Hávamál Notebook | Norse Wisdom Hardcover Journal, Sayings of the High One

The Hávamál, “the Sayings of the High One,” is an Old Norse poem in which the god Odin hands out advice on how to live: how to treat a guest, how to choose friends, how to be careful with words, and what lasts after death. It is preserved in the Codex Regius, a 13th-century Icelandic manuscript, and it likely draws on much older oral tradition. For readers of the sagas, it is one of the best windows into how Norse people thought about hospitality, honor, and reputation.

This hardcover notebook puts two passages from the poem on its cover, inside a golden knotwork border with dragon heads and a valknut at the top. The first is about hospitality: a traveler who arrives cold from the mountains needs fire, dry clothes, water, and a place to sit. The second is the famous stanza on mortality, which says that cattle die, kinsmen die, and you will die too, but the judgment passed on each dead person never dies. The Old Norse for that stanza is printed on the cover with an English translation. A mountain and forest scene with a smoking turf-roofed house sits at the bottom.

Inside are 80 pages of cream-lined paper, enough for reading notes, journal entries, or your own set of sayings. The notebook has an elastic closure and a ribbon marker, and it measures 5.5" x 8.5". It suits readers of the Eddas, students of Old Norse, and anyone who keeps a notebook of lines worth remembering. For more, browse more from the Norse world or pieces that carry old words into daily use.