The Havamal: A Heathen Path of Living (What is the Havamal?)

The Havamal is truly a long collection of poems that is roughly broken into four different sections. The first section, called “The Guest’s Section”, is a long list of directives and bits of wisdom with which one should live his or her life. This section of the Havamal reminds me of the Book of Proverbs in the Bible or the Analects of Confucius in that the wisdom seems to have been written down as the author thought of them. One stanza does not always have anything to do with the stanzas surrounding it. The guidance in this section of the Havamal appears to be literal rather than metaphysical, meaning that the information in the first section was written for the common man and not a select, initiated priesthood or noble leaders, though they could find much to learn from in this section. Other sections of the Havamal have a more mystical bent.

The second section of the Havamal is an unflattering description of the character of women in general and then tells the stories of Odin’s ill-fated attempts to seduce a maiden, and the successful seduction of Gunnlod, in order to steal the mead of poetry.   This section seems to discuss relationships between men and women and the proper conduct of a man.  However, it is likely that there are deeper lessons as well.

The third section of the Havamal is a series of directives towards a character named Loddfafnir. Much of the information imparted in this section is similar in themes of the Guest’s Section.

The last section of the Havamal is the depiction of the story of how Odin gained the knowledge of the runes, the sacred alphabet in the Norse culture often used in divination, and their meanings. This is by far the most metaphysical section of the Havamal.

This blog will go through the various sections in order of the stanzas as they are read rather than jump for section to section or picking out a few stanzas while ignoring others.  Each stanza has something to teach even if the lesson isn't obvious to us.