In the Poetic Edda poem Hávamál, Odin delivers the collection of wisdom sayings.
Hávamál means “Sayings of the High One,” with the High One understood to be Odin. The poem presents advice about hospitality, friendship, caution, memory, reputation, and practical conduct. It also contains mythic material, including Odin’s ordeal on the world tree and his acquisition of the runes.
Although the poem speaks in Odin’s voice, it is not a single uniform speech in the modern literary sense. Scholars identify different sections and poetic layers within the work. The changing tone moves from everyday counsel to heroic and magical knowledge, which helps explain why Hávamál is both a wisdom poem and an important mythological source.
Hávamál is preserved in the medieval Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius, where it appears among poems now grouped as the Poetic Edda. Its attribution to Odin is a literary feature of the poem, not evidence that a historical person named Odin wrote it.