The Poetic Edda: Hovamol · 9 of 16 · tr. Henry Adams Bellows
Section 1i
50 Foul scorn was my meed | from the crafty maid, And nought from the woman I won.
* * * 103.
Though glad at home, | and merry with guests, A man shall be wary and wise; The sage and shrewd, | wide wisdom seeking, Must see that his speech be fair; A fool is he named | who nought can say, For such is the way of the witless.
104.
I found the old giant, | now back have I fared, Small gain from silence I got; Full many a word, | my will to get, I spoke in Suttung's hall.
105.
The mouth of Rati | made room for my passage, And space in the stone he gnawed; [103.
With this stanza the subject changes abruptly, and apparently the virtues of fair speech, mentioned in the last three lines, account for the introduction, from what source cannot be known, of the story of Othin and the mead of song (stanzas 104-110).
104.
The giant Suttung ("the old giant") possessed the magic mead, a draught of which conferred the gift of poetry.
Othin, desiring to obtain it, changed himself into a snake, bored his way through a mountain into Suttung's home, made love to the giant's daughter, Gunnloth, and by her connivance drank up all the mead.
Then he flew away in the form of an eagle, leaving Gunnloth to her fate.
While with Suttung he assumed the name of Bolverk ("the Evil-Doer").
105.
Rati ("the Traveller"): the gimlet with which Othin bored through the mountain to reach Suttung's home.] p.
51 Above and below | the giants' paths lay, So rashly I risked my head.
106.
Gunnloth gave | on a golden stool A drink of the marvelous mead; A harsh reward | did I let her have For her heroic heart, And her spirit troubled sore.
107.
The well-earned beauty | well I enjoyed, Little the wise man lacks; So Othrörir now | has up been brought To the midst of the men of earth.
108.
Hardly, methinks, | would I home have come, And left the giants' land, Had not Gunnloth helped me, | the maiden good, Whose arms about me had been.
109.
The day that followed, | the frost-giants came, Some word of Hor to win, (And into the hall of Hor;) [106.
Probably either the fourth or the fifth line is a spurious addition.
107.
Othrörir : here the name of the magic mead itself, whereas in stanza 141 it is the name of the vessel containing it.
Othin had no intention of bestowing any of the precious mead upon men, but as he was flying over the earth, hotly pursued by Suttung, he spilled some of it out of his mouth, and in this way mankind also won the gift of poetry.
108.
Hor : Othin ("the High One").
The frost-giants, Suttung's kinsmen, appear not to have suspected Othin of being [fp.
52] identical with Bolverk, possibly because the oath referred to in stanza I to was an oath made by Othin to Suttung that there was no such person as Bolverk among the gods.
The giants, of course, fail to get from Othin the information they seek concerning Bolverk, but Othin is keenly conscious of having violated the most sacred of oaths, that sworn on his ring.] p.
52 Of Bolverk they asked, | were he back midst the gods, Or had Suttung slain him there?
110.
Themes
◆Animismcosmology
The doctrine and worldview that natural phenomena, places, and objects possess inherent spirit, soul, or personality — and that the cosmos is populated by countless local, plural, embodied divine agents: kami in mountain and tree, sidhe in cairn and well, landwights in field and stone, nymphs in spring and grove, haltija in forest and lake, lares and penates in household and threshold, Iamblichean daemons in element and place. Distinct from monotheism (single transcendent God), pantheism (one underlying substance), and emanation_hierarchy (cascading single source); animism's signature is the plurality, locality, and embodied-in-landscape character of the divine.
The text features giants and spirits inhabiting the landscape (mountains, paths), consistent with a worldview populated by embodied divine agents.
Transgressive knowing acquired against divine prohibition — the Watchers' teaching of metallurgy, sorcery, and cosmetics in 1 Enoch, the Gnostic Eve narratives, the Promethean mytheme; explicitly contrasted with gnosis_direct_knowledge, which is salvific.
The narrative depicts Odin acquiring the mead of poetry through deception and oath-breaking, aligning with transgressive acquisition of wisdom.
Form-mutability as a constitutional property of divine and preternatural beings — gods, heroes, spirits, and their human practitioners possessing inherent capacity to alter form across human, animal, plant, or elemental states. Loki and Odin's transformations in Norse, Math's pigs and Blodeuwedd's owl-shape and Pwyll's exchange with Arawn in the Mabinogion, the Greek Proteus, the Indian dasavatara, Vainamoinen's bird-flight in the Kalevala, Ovid's metamorphoses, the shamanic and witch's capacity for ritual form-change. Distinct from anthropomorphism (divine taking specific human form, single embodiment) in that anthropomorphism establishes a stable form whereas this concept establishes form's plurality and instability.
Odin explicitly transforms into a snake to bore through the mountain and an eagle to escape, fitting the definition's specific mention of Norse transformations.
The doctrine and practice that spoken or sung word carries causal-magical force — that uttering names, formulas, songs, or incantations alters reality directly rather than merely communicating about it. Vainamoinen's runo-songs that move mountains and command iron, Norse galdr, Vedic mantra, Shinto kotodama, the magician's barbarous names in the Greek Magical Papyri, Iamblichean arcane signatures and inexplicable symbols, biblical creation-by-word. Distinct from sacred_names (the ontological power of names themselves) and prayer (address to the divine); word_power_incantation is the magical-causal efficacy of the spoken word as such.
The mead confers the gift of poetry, and stanza 103 emphasizes the power and necessity of fair speech, reflecting the magical efficacy of words.
A vertical structure connecting cosmic levels — a tree, pillar, mountain, or ladder linking heaven, earth, and underworld around which the cosmos is organised. Yggdrasil binding the Nine Worlds in Norse cosmology, the Kalevala's Sampo as world-pillar, the Mayan ceiba, the Vedic Aśvattha, the shamanic central tree of Eliade's analyses. Cosmic-structural in character: distinct from sefirot_tree (a kabbalistic emanation diagram) and emanation_hierarchy (an ontological cascade); world_tree_axis is the cosmos's spine rather than the divine's outflow.
References to paths 'above and below' and boring through a mountain imply a vertical cosmic structure connecting different realms.