Havamal Snippets 146: If disputing or in sorrow, then sing for help

It goes somewhat against the cliched stereotype of the fieresome Viking doesn't it?  That a Viking who is in dire straits actually sings for help.  That he doesn't revert to picking up his spear to resolve his issues by aggressively destroying them, but instead he sings an emotionally charged song requesting help from another.  A song from the heart.

It demonstrates to us that a man can be both confident and aggressive, and emotionally humble at the same time.  The two aren't mutually exclusive.  They are tools, options.  There to be used when the situation calls for it.


146
Ljóð ek þau kann
er kannat þjóðans kona
ok mannskis mögr
hjálp heitir eitt
en þat þér hjálpa mun
við sökum ok sorgum
ok sútum görvöllum

I know the songs
that no ruler's wife knows,
nor anyone's son:
the first is called "Help",
and it will help you
with disputes and griefs
and absolutely all sorrows.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 145: It is better that it be not invoked than over-sacrificed

If you make demands on anything, be it Gods or people or animals or things, then that thing requires something back in return.  It's one of the traditions of the universe.  If the thing is a a God, then an offering must be given in return.  If a person, then a favour.  If an animal then care and attention.  If an inanimate object then maintenance.  Even something as mundane as a field (where crops are grown and harvested) must have something given back to it (fertiliser), otherwise the relationship will turn sour (i.e. the crops won't grow because the field is depleted of it's nutrients that the crops took from it).  This correlates to the view of the world as a one that requires balance: favours for favours, an eye for an eye, and so on.  It's a dualistic view, and duality runs strong in polytheistic belief systems (cf. Ragnarok, Norse end-times, an event where most of the Gods will have a dualistic opposite whom they will fight to the death.  The fight will result in the death of both entities, e.g. Thor and Jormungandr).  Though it's important to note that Duality is but one view of the universe.

It's something to be aware of in everyday life:  Aware of the demands that you make of things, be they Gods or anything else, and the payments that you must give in return.


145
Betra er óbeðit
en sé ofblótit
ey sér til gildis gjöf
betra er ósent
en sé ofsóit
svá Þundr um reist
fyr þjóða rök
þar hann upp um reis
er hann aptr of kom           
 
It is better that it be not invoked
than over-sacrificed,
the gift is always for the repayment,
it is better that it be not sent
than over-immolated.
So Thundr carved
before the history of the peoples,
when he rose up
and when he came back.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 144: Knowing the Runes

This is another verse that deals with the Runes that Odin garnered after hanging himself on the World Tree (Yggdrassil) for nine windy nights.

The verse asks the reader is he 'knows' how to interact with the runes.  (Knowing is of course different to merely having information, it means having a deeper connection with something, on emotional, and abstract terms).

The lines themselves are arranged in pairs, opposites that exist within a given context.  We'll use the first two lines as an example. These two lines deal with writing (cutting/scribing) the runes, and the reading the runes.  One part (writing) is balanced out by it's opposite (reading).  The first part is male, or masculine, and tends towards the more masculine traits (being active, doing physical things), while the second part tends towards the more feminine traits (being passive, doing mental things).   The male comes first, and the female comes second, just like explorers into any new territory.  Christopher Colombus and his sailors went first, then the wives moved in afterwards.  This male/female dichotomy is demonstrated in the first two lines as follows:
* The 1st line is writing - active (moving the hands), creative (making something out of nothing), physical (cutting into wood).
* The 2nd line is reading - passive (sitting down), analytical (analysing something that exists), mental (thinking about the meaning of the cuts).

The rest of the lines are also pairs of opposites that deal with other aspects of the Runes.

144

Veiztu hvé rísta skal?
Veiztu hvé ráða skal?
Veiztu hvé fá skal?
Veiztu hvé freista skal?
Veiztu hvé biðja skal?
Veiztu hvé blóta skal?
Veiztu hvé senda skal?
Veiztu hvé sóa skal?

Do you know how you must cut [them]?
Do you know how you must interpret?
Do you know how you must colour?
Do you know how you must try?
Do you know how you must invoke?
Do you know how you must sacrifice?
Do you know how you must send?
Do you know how you must kill?

[End.]

Havamal Snippets 143: Odin's opinion on Gods, Elves, Dwarves and Giants

This verse seems to be just a list of four of the different races of the Norse Mythology and their ruler.  I'm not sure what to make of it so I'll post the thoughts of the man who runs THIS website again.  (I don't like constantly deferring to others, but as needs must):

You remember that the adjective óðr means ‘furious’ and that the substantive óðr means ‘intelligence’. In our civilization, we tend to confuse ‘furious’ and ‘angry’. The feelings are certainly similar but anger blinds you while fury enlightens you; for example it will help you to see a truth that someone tries to hide. Poetry and runes are practiced with creative fury, if not they remain style exercises. We can thus carve the runes in an inspired fury, a mystical fury, and even a desperate fury. We then involve our body, our heart and our spirit into the task to be achieved. The other uses of the runes, the games inspired by the runes are at best ineffective.

The word dáinn means either ‘impotent’ or ‘filled with wonder, ecstatic’. By giving this name to the first elf carver of runes, Ódhinn shows that he somewhat despises elf magic. For a god of action as Ódhinn, an impotent person (we speak here only of the incapacity to act) is a lower being since he/she is lítt megandi as explained in the comment of stanza 141. The added meaning of being ecstatic as well shows that Ódhinn has little respect for ecstatic people because they are unable to act, and they vaticinate without taking their problems in hand.

The word dvalinn means 'who waddles' or 'who is unable to decide when to act'. Dwarf magic does not interest Ódhinn much more than the one of the elves.

As opposed to this contempt, the name of the giant magician is more intriguing. The word ásviðr (ás-viðr which is read áss-viðr) means “one of the Æsir-tree.” Ódhinn thus exposes his respect for giants’ magic, which carries no surprise, as stanza 140 taught us. This stanza, even in its most prosaic and rational version possible, explicitly states that Ódhinn inherited nine magic songs coming from his maternal uncle. If we recall stanza 138, we understand that this ásviðr strongly evokes Yggdrasill which is “the tree of the gods Æsir,” to which Ódhinn has been hung. Moreover, as an initiator of giants’ runic magic, Ásviðr name qualifies to be his uncle’s one.

In an even more significant way, it shows that runic magic is related to a worship of the tree of world, something left implicit in 138.

Source: http://www.nordic-life.org/nmh/NewHavamalEng138-145.htm

143
Óðinn með ásum
en fyr álfum Dáinn
ok Dvalinn dvergum fyrir
Ásviðr jötnum fyrir
ek reist sjálfr sumar            
 
Othinn among the gods,
Dainn for the elves
and Dvalinn for the dwarves,
Asvithr for the giants
-- I myself carved some.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 142: The runes

Alas, this is another stanza that I can't get my head fully around, so I'll leave the explantion of it to the man who runs THIS website:

This stanza requires three types of explanations: 1.A commentary of some nontraditional qualifiers of the runes, 2. Which features characterize the runes since their creation?   3. An analysis of the role of the three rune creators.

1. How to qualify the runes.

First of all, the second line says that the runes are ráðna, i.e. ‘interpreted, understood’ what is no more the case nowadays. This implies that the properties of the runes in the following lines and stanzas relate to correctly interpreted and understood runes. When we note the mass of the works where a version of the meaning of each rune is stated (and not discussed, explained… interpreted), we see that this first Ódhinn’s remark, though implicit, is hardly respected.

The third line says that they are stóra, an adjective which carries the meaning of power associated to some ruthlessness. It never should be forgotten that the runes quickly become ruthless. They do not yield to the criteria of compassion and ‘pure’ love that our civilization romanticizes.

The fourth line says they are stinna i.e. strong and rigid. The notions of power and strength of the runes crossed the centuries as archetypes while the brutal and stiff runes were slowly forgotten. The last ones were revived by the Nazis who, on the contrary, forgot their power and their strength, which can act with softness. It should be forgotten, no more than their brutality and stiffness. By their ‘stiffness’, I understand that Ódhinn says that they have a clear meaning and that we should not try to ‘twist’ it to our whims. Our understanding must yield and adapt in front of the stiff strength carried by the runes.

2. On the creation of the runes

The runes were painted/got, made/set up and scratched/hacked.

- the last couple of qualifiers is easy to understand. The “Hroptr of the powers” etches them on wood and needs more strength to put them on metal or stone.

- the couple made/set up clearly states that they were designed/shaped by the ginnregin i.e. ‘the supreme powers’. These supreme powers might be Nature, as seen by dedicated atheists, or their God for the fundamentalists, or the big-bang, for the mystics of astrophysics. In all cases, the majesty of the design of the runes remains practically the same. As the place where the roots of Yggdrasill take their support (stanza 138), the runes belong to the unfathomable mechanisms of the creation of the universe and we cannot say much of their origin… can any shaman visit their birthplace? I doubt it.

- Lastly, how this “wise storyteller” could paint/get them? We have to paint them, color the runes, possibly with the red of our blood, with the aim to ‘activate’ them, as we would say now. We thus ‘get’ living runes that are ready to be used.

3. On the creators of the runes

First of all, the commentators tend to see the same character hidden behind these three names, i.e. Ódhinn. This means that Ódhinn, who is already overloaded with nicknames describing his many functions, should also carry being a fimbulþulr and the ginnregin (a plural noun). As for the ginnregin, anyway, this is opposed to our mythology that describes Ódhinn like born after the formation of the universe, as he says himself in stanza 140. It thus appears much more reasonable to me to acknowledge that the creators of the runes are three different divine entities.

- the fimbulþulr, that is the immense-wise storyteller, is the one who perpetuates the traditions, who transmits knowledge. He collected the knowledge of how activating the runes, and he seems to have received it at the origin of the runes.

- the ginnregin must be the forces that built the runes. They conceived the structure of Futhark, that is the fact that the 24 runes are structured into three ættir (families) and provided in a given ordering. The ginnregin look like the architects who conceived the structure of the ‘house’ they built.

- Hroptr of the powers seems to be indeed Ódhinn owing to the fact that the name Hroptr is often allotted to him. However … as a power reigning over the rögn? Moreover why Ódhinn would need to collect the runes at the Yggdrasill’s foot if he were one of their three creators? Ódhinn is called Hroptatýr, which qualifies it well as an Æsir’s leader but not as one of ‘the powers’. Once again, as in the case of the final destiny of Burr and Bestla, without inventing a romantic story, I must call upon the concept of a “lost myth” in order to understand how Ódhinn can be called a ‘herald of the unsaid truths’ according to the translation I propose for Hroptr (or, rather Hróptr). We know practically nothing of the Ódhinn who left Frigg and whose place has been temporarily taken, at Frigg’s side, by Vili and Vé. Ódhinn’s character, such as we know it by later texts, suggests an intelligent god who does not sputter his words. His blood brother, Loki [again, an unknown myth: the one in which took place the ceremony which hallowed their fraternity] plays exactly the same role of a hidden truth discloser (not the one of crier). This role, now degraded in the one of the ragna (king’s) fool, might have been played by Ódhinn with dignity. I thus feel it quite possible that the conjunction of Loki’s crafty and fragile intelligence and Ódhinn’s sincere and powerful one might have led them to tell to the gods unpleasant truths. As an example, think of them explain to the other gods the Norns’ power as a limit to their freedom. Here is the scheme of a possible explanation the meaning I give to this ‘slanderer’ (a meaning carried by the verb hrópa) who dares to put the gods in front of their weaknesses.

As a conclusion, we can as notice that the above three characters cannot integrate Dumézil’s trilogy of the sovereign gods. That drives us to think that the present trilogy corresponds to beliefs older than the Indo-European civilization. The runes could well have not reached their status of written signs before, say, the second century, while they convey a much older knowledge.

Source: http://www.nordic-life.org/nmh/NewHavamalEng138-145.htm

142
Rúnar munt þú finna
ok ráðna stafi
mjök stóra stafi
mjök stinna stafi
er fáði fimbulþulr
ok gørðu ginnregin
ok reist Hroptr rögna          
 
You can find runes
and meaning staves,
very mighty staves,
very strong staves,
which a mighty sage coloured
and mighty powers made,
and Hroptr of the gods carved.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 141: Odin grows in knowing after gaining knowledge of the Runes

This verse continues Odin's journey gaining knowledge (in the form of the runes) after hanging on the World Tree, Yggdrasil.  It explains how Odin's wisdom grows from humble beginnings to something bigger, very much like a tree grows from a simple fractal pattern to form a mighty & impressive looking tree.  Trees are used as analogs for other things in the world, be they phylogenetic tree, technology trees (from computer games), family tree of Gods, or other things that develops and grows over time.  If you bind yourself to one of these trees, as Odin did with the 'World Tree' Yggdrasil, then you will become a part of it, at one with it, and then you will know what it knows.  In the same way that Buddha gained knowledge of the world by meditating under the Boddhi Tree, which is symbolic of the Buddha gaining knowledge of the world, much like Odin (although they took different paths to this knowledge, one torrid and the other peaceful).  This is what it means to gain knowledge, it means to be at one with something.

141

Þá nam ek frævask
ok fróðr vera
ok vaxa ok vel hafask
orð mér af orði
orðs leitaði
verk mér af verki
verks leitaði         
 
Then I began [2] to be
[1] fruitful [2] and wise,
to grow and to flourish;
speech fetched my speech for speech,
action fetched my action for action.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 139: Learning truths means temporarily losing yourself to fear

This verse follows on from verse 138 which describes Odin hanging on the World Tree being buffeted by strong winds in a bid to understand more, to learn more, to know more.  Enduring hardships, be they strong winds like Odin, or whatever, seems a fundamental part of learning truths.  The two seem to be intertwined somewhat.  Though why this is so I just don't know.  In the case of Odin he had to endure fear, which caused him to scream out in fright, before gaining knowledge of the Runes.


139
Við hleifi mik sældu
né við hornigi
nýsta ek niðr
nam ek upp rúnar
œpandi nam
fell ek aptr þaðan               
 
They cheered me with a loaf
and not with any horn,
I investigated down below,
I took up the runes,
screaming I took them,
and I fell back from there.


P.S. I hit the 'save' button instead of the 'publish' button when I was composing the post, and didn't notice the mistake until today.  Sorry for that.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 140: Another stanza on Odin and the Mead of Poetry

I can't make head nor tale of this stanza, so I'll offer the interpretation of another man who is both a scientist and a pagan whose website can be found HERE.  (I've added comments in square parenthesis on the Nordic names for anyone who is unfamiliar with them, and hyperlinks as well):

Comment on the meaning
This stanza seems, as noticed the experts, is a little out of context. In my “prose explanation,” you could see that I explain this shift by a kind of side-remark on Ódhinn [Ódhinn is another way of spelling Odin - ed] feeling the need of bringing some details on the circumstances of his sprinkling at birth. This assumption supposes that Óðrœrir [a container for the Mead of Poetry - ed] existed before Ódhinn’s birth, i.e. there has been a primitive Óðrœrir or, in order to reconcile all versions of our mythology, that Audhumla’s [a cosmic cow which is representative of sustenance amongst other things - ed] milk is called here Óðrœrir because its magic properties.  

Ódhinn’s uncle was in charge of his education and gave him ‘knowledge’, i.e. magic. This confirms the well-known importance of mothers’ brothers in ancient Germanic civilization. These nine songs originate from giants’ knowledge, often qualified as “very knowledgeable” in the Eddas. We will see in stanza 143 that the giant who brought the knowledge of the runes to his people is named Ásviðr (one of the Æsir’s Tree) what obviously refers to Yggdrasill [aka world tree, a symbol common in many mythologies and representative of the totality of existence - ed], and which thus seems a good candidate to name Ódhinn’s uncle.  

Stanza 143 is also often said to be disconnected from the others stanzas, which we just shown being false, in our ‘Mystical meaning’ above. This shows us that the major coherence of Rúnatal is observable only through a magical understanding of the poem.  

Again in my ‘Prose explanation', I consider this stanza as an announcement of the eighteen songs that Ódhinn will deliver in the last stanzas of the poem: it brings coherence between Rúnatal and Ljódatal.
 

Commentary on the vocabulary
Bölþorn means Böl-þorn = Bad-thorn. 

The verb ausa, here ausinn in the past participle, means ‘to sprinkle’. This verb can be used to indicate prosaic actions, like ‘to cover (dust)’, but it has also a ceremonial tinge. The children were “sprinkled with water” then named by their parents in pagan times. It was a family-only ceremony. We do not know any further detail about it, but it probably was the ceremony by which the child was accepted in the family, and became exposed to the duties and rights of free person. In Roman antiquity, the ceremony of purification by water was done on adults by a magistrate, and was called a lustration. In the Christian culture, that looks much like baptism, it is thus necessary to distinguish this ‘Germanic Heathen sprinkling’ from Roman lustration and of Christian baptism. This why I propose you to simply call it a sprinkling since the sagas say: “the child was sprinkled with water.” 

The vessel containing the hydromel of poetry is called Óðrœrir (here spelled Óðrerir). It does Óðroeri in the accusative and the dative, here undoubtedly a dative. This name is made of óðr-hrœrir = ‘intelligence-stirrer’. [Recall that óðr as a substantive means ‘intelligence, spirit’. As an adjective, it means ‘furious’ – in our context, ‘furious’ en ‘clever do not oppose as it does now, because we took the habit to confuse anger and furor.] 

Source: http://www.nordic-life.org/nmh/NewHavamalEng138-145.htm

140
Fimbulljóð níu
nam ek af inum frægja syni
Bölþórs Bestlu föður
ok ek drykk of gat
ins dýra mjaðar
ausinn Óðreri

[2] I took [1] nine mighty spells
from the famous son
of Bolthorr, the father of Bestla,
and I got a drink
of the precious mead,
poured from Othrerir.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 138: Hanging on World Tree

This verse moves towards mystical wisdom and away from practical wisdom that has characterised the Havamal so far.
 
I'm no expert on mystical systems, and cannot claim to have had any experiences (either drug induced, prayer induced, or isolation tank induced), so I cannot really provide you with any mystical insight into the verse.  (Mysticism, as I understand it, is a kind of emotionally-experienced wisdom, in constradistinction to thoughtful-emotionless wisdom, the latter is evident in academia).   The only point that I can make with any confidence is that the tree mentioned in the verse is Yggdrasil, which is the World Tree, and represents the totality of existence.  (Think of the tree as something like a universal fractal pattern)..  When Odin hangs himself on it, he is really fusing with it.  Joining with the tree and thus attataining a kind of 'one-ness' with it.  This 'one-ness' is very much like when Buddha sits under the Boddhi tree (which is also a symbol of the world tree) and gains enlightenment.  These two characters, Odin and Buddha, represent the two different paths that one can use to gain enlightenment (or knowledge, to a lesser or greater degree) of world tree (or the cosmos if you like):
- The active path, which is full of action, tends towards an active body & inert mind, and also suffers hostility from others.  This is Odin's path or tree.
- The passive path, which is full of peace, tends towards an active mind & inert body, and also experiences gentleness from others.  This is Buddhas path or tree.

Both paths, trees, are viable options to gaining understanding of the world and things in it (even if it's understanding of something small and seemingly inconsequential).  It's up to each man to decide which path he chooses to gain that knowledge.


138
Veit ek at ek hekk
vindga meiði á
nætr allar níu
geiri undaðr
ok gefinn Óðni
sjálfr sjálfum mér
á þeim meiði
er manngi veit
hvers hann af rótum renn 
 
I know that I hung
upon a windy tree
for nine whole nights,
wounded with a spear
and given to Othinn,
myself to myself for me;
on that tree
I knew nothing
of what kind of roots it came from.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 137: A window into the Viking pharmacy

This verse deals with practical advice that Vikings used for physiological and psychological maladies.  (If you have any stomach complaints then please speak to a respectable qualified professional first.  The Havamal shouldn't be your first port of call for medical advice!)

One of the lines in the verse refers to a belly that is over-filled with acidic beer should be treated with alkali soil.  This makes sense when you remember that in the tropical rain forests, both humans and animals that live on a diet of acidic plants quite often eat mud to counteract the toxic effects of the plants.  People living in industrialised countries suffering from stomach acid also consume soil but soil in a bottle, that has been carefully prepared by a chemist, e.g. milk of magnesia.

 
137
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
hvars þú öl drekkr
kjós þú þér jarðar megin
því at jörð tekr við ölðri
en eldr við sóttum
eik við abbindi
ax við fjölkynngi
höll við hýrógi
heiptum skal mána kveðja
beiti við bitsóttum
en við bölvi rúnar
fold skal við flóð taka       
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
when you drink ale,
choose for yourself the might of the earth,
because earth fights against beer,
and fire against sickness,
oak against constipation,
an ear of corn against sorcery,
the hall-tree against domestic strife,
-- one must invoke the moon against wrathful deeds --
alum against bite-sickness
and runes against misfortune;
the earth must contend against the sea.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 136: Make sure your door has a good lock

This stanza is a continuation of the previous stanza 135 (which stresses the importance of treating guests well) because it highlights that in addition to treating guests well, hosts should also have a good & securable door (in Viking times this meant a beam across the door, in modern times this means a Yale lock) which the home-owner can use to keep out unwanted or malevolent people.

136 Rammt er þat tré er ríða skal öllum at upploki baug þú gef eða þat biðja mun þér læs hvers á liðu   Powerful is that beam that must move from side to side to open for all; give a ring, or it will call down every evil on your limbs [End.]

.

Havamal Snippets 135: Treat guests well

This stanza stresses the importance of being hospitable to guests.  It's a trait that prevails throughout much of humanity, and due to the fact that it continues to exist amongst human society shows that being hospitable to strangers is on average more beneficial to both hosts and guests than being inhospitable to strangers.  The idea put forward by mainstream historians over the past umpteen generations that Vikings were a totally savage and war-like people is challenged by stanzas like this, and the Havamal in general, which encourages hosts to treat guests decently.  (Though, of course, that's not to say that Vikings were totally peaceful people, because they did have a strong fighting ethic just like other hunter-gatherer tribes.)


135
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
gest þú ne geyja
né á grind hrekir
get þú váluðum vel            
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
do not revile a guest
nor drive him away from your gates;
treat the wretched well.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 134: Old men are often experienced in the ways of the world

The polytheistic, pre-Christian people of Europe (and the rest of the world to be sure), held the elders of their tribes in high regard.  They listened to them.  They showed them respect.  They considered them as human beings rather than as 'old people'.

Showing respect to elderly people isn't something that should be done because it's 'the right thing to do'.  People should show respect to their elders because it's good: It's good for the younger generation (they benefit by gaining knowledge & learned experience) AND it's good for the elder (they benefit by passing on their knowledge & experience).  Everything that is good is good for your and good for others, is good now and is good later, is good in itself and begets goodness.  The previous generation (the Baby Boomers) cast aside this concept of goodness, and embraced the opposite of this: 'instant gratification' (as evidenced by the free love, drug taking, and love of music halls).  A number later embraced the other, equally bad, alternative to goodness - 'Deferred Gratification'.  It is equally as bad because it promises a golden future at the expense of a miserable present.

Present and future generations need to re-learn the older culture which benefited all people in society (you and other people), all times that a person lived (the present and the future), if they are to grow and advance.  One way of re-learning these older traditions is to start showing respect to older people, to see them as human being with life-experience that we all can benefit from.


134
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
at hárum þul
hlæðu aldregi
opt er gott þat er gamlir kveða
opt ór skörpum belg
skilin orð koma
þeim er hangir með hám
ok skollir með skrám
ok váfir með vílmögum    
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
[6] never laugh
[5] at a gray-haired sage
often what an old man says is good,
often [9] clear words come
[8] out of shrivelled skin,
from the one who hangs among the hides
and dangles among the dried skins
and moves among the entrails.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 133: Know a goodness in yourself, and recognise that goodness in others

This stanza doesn't make any sense to me (the last three lines are unrelated to the first three, making the verse a non-sequitur), so I'll defer to the interpretation of someone who studies the Havamal and Nordic life in general.  His website can be found HERE.  These are his thoughts on stanza 133:

Once again, the extreme banality of this stanza leads the reader to wonder what information Ódhinn wanted to put in it.

It does not seem reasonably possible to choose the meaning ‘wonder’ for kyn but, to keep this meaning as ‘background music’ for a proper understanding of this stanza.

Now, here is a group of people already settled in the home and they do not know well if the newcomers are of the family. This remark either is ironic, or touches to dumbness since, as everyone knows, the principal concern of a group already in place is to judge the nature of the newcomers. Moreover, the last three lines not only do not shine by their originality but moreover they seem disconnected from the three first.

The solution with these dilemmas are in the choice of the meaning ‘soul-mates’ rather than simply ‘family’. None is able to recognize his/her soul-mate at first sight and even less the one of other people. In it lies a kind of magic which I already evoked by studying [stanza] 124 in an allusion to Montaigne and La Béotie’s famous friendship. This kind of relation is established without knowing too precisely why. This is why “these who are already in the home,” i.e. the former friends, are not able to spot in a newcomer if he/she will become a soul-mate.

The second half of the stanza explains why, in any case, to accept a soul-mate, as beautiful his/her soul might be, it is necessary to show generosity, i.e. to seek in the others what is better than you own self. All things considered, this second half says that each one contains parts of the best and parts of the worse and it implicitly advises you to recognize your own worse and the other’s best in order to build a faithful relation.

The magic of life is so strong in this stanza that it is enough for me to recall that the relations between friend magicians follow the same paths as for everyone’s.

Source: htp://www.nordic-life.org/nmh/NewHavamalEng111-137.htm
 

133
Opt vitu ógörla
þeir er sitja inni fyrir
hvers þeir ro kyns er koma
erat maðr svá góðr
at galli ne fylgi
né svá illr at einugi dugi     
 
Often they don't precisely know,
those who sit first in a house,
whose kinsmen they are who come (later):
no man is so good
that no fault follows him,
nor so bad that he is of no use.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 132: Be hospitable to guests

Like many pagan/polytheist cultures around the world, the Viking culture stresses the importance of being hospitable to guests.  It's a point that is made in stanzas 103, 132, and 135.  Be hospitable to guests, treat them well.  It's part of being human, that hosts should be genial to guests, and guest should reciprocate.  The Christian tradition of marching into someone else's homeland and telling them that their way of life is wrong is a recent addition to world culture, and as such an anomaly.  Christians calling this 'spreading the word' and 'preaching the gospel', but as Mike points out, this is a total misnomer:

[Missionaries] have walked into other peoples lands telling them their whole belief system is wrong, their gods are wrong, and their way of life is wrong. They’ve gone into other peoples lands and disrupted the political and social systems time and time again for centuries. Many of the worlds political and social problems can be traced to the Christian conversion and the disruption it caused. In some sense, they set the whole world into an unrest. 

I saw a man say something that has always stood out in my mind since then. This took place in the late 80′s sometime. I was studying anthropology at the time. I saw this documentary about this Christian religious group that went out into the world to try to ‘teach the world the truth’. They went to this small tribe. I think it was in the orient somewhere. These missionaries saw how people would offer prayers to their gods and one of them said something like: ”We need to change that. We need to teach them that Christ will answer their prayers, not these idols”. Their guide, who was part of the tribe, turned to them and said: “What for? Why do they need to be changed? What’s wrong with their gods? They’ve been worshipping them for centuries”. I will never forget that. Later, they’d look at other tribes and find nothing but fault with their religion.
Source: http://mikespassingthoughts.wordpress.com/2010/12/30/thoughts-on-christian-missionaries-a-personal-gripe

The idea that Christians are civil genial and decent folk is a lie that Christians believe in, and convince other people to believe.  Being civil and hospitable to all people, friends and guests, is something that polytheists, pantheists and other belief systems, practise and have practised for countless millenia.


132
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
at háði né hlátri
hafðu aldregi
gest né ganganda
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
never mock or laugh
at a guest or traveller.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 131: Be warey of: ale, other mens girlfriends, thieves

This stanza is a pretty straightforward list of things that you ought to be wary/cognisant when dealing with: ale, other mens wives/girlfreinds, and thieves (I suppose this could be extended to include con-artists).  The benefit of being wary/cognisant is a common theme throughout the Havamal.  Such as being wary of ones surroundings as in stanzas 1 and 6, or wary of other people as in stanza 7, or not drinking ale because it causes forgetfulness (which is the opposite of wariness).

131

Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
varan bið ek þik vera
en eigi ofvaran
ver þú við öl varastr
ok við annars konu
ok við þat it þriðja
at þjófar ne leiki 
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
wary I bid you be,
but not too wary:
with ale be the most wary
and with another's woman,
and with a third thing,
that thieves do not trick you.


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 130: How to 'take pleasure with a woman'

This stanza is one of the many in Havamal that explains how to, ahem, ‘get your end away’ with a woman.  Notice the emphasis on ‘pleasure’ rather than ‘love’ in this verse.  According to THIS website (which is unfortunately experiencing a network error; a cached version is HERE), this is a common occurrence throughout the Havamal, stressing that carnal love (like someone who engages in a one night stand might experience) is different to platonic love (like someone who get’s married might experience).  There is a good page on the topic of different types of relationships between humans in Viking society, and how they honor them which can be found HERE in a cached version.  (If you ever come across a page that is inaccessible or ‘down’, then enter the website address into Bing or Google and simply view the cached version).
 
 
130
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
ef þú vilt þér góða konu
kveðja at gamanrúnum
ok fá fögnuð af
fögru skaltu heita
ok láta fast vera
leiðisk manngi gott ef getr       
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
if you want [6] to attract
[5] a good woman to you [6] with pleasant talk
and take pleasure with her,
you must make a fair promise
and stick fast to it
-- no one loathes the good, if he gets it.
 
 
[End.]

Havamal Snippets 129: When in battle, fight, do not think, just fight

This stanza talks about the importance of being Single-Minded in battle.  When in battle, you must shut your mind off to outside influence, you must become like Hod, the blind God of War (who is like the blind Roman goddess Lady Justice in the respect that she delivers justice indiscriminately, impartially).  If not, then you are vulnerable to psychological attacks (referred to in the stanza as 'men casting spells upon you', spells being witchcraft), which will only cause you to doubt yourself.  Single-Minded is what this particular state of mind is.  It's about being focussed on one thing in particular.

Single-Mindedness is like 'being in the zone' when you are running on a race track, or driving a car, or when you are doing something so repetitive that you are totally engrossed in that activity to the point that you forget yourself, you become absent minded.  It's called 'flow' in psychological terms.  It's about doing rather than thinking, and this doing rather than thinking brings with it a degree of certainty, and certainty is essential in battle situations because as soon as you doubt yourself you give the enemy an opportunity to strike.

Self-Awareness is the opposite of Single-Mindedness.  Self-Awareness is being aware of yourself in relation to other things (be they material things or immaterial things).  It means being at calm and being aware of things around you and in you.  It's like being on top of a mountain (mount Noos) surveying all things things going on beneath you (on the Plains of Phusis).  Sat up here you have the ability to choose how you want to act in the future.  You can see the options available to you and then decide how to act.  It's this state of mind that the Havamal advises against while in battle because being Self-Aware means you are thinking about 'what ifs' and other possibilities, which tends towards uncertainty.

This is why Single-Mindedness (being Hod like) is better in a battle situation, because you do not succumb to any neurotic seizure which would strip you of the ability to act/fight.  Your seizure would cause you to be indecisive and not make the 'killer blow' against your enemy, or even be able to defend yourself.  Hence this is why you need to be what the Havamal calls 'blind' (which is not physically blind so that your eyes don't work, but mentally blind so that your brain isn't contemplating the images that it's seeing) in a battle situation, so that you do not 'have a spell' (a psychological attack) cast upon you.

If you want to think about Single-Mindedness and Self-Awareness in a real life situation then you might want to think about a two-man sniper team: a sniper and a spotter.  The Sniper is Single-Minded because he is totally focused on the target that he is shooting,  He has tunnel vision to such an extent that he is oblivious to all other things going on around him.  The Spotter on the other hand IS aware of what is happening all over the horizon.  He has Self-Awareness and decides what target the Sniper should shoot at next.  This means that he must be aware of options and then choose one.  Both men work together and benefit from the partnership.

While the two men in the sniper team may have chosen to be either Single-Minded or Self-Aware, they need not be those roles for their entire life.  Indeed they may, certainly will, make use of both states of mind throughout their lives, to their own betterment.  Sometimes thinking more, sometimes doing more.  Using both states of mind benefits them, and can benefit us also if we choose to do it.


129
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
upp líta
skalattu í orrostu
gjalti glíkir
verða gumna synir
síðr þitt um heilli halir        
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
[6] you must not [5] look up
in battle
-- [8] the sons of men become
[7] like men terror-crazed --
lest men cast spells upon you. *


[End.]

Havamal Snippets 128: Enjoy the good in life!

A simple stanza stating that it is good to pleased by good things, and it's not good to be pleased by bad.

Puzzlingly though this stanza seems to contradict the relativistic nature of pagan beliefs somewhat by dividing the world into absolutes (i.e. good and bad).  A relativistic view means that a good act is only good when viewed from a certain perspective.  If that same act is viewed from another perspective then it is perceived as bad.

So perhaps the stanza is talking about taking pleasure in acts that are good from 'your' perspective rather than taking pleasure in acts that are evil from 'your' perspective.  If that's the case then it is contingent on you being aware of both good and evil so that you know what you are doing.  Which is like a passage from the Bible that "we should be wise as serpents yet gentle as doves", inasmuch as people should know evil, which means studying evil, and thinking about evil, yet keeping distanced from it and affirming good rather than evil.


128
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
illu feginn
verðu aldregi
en lát þér at góðu getit       
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
[6] never be
[5] glad in evil,
but let yourself be pleased by good.

Havamal Snippets 127: Speak out about misdeeds

Expose fraudsters and liars.  Make their malevolent actions and intentions known to all so that no-one else has to suffer from their wicked ways.  A good way of destroying liars is by exposing them to light and to publicity.  Name and shame, like the site register-her.com does.  Liars like to hide in the masses, in the herd, in the mob, because they are safe there, hidden behind a mass of other people.  A man is like a city on a hill, a light held aloft, something clear and distinct that all can see.  Men are bold and clear (though sometimes they are unaware of this, oblivious to their own obviousness) women are indistinct and murky.

 
127
Ráðumk þér Loddfáfnir
en þú ráð nemir
njóta mundu ef þú nemr
þér munu góð ef þú getr
hvars þú böl kannt
kveðu þat bölvi at
ok gefat þínum fjándum frið           
 
I advise you, Loddfafnir,
to take advice;
you would benefit, it you took it,
good will come to you, if you accept it:
when you come upon misdeeds
speak out about those misdeeds,
and give your enemies no peace.


[End.]