present in a much earlier age. The Noleby stone in Sweden, of the sixth or seventh century, declares that it carves a rune “raginakundo”, come from the gods. In the Hávamál itself the expression “rúnum inum reginkunnum”, the runes of divine origin, returns almost identically. A formula that survived for centuries.

The myth of Odin hanging on the tree does not explain the real history of the runes, which arose from contact with other alphabets. It tells instead how the Norse thought of knowledge: something not received for free, but bought with suffering and solitude. That is why the god of the runes is also the god of poetry, of the dead and of wisdom, and his sacrifice remains one of the most powerful images of European mythology.