The myth behind Nine Nights: Odin hanging on the world tree (Hávamál)

Most gods win their power. Odin pays for his, and in the strangest way in all of Norse myth: he hangs himself. Nine Nights is HEIDR's ritual chant for that moment, and it comes from one of the oldest poems we have, the Hávamál, "the Sayings of the High One", preserved in the 13th-century Icelandic manuscript known as the Codex Regius.

On the windy tree

Most of the Hávamál is practical advice: how to behave as a guest, how to treat friends, why you should not drink too much. Then, near the end, the voice changes. In the section scholars call the Rúnatal, Odin speaks in the first person.

In stanza 138 (we follow Bellows' numbering; some editions count one higher) he says he knows that he hung on a windy tree for nine whole nights, wounded with a spear and given to Odin, himself to himself, on a tree whose roots no one knows. The Old Norse words for "on a windy tree" are vindga meiði á. That is the phrase HEIDR whispers at the start of the song, and the last thing you hear at the end.

In stanza 139 he says no one gave him bread or a drink from a horn. He looked down, took up the runes, screaming he took them, and then he fell back.

The song keeps those images almost word for word: "Nine nights on the windy tree / A spear in my side, given to me / No bread to eat, no horn to drink / I looked down into the deep." The chorus line "I gave myself to myself" is the poem's own paradox, and the bridge ("I took them up, screaming... And I fell") is stanza 139.

What he won

Stanza 140 says that afterwards Odin learned nine mighty songs from the son of Bölþórn, the father of his mother Bestla, and drank the precious mead poured from Óðrerir. The number nine keeps returning: nine nights, nine songs, and the nine worlds of the song's second verse.

The second verse also borrows from another story: "The well of wisdom closed my eyes." That is Mímir's well. In Gylfaginning 15, Snorri Sturluson says wisdom and understanding are stored in the well under one root of the world tree, and that Odin was only given a drink from it after he left one of his eyes there as a pledge. The poem never connects the two sacrifices; the song puts them side by side.

Which tree, and why it matters

The poem never names the tree. Commentators usually identify it with Yggdrasil, the world ash, and the name itself is often read as "Ygg's horse": Yggr, "the terrible one", is one of Odin's names, and "horse" would then be a poetic image for the gallows he rode. That reading is the traditional one, but it is debated. Some scholars point out that it rests heavily on this single passage, and others propose different roots for the name.

There is also honest uncertainty about the passage itself. Scholars have argued for a long time about how stanzas 138-145 fit together. The notes to Bellows' translation treat stanza 140 as an insertion that interrupts the story of the runes, and stanza 141 as a fragment of the mead myth. Peter Jackson's study "The god in the tree" is devoted to this one puzzling, much-argued passage.

Why it still hits

What stays with people is the paradox: the highest god as his own sacrifice, starving and wounded, alone on a tree in the wind, crying out as he grasps something no one else could see. Even the god called the terrible one had to fall to learn. That is the moment Nine Nights is built around: the call, the answer from the choir, and the silence after he falls.

Listen

• Full song on YouTube: HEIDR - Nine Nights
• On Spotify: Seiðr, the album

Lyrics

[Intro]
Vindga meiði...

[Verse 1]
Nine nights on the windy tree
A spear in my side, given to me
No bread to eat, no horn to drink
I looked down into the deep

[Chorus]
Nine nights! (Nine nights!)
I hung for the runes (I hung for the runes)
Nine nights! (Nine nights!)
Under wolf and moon
I gave myself to myself
And the dark gave back
Nine nights, nine nights
And the runes cut black

[Verse 2]
Wind in my bones, the ravens near
Nine worlds turning, cold and clear
Down in the roots where the waters rise
The well of wisdom closed my eyes

[Chorus]
Nine nights! (Nine nights!)
I hung for the runes (I hung for the runes)
Nine nights! (Nine nights!)
Under wolf and moon
I gave myself to myself
And the dark gave back
Nine nights, nine nights
And the runes cut black

[Bridge]
I took them up, screaming
I took them up, screaming
And I fell
(And she fell)

[Final Chorus]
Nine nights! (Nine nights!)
I hung for the runes
Nine nights! (Nine nights!)
And the runes cut black

[Outro]
Vindga meiði... the tree remembers.

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HEIDR is a virtual artist: character, visuals and voice created with AI tools.