Benjamin Balderson & Rachel Maiden | Norse Morality In Mythology: Odin, The Hávamál, & Poetic Edda
Tonight we're joined by Odin's favorite wizard, Benjamin Balderson, and the poetic paganist Rachel Maiden, for an examination of customs and philosophy selected from the Hávamál, and other works of the Poetic Eddas. These two have a great knowledge of Norse Mythology and the morality that it espouses, along with a strong grasp upon the wisdom of the runes, as they've been teaching on the Odin's Alchemy podcast.
The Plus+ Extension begins with discussion on the value of difference between regional deities, and by the end we find ourselves in a hilarious set of Odin's observations about the differences between men and women. This is a truly unique second hour, worth the price of admission.
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In this episode
Core themes
The sayings of the high one
Chance Garton frames the Havamal, the sayings of the high one, as poetry that carries the words of Odin and the everyday morality of the Old Norse. Benjamin Balderson and Rachel Maiden have spent eight episodes of Odin's Alchemy on its hundred and sixty stanzas, reading several translations side by side because the wording changes everything. Balderson compares confident translation to digging up an unknown creature and inventing the sound it made, and says small shifts can flip a passage the way a nature documentary frames the same hunt as a starving mother or as doomed prey.
Hospitality was survival, not manners
The guest rights and host rights that dominate the poem were, in Balderson's telling, not etiquette but life and death. Balderson describes five feet of snow at his own place and says that if somebody showed up at his door and he refused them, they could die. Chance Garton adds that a natural law society needs very few rules, mostly a short list of things you should not do, which leaves room for hospitality, and that a high trust society is a productive and healthy one. Rachel Maiden notes how far modern Viking culture has drifted from that.
Gullveig and the sickness of hoarding
Chance Garton reads a stanza about saving for the loathed what was meant for the loved, and hears a warning against hoarding against disaster instead of sharing with the people you love. Balderson answers with Gullveig, in his reading the only real villain of heathen cosmology, who embodies a hoard valued above a man, and with the modern case of the state clawing back an estate after Medicaid care. Rachel Maiden describes possessions split in thirds at death, one part for the funeral, one for family, and one utterly destroyed, then asks what a billionaire living that way would leave behind.
Odin, the mead of poetry and the ferryman
Because Odin is said to live on wine alone and to have stolen the mead of poetry, Chance Garton connects him to Bacchus, to Dionysus and to Indra stealing ambrosia. He traces a pun in the poem between forgetfulness and a river mouth, and links the heron of the drinking stanzas to Charon, the ferryman on the river of forgetting. Balderson, a mead maker, insists not every drink was meant to intoxicate, separating a mead of knowledge from party drinking, and says Rome won battles by feeding Germans stronger wine. Rachel Maiden reads Odin's ravens, thought and memory, as drinking to remember.
You are your own judge
Balderson says heathens face no external judge at death. He is the judge, which he compares to the Egyptian heart weighed against a feather, and it makes him live by a strict moral code because he will eat himself up over failing it. Rachel Maiden defines heathen simply as a country person. Chance Garton notes that Chrestos in Greek meant good, so a person could be a heathen and a Chrestian at once, and argues that if the world is as within so without, then morality is built into reality itself, an energy that constricts or flows.
Quotes
“And, yeah, tonight, the topic at hand is called the Hávamál, the sayings or the words of the high one. This is a poem attributed to and maybe maybe it's many poems cobbled together, but basically the words of Odin are captured in poetry.”
“And so the philosophies, the best philosophies in the world were all derived from alchemy. And that was done in the laboratory as these ancient alchemists sat in the laboratory and watched the way nature worked and watched it over and over and over.”
“If you do not take them in, do not take care of them. And that's and that's the situations that they faced back then. So it was very important for you to treat people a certain way and to be a good host to people that came to your door.”
“That people are saving for, like, what if something bad happens? I need to save money for that. And so they're saving for what they loathe, which is disaster, rather than what's meant for the loved, which is wealth is meant to share with those you love.”
“But then a third of it was utterly destroyed, utterly and completely trashed and destroyed. You know, we're finding all these hoards of gold. Well, maybe they're not hoards. Maybe that was supposed to go back.”
“And the river that one crosses with Charon is the river of forgetfulness, which is like philologically heron, like the bird and Charon, the ferryman, same word, because some, you know, you go translate a word from one language to another.”
“And here's why Odin's Ravens are thought and memory. He's not drinking and forgetting. He's drinking and remembering. Hey, remember when you did this? Hey, remember when you did that?”
“So Odin in that is very specific in telling you that if you want to be a happy man, you get a small farm, even if it's only a shack and a couple goats, and you go live on it. That's how you live.”
Benjamin Balderson is a practicing alchemist who has taught laboratory (practical) alchemy on InnerVerse, covering distillation, alcohol-free tinctures, and the alchemical patterns found in nature; he shares his work under the banner "Odin's Alchemy."
See all Benjamin episodes→Kyle and Serena Denton are community herbalists creating wild-crafted and organic plant medicines out of Milwaukee since 2015. I have used their teas and tinctures on an almost daily basis for years now. Kyle is a great friend of InnerVerse and has appeared on the channel more times than I can count. These products work, not in the allopathic "pharma-medicine" way, but in a terrain-support, consciousness bolstering plant-teacher sort of way.
