Gripla - 20.12.2008, Blaðsíða 116

GRIPLA114
On the cliff he stood with Brimir’s sword,
a helmet he had on his head;
then Mim’s head spoke
wisely the first word
and told the true letters.
(Larrington 1996, 169)
As usual in Old Norse mythology, the acquisition of knowledge is associ-
ated with violence, symbolised here by the armed and helmeted figure.
This figure is almost certainly Óðinn, mentioned in the previous stanza.
The narrator is the valkyrie Sigrdrífa, who goes on to ‘ventriloquise’ Míms
hǫfuð in sts. 15–17, a list of where the runes should be carved.22 To resolve
the oddity of Míms hǫfuð speaking sanna stafi ‘true staves’, the plural
stafir is usually taken as meaning ‘words’ rather than ‘letters, runes’ (von
See et al. 2006, 579; Kuhn 1968, 190–91), but as Clunies Ross appositely
comments, this passage ‘associates runic writing with operative magic of
various kinds and the physical location of these messages ... the association
between verbal utterance and operative magic realised in writing is very
strong’ (1994, 214 n. 22). In st. 5, Sigurðr is given beer fullr ... lióða oc lícn-
stafa, / góðra galdra oc gamanrúna, ‘full ... of spells and favourable letters, /
good charms and joyful runes’, while in st. 18 the process of mixing such a
drink is described: Allar vóro af scafnar, þær er vóro á ristnar, / oc hverfðar við
inn helga miǫð, ‘All [the runes] were shaved off, those which were carved
on, / and scattered with the sacred mead’.
In Sigrdrífumál magical effectiveness is embodied in writing as mate-
rial object, something which can be carved, shaved and scattered, later to
be ingested in the form of a drink (Quinn 1992, 114). Exchanges, transfers
and transformations from one physical form to another, conceptualised as
a busy traffic in and out of the mouth, characterise the process of acquiring
runic knowledge. Míms hǫfuð speaking runic letters, like the gods, elves
and men ingesting the runes as a mixture of mead and wood-shavings,
enacts a transfer of magical effects across medial boundaries, from numi-
nous to material, from embodied presence to writing, and back again. In
22 The corresponding section of Vǫlsunga saga simplifies this process by omitting st. 14: sts.
15–17 then become the valkyrie’s directly imparted runic wisdom; see von See et al. (2006,
577).