Hávamál

[2] Following the gnomic "Hávamál proper" comes the Rúnatal, an account of how Odin won the runes, and the Ljóðatal, a list of magic chants or spells.

[note 2] The part dealing with ethical conduct (the Gestaþáttr) was traditionally identified as the oldest portion of the poem by scholarship in the 19th and early 20th century.

Bellows (1936) identifies as the core of the poem a "collection of proverbs and wise counsels" which dates to "a very early time", but which, by the nature of oral tradition, never had a fixed form or extent.

A discussion of authorship or date for the individual parts would be futile, since almost every line or stanza could have been added, altered or removed at will at any time before the poem was written down in the 13th century.

"[note 3] All the entrances, before you walk forward, you should look at, you should spy out; for you can't know for certain where enemies are sitting, ahead in the hall[3] Number 77 is possibly the most known section of Gestaþáttr: "Deyr fę, deyia frǫndr, deyr sialfr it sama; ec veit einn at aldri deýr: domr vm dꜹþan hvern."

"Vęit ec at ec hecc vindga meiði a nętr allar nío, geiri vndaþr oc gefinn Oðni, sialfr sialfom mer, a þeim meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn.

The parallelism of Odin and Christ during the period of open co-existence of Christianity and Norse paganism in Scandinavia (the 9th to 12th centuries, corresponding with the assumed horizon of the poem's composition) also appears in other sources.

[11] The last section, the Ljóðatal enumerates eighteen songs (ljóð), sometimes called "charms", prefaced with (stanza 147): "Lioþ ec þꜹ kann, er kannat þioðans kóna oc mannzcis mꜹgr" The songs I know that king's wives know not Nor men that are sons of men.

Müllenhoff takes the original Ljóðatal to have ended with stanza 161, with the final three songs (16th to 18th) taken as late and obscure additions.

Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, leader of the Icelandic Ásatrúarfélagið, published his performance of a number of Eddaic poems, including the Hávamál, chanted in rímur style.

[13][better source needed] The opera Gunlöd by Peter Cornelius takes its plot from the Hávamál; detailing Odin's theft of the mead of poetry.

[14] The German viking-pagan metal band Falkenbach formed in 1989 and recorded their first demo, titled Hávamál, and incorporate lines from the poem into lyrics.