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1. The structure of 'Hávamál'
In this article I want to look at the mythical situation underlying what have traditionally been regarded as the last two sections of Hávamál. As long ago as 1891, Karl Müllenhoff suggested that Hávamál should be regarded as an anthology of Odinic poetry rather than a single poem, and divided it into six sections, of which he called the last two Rúnatal 'List of runes' (stt. 138-45) and Ljóðatal 'List of magic spells' (stt. 146-64). Part of this approach can be supported from the evidence of the Codex Regius, the sole authoritative manuscript, since the scribe begins St. 138 with an enlarged initial such as he uses elsewhere to indicate the beginnings of poems. Early post-medieval scribes seem already to have taken note of this: the seventeenth-century paper manuscripts begin a new section at this point and give it the heading 'Runatalspattr QcUns' or 'Rúnaþáttr Odins'. There is, however, no manuscript support for the idea that a new poem or section begins with st. 146.1
Müllenhoff's division of the text was challenged in the 1970s by Klaus von see, who argues that most of Hávamális essentially the work of a single author,2 and that it is indebted to Hugsvinnsmál, an Old Norse translation and adaptation of the popular Latin wisdom poem known as the Disticha Catonis. This seems unlikely: the most distinctive resemblances between Hávamál and Hugsvinnsmál are conspicuously absent from the Disticha Catonis, and Hugsvinnsmál shows signs of rather late composition which suggest that it more probably borrows from Hávamál than vice versa.3
Müllenhoff's view is too subjectively based to be accepted as it stands, but a modified version of it might suggest that the text went through three stages of development:
1. A number of monologue poems in which Óðinn was imagined to be the speaker were grouped together in a manuscript which is now lost. Each probably began with a large capital letter, and three of these capitals (at the beginnings of stt. I, III, 138) have been copied into the Codex Regius. There is a good case for arguing that a fourth large capital may have been lost at the beginning of st. 84, where the theme switches from gnomic wisdom to the demonstration of the...