The raven called Memory

This article differs from the others you will read here on Vitki. It is not about a runestone or a statistical pattern, but about me: about why I came to work on this project, about what I believe we can learn from those who were here before us, and about why we need to preserve what they had to say.

I have always been interested in history. In my parents' home, Brian Branston's Gods and Heroes from Viking Mythology, with Giovanni Caselli's illustrations, lay in its Swedish edition in the magazine rack by the reading chair, and I came to read it many times in my younger years. Ymir and the creation of the world, Thor in the hall of Útgarða-Loki, Ragnarök: they all became stories I came to relate to and marvel at.

The raven above the treetops

More than thirty years later I work in IT and spend most of my waking hours in front of a computer. Without my quite noticing it, a strong need has grown in me to seek simplicity: to get out into nature, light a fire to warm myself by, hear the trees move in the wind and simply be left in peace from the stream of people and demands that fills a working day.

One of those days in the forest I saw the raven flying high above me and the treetops. There was something simple about the sight, but also something mighty and eternal. The raven had surely flown over the same place many times before; it was its home. But there and then I felt a sudden kinship with the old, in a direct line of descent. Someone before me had looked up at the same sky and seen another raven flying above, and perhaps marvelled at it just as I now did. The raven stirred something in them, that much is certain, for it became an important part of their view of the world.

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Thought and memory

In Norse mythology Odin has two ravens, Huginn and Muninn, whose names mean roughly thought and memory. Every day they fly out over the world, and when they return they tell him what they have seen. In the Eddic poem Grímnismál, Odin says of them:

Huginn ok Muninn fljúga hverjan dag Jörmungrund yfir; óumk ek of Hugin, at hann aftr né komi-t, þó sjámk meir of Munin.

Huginn and Muninn fly every day over the wide earth. I fear for Huginn, that he may not come back, but I worry more for Muninn.

It is a stanza I often return to. The wise god fears losing thought, but fears losing memory even more. I believe it is important to know where we come from, and to keep the memory of those who came before us and the insights they gained in their short time on earth. We walk the same ground and till the same soil as they did, but perhaps we do not care for it as well. To understand how they thought, and to pass it on to the generations to come, is important work.

That is why Vitki came about. The project began with a single stone, the Danish Malt stone, which seven scholars have read in seven different ways. I wanted to know whether we could get closer to what actually stands there, by letting the runes and all the other runic inscriptions speak instead of choosing the interpretation that sounds best. I have written about that in The Malt stone – calculated instead of interpreted. The name Vitki is Old Norse and means roughly the wise one, the knowing one. The word is related to vita, to know.

Three stanzas of Hávamál

To know is also what Hávamál is about. The poem, the sayings of the High One, is a collection of advice and wisdom put in the mouth of Odin, the god who gave one of his eyes to gain wisdom. It is in Hávamál that I have found the words that best explain why I do this work, and why the old is worth preserving. The poem is preserved in the Codex Regius, an Icelandic manuscript written down around 1270, but much of its content is older. Here are three of my favourites, compared with the Old Norse text and translated as literally as possible.

In the High One's hall

The first is really two stanzas that belong together, around a line that recurs in the poem: Háva höllu í, in the High One's hall. The High One, Hár, is one of Odin's names. In stanza 111 the poet speaks from the sage's seat at the well of Urðr:

sá ek ok þagðak, sá ek ok hugðak, hlýdda ek á manna mál; of rúnar heyrða ek dæma, né of ráðum þögðu Háva höllu at, Háva höllu í, heyrða ek segja svá:

I saw and was silent, I saw and pondered, I listened to the speech of men. Of runes I heard them talk, nor were they silent about counsel. At the High One's hall, in the High One's hall, I heard it said thus.

The poem ends in stanza 164:

Nú eru Háva mál kveðin Háva höllu í, allþörf ýta sonum, óþörf jötna sonum;

Now the sayings of the High One are spoken in the High One's hall, most useful to the sons of men, useless to the sons of giants.

What I take with me is the order in stanza 111: first see and keep silent, then think, then listen. It is an attitude that suits us just as well today, when most things around us demand our attention and want an answer at once. And the last stanza reminds us who the words are for: people. They hold now as then.

Runes you will find

The second is stanza 142, from the part of Hávamál called Rúnatal, the account of how Odin won the runes. A few stanzas earlier he hangs for nine nights on the windswept tree, wounded by a spear and given to himself, before he takes up the runes. Then comes the promise:

Rúnar munt þú finna ok ráðna stafi, mjök stóra stafi, mjök stinna stafi, er fáði fimbulþulr ok gerðu ginnregin ok reist Hroftr rögna.

Runes you will find, and interpreted staves, very great staves, very strong staves, which the mighty sage coloured, which the holy powers made and which Hroptr of the gods carved.

The mighty sage, fimbulþulr, is Odin, and Hroptr is another of his names. The stanza describes how the runes came into being in three steps: they were coloured, they were made and they were carved.

The word for colouring, fáði, is one I have had reason to dwell on. It also appears on two of the oldest runic inscriptions in Sweden, from the ninth century: Varinn faði, Varinn coloured, on the Rök stone, and Gunnarr faði runaR þessaR, Gunnarr coloured these runes, on the Oklunda carving. The runes were painted, and colouring them was part of making them. The poem says the gods did it first; the stones show people who did the same. On later runestones the word almost disappears.

Do you know how to interpret?

The third is stanza 144, and it is perhaps the one I think about most in the work on Vitki:

Veistu, hvé rísta skal? Veistu, hvé ráða skal? Veistu, hvé fáa skal? Veistu, hvé freista skal? Veistu, hvé biðja skal? Veistu, hvé blóta skal? Veistu, hvé senda skal? Veistu, hvé sóa skal?

Do you know how to carve? Do you know how to interpret? Do you know how to colour? Do you know how to test? Do you know how to ask? Do you know how to sacrifice? Do you know how to send? Do you know how to offer?

Often only four of the questions are quoted: carve, sacrifice, send and offer. But the four in the middle are at least as important: to interpret (ráða), to colour (fáa), to test (freista) and to ask (biðja). The word for interpret, ráða, is the same as in ráðna stafi, the interpreted staves of stanza 142, and lives on in Swedish råda. Veistu means do you know and comes from the same word as the name Vitki: vita, to know. The questions are about knowledge that is not only facts but craft – about doing something right, with respect for what it means.

They are also the questions Vitki asks, though with other tools. How were the runes carved? That we can measure in 3D scans of the grooves in the stone. How are they to be interpreted? That we can test against thousands of other inscriptions and give every reading a probability. How were they coloured? There we know almost nothing, since the paint has rarely survived. And what did it mean to sacrifice, send and offer? No measurement reaches that far. The stanza asks the questions, but gives no answers. That is what I like about it.

What lives on

Perhaps the best-known stanza of Hávamál is number 76:

Deyr fé, deyja frændr, deyr sjalfr it sama, en orðstírr deyr aldregi, hveim er sér góðan getr.

Cattle die, kinsmen die, one dies oneself the same way, but the good name never dies for the one who wins a good one.

That is what the runestones are. Someone raised a stone for their father, their son or their wife, so that the name would live on. A thousand years later we still read them. They are Muninn in stone, the memory Odin was afraid to lose.

I believe there is much wisdom to understand and preserve in those who came before us: to see and keep silent before speaking, to remember one's dead, to do one's craft well. But I also believe there is a great and exciting mystery left to explore. We do not know what the Malt stone's titultitul means. We do not know who carved most of the stones, or what their colours looked like. Every new measurement gives an answer and a new question.

If my work on Vitki can contribute, however little, to the old being understood and passed on, my goal with the project has been reached. I hope you will come along on that journey.

Sources

• Hávamál and Grímnismál in the Codex Regius (GKS 2365 4to). Old Norse text after Guðni Jónsson's edition, heimskringla.no.
• Brian Branston, Gods and Heroes from Viking Mythology, illustrated by Giovanni Caselli (Swedish edition: Gudar och hjältar i nordisk mytologi).
• The Rök stone (Ög 136) and the Oklunda carving (Ög N288) after the Scandinavian Runic-text Data Base, Uppsala University.
• Image: Ludwig Pietsch, Odin (from Murray, Manual of Mythology, 1874), public domain via Wikimedia Commons.