THE TERRIBLE ONE'S HORSE: CHAPTER 16

NINE NIGHTS ON THE TREE: ODIN’S SELF-SACRIFICE AND HIS OBTAINING OF THE RUNES

The subject of this article is NOT the paleographical study of the Norse (or Germanic, or Anglo-Saxon) runes.  The origin and development of runic letters, as scholars maintain, may indeed lie in their relationship to other, earlier Mediterranean alphabets (although it must be stressed that the field of runic paleography is still a highly contentious one and no single theory clearly predominates).  Here I will restrict myself to a brief MYTHOLOGICAL interpretation of Odin’s winning of the runes.

The only account we have of Odin’s self-hanging on the World Tree Yggdrasill (‘Terrible One’s Horse’; Yggr being a name for Odin) is found in the Poetic Edda’s “Havamal” or Sayings of the High One.  The relevant stanzas in the Carolyne Larrington translation run as follows:

I know I hung on a windy tree

Nine long nights,

Wounded with a spear, dedicated to Odin,

Myself to myself,

On that tree of which no man knows

From where it roots run.

No bread did they give me nor a drink from a horn,

Downwards I peered;

I took up the runes, screaming I took them,

Then I fell back from there.

Carolyne Larrington’s note on the first strophe is informative:

“Odin performs a sacrifice by hanging for nine nights on the tree Yggdrasill, pierced with a spear in order to gain knowledge of the runes.  The parallels with the Crucifixion are marked, though interpretation is controversial.  The motif of the Hanged God is widespread in Indo-European and ancient Near Eastern religion, however, so direct Christian influence need not be present here.”

I would add that while in the main this statement is correct, it does not address the parallel of the the casting of the lots by the soldiers present at Christ’s Crucifixion.  As Matthew 27:35 puts it:

“And when they had crucified him, they divided his clothes among themselves by casting lots…”

Tacitus in his “Germania” describes the use of runes in a lot-casting ceremony:

“To divination and lot-casting they pay the greatest attention.  They lop a branch from a fruit-bearing tree and cut it into slices, which they mark with distinguishing signs [Latin notae] and scatter at random without order on a white cloth.”

This casting of runes AS IF THEY WERE LOTS is markedly similar to the casting of lots in the Christ story. True, the Roman soldiers were engaging in a form of gambling, not prophecy.

More important than whether Christian influence is present in the account of Odin’s winning of the runes is what the actor and various objects in the Norse myth represent.  And it is to these that I will now turn my attention.

Odin was the Sky-Father and thus the sky or heaven itself.  His two eyes were the sun and the moon.  When I treated of Mimir’s Head and Well in a previous article, we saw that the Sky-Father “gave up” his solar eye, leaving him with only the one lunar eye.  When he is referred to as the one-eyed god, then, we are to assume that the sun is not in the sky, i.e. he is the Sky-Father of night and the moon.  This may be significant, as the moon was male in the Snorri’s system, while the sun is said to be female.

Yggdrasill the World Tree is also emblematic of the sky.  In my short piece on the valknut, I have made a case for the white clay the Norns spread on the tree to keep it white being symbolic of the white clouds.  There is little reason, therefore, to interpret Yggdrasill as anything other than the pillar whose top lies at the Pole Star and whose branches spread out over the earth.

The spear with which Odin is pierced is a typical lightning spear, the weapon of the Sky Father.  It is Gungnir, of course, Odin’s own spear.

But are we to view Odin hanging on the tree as the sky hanging on the sky?  While this kind of duplication in mythic language is not without precedent, I think that the presence of the number nine in the account of his hanging is telling.  Nine betokens the moon, and the moon rules the night.  As Odin the One-Eyed is the god of night and of the lunar eye, I would suggest that he hangs upon the sky tree during a thunderstorm as the moon.

If so, what do we make of the runes?  What do they represent?  The scream of Odin is most assuredly the voice of thunder.  The thunderclap attends the strike of the lightning-spear, the weapon that wounds the god.  Odin peers downward and picks up – what, exactly?  Before he falls off of the sky-tree, apparently setting into the earth as the lunar eye, what does he take up?

Well, Tacitus tells us the runes WERE MARKED ON PIECES OF A TREE.  In my book “The Mysteries of Avalon: A Primer on Arthurian Druidism”, I guessed that the shape of runes may have been likened to the forked tines of heavenly lightning. And the lightning-weapon is found as mistletoe in the myth of Balder's death.  We know Celtic druids cut mistletoe from the oak tree (symbolic of the sky tree) and placed the mistletoe on a white cloth.

Where are the rune-marked slips of wood placed in Tacitus’s account?  ON A WHITE CLOTH.  As the fruit-bearing tree represents the Sky-Tree, the white cloth is the cloud that stretches forth over the sky.  The community priest

“… invokes the gods and, with eyes lifted to the sky, picks up three slices of wood, one at a time, and interprets them according to the signs previously marked upon them.”

Substitute here for the community priest Odin himself, PICKING UP the runes from the cloud-cloth.

The runes are marked on pieces of the sky; this much is certain.  If Odin is hanging from the Sky-Tree in his capacity as the lunar eye of night, and must reach down for the runes, we must imagine these marked sky-pieces are resting upon or are above the upper surface of the cloud.  And here was to be found the heavenly lightning, whose form could assume all sorts of forked shapes.  In these shapes lay the mythological pattern for the runic letters. 

P.S.  I have a rather unusual personal affinity with Odin.  When I was four and lived in Pennsylvania, I climbed a tree in our family’s yard.  When coming down from the tree, I hung myself through the left armpit on a sharp broken branch.  Although I do not remember the incident, according to my Mother I was unable to detach myself from this prong and remained there for some time: no one knows for how long.  My Mother eventually heard my cries, came out and with difficulty reached up and hoisted me off the offending branch.  I lived only because my axillary artery was not severed.  To this day I bear a very large scar under my left arm as a reminder of the incident.