Book Review: "The Wanderer's 'Havamal,'" Jackson Crawford (Hackett, 2019)

 

I am incapable of offering an unbiased review of anything by Jackson Crawford.  I first became aware of his work back in 2016 or so, when I first started playing in the SCA and his Old Norse work first came across my Facebook feed.  Ironically enough, Crawford's own words played a part in my decision to turn off that same Facebook feed (original text from Crawford's website here):

You will talk yourself into trouble
if you don’t think before you speak:
Hold that tongue, and think a little,
or you’ll find out that it’s a long whip,
and it’s gonna hit you from behind.

That is from his "Cowboy Havamal," a very loose and informal translation of Havamal, which translates either to "sayings of the High One" or "sayings of the Hanged One" or, given that it's meant to be a collection of the wisdom of Odin, probably both and neither all at once.  The "Cowboy Havamal" is, of all of the things he has published, by far my favorite, and it is part of the reason I am incapable of giving an unbiased review of Crawford's work.

To understand why it speaks to me, it is important to understand my mindset in 2016.  My life was secure enough for the first time in years to start thinking about something other than immediate needs, and I found myself spectacularly rudderless.  It was in these circumstances that a series of fortunate events - a friend's planned Vegas wedding, another friend living in Vegas, a new interest in archery, a local fighter practice - all wound up leading to me joining the SCA, and finding a sense of direction and discipline that I'd lacked.  Crawford's voice was one of the earliest I picked up in that time, despite, so far as I know, the man having absolutely no association with the SCA beyond a rabid but respectful fandom in the Society.

Because I picked it up from his YouTube channel, and because he has a voice that could make the Monty Python "spam" lunch menu interesting, I hear his work in his voice; this puts him in such company as Neil Gaiman, my wife, and my drill sergeants, in terms of mental influence.  Thus, that was the voice I heard as I read first his Poetic Edda and Saga of the Volsungs a year or so ago, and more recently his annotated translation of Havamal.

So much for why Crawford's work matters to me; let us discuss instead why it matters in general.

What separates Crawford's work from other editions and translations is accessibility.  He has struggled with being adjunct faculty and feeling like his professional input was irrelevant for years, and as a reaction to this has made a point of his translations being, for lack of a better description, idiot-proof.  Anyone can pick up a Crawford translation and get a good sense of what the passage is about unless he, too, is at sea about it (more on that later).  The choice of a free-verse translation to capture meaning and sense is a trademark of Crawford's work, as is a fairly deft touch in finding acceptable equivalents (his use of "sissy," for instance).  Compare this to, for instance, the previous American standard translations, Lee Hollander's University of Texas Press editions, which clung much more closely to the poetic meter than Crawford's.  This is not to say Hollander's translations were bad; they were standards for a reason, but they were much less accessible.

In The Wanderer's Havamal, he takes a very different tack from his Poetic Edda, in that it comes with facing Old Norse and English texts.  The introduction explains his translation and orthography conventions, which are the densest part of the text, but also important reading for the actual text.  Some time in the past five years, Crawford realized that there was real, non-academic interest in Old Norse as a language, and much of his YouTube channel is devoted to language lessons.  In The Wanderer's Havamal, he has attempted to take a fundamental, well-known Old Norse text preserved in the Codex Regius (lit. "The King's Book"), an Icelandic text that preserves much of what we know of Old Norse literature, and turn it into a potential teaching or learning text.  This makes up the bulk of the book, with his translator's notes at the end of the translation.  I am not certain in this case whether I would prefer endnotes, which he's used here, or footnotes, which would allow reference for each stanza "on the go," but given the extent of the notes, endnotes are probably the more solid choice.  After his endnotes come two other pieces of literature - one, various "supporting documents" to explain parallel versions of some of the stories referenced, and one, the "Cowboy Havamal," which I referenced earlier.

There is very little I can say about Crawford's intent that he does not already say, and I suspect I am the wrong linguistic target; I can read passably in modern Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and German, and Old English is a linguistic stretch but not an impossible read.  Thus, I can follow the Old Norse text well enough stanza to stanza to get the gist, and understand his linguistic arguments in the notes.  However, if I were to recommend an introductory text for someone interested in Old Norse poetry, I would heartily recommend Crawford's book.  The introduction describes each of the major poetic forms, and what constitutes alliteration and what doesn't - I had not realized for instance that in Old Norse all vowels are considered alliterative, so that to the Norse ear, the phrase "Old Alfred, Batman's batman" contains not one but two alliterations despite English not treating "old" and "Alfred" as alliterative.  Further, because Crawford explains where in the text each of the forms is used, a reader can instantly flip to those particular stanzas, read them aloud in Old Norse, and get a feel for how that behavior feels rather than a rote recitation of rules.  Combined with Crawford's Poetic Edda, which contains a rather nice description of hummingbirds to show how those same rules work in English, it is a fully functional introduction to Norse poetry, using a standard work that is not buried ears-deep in indecipherable kennings, and where there are kennings, they're unpacked in his endnotes in detail - sometimes surprising detail, like his footnotes about Yggdrasil.

I said that I'd mention one time I felt Crawford was at sea on his meaning; there's a description of how the young should not mock the old, the men draped in skins.  The one time I ever felt him shrug and go "I dunno" in the endnotes was in trying to make sense of what this reference to skins meant.  I believe that the obvious answer is Ivarr Runamagi, Lion of Ansteorra.  I of course don't mean that literally, and one could just as easily say Count Simonn of Amber, also Lion of Ansteorra.  In both cases, these are men who are, in their circles, larger than life.  For all that, if you watch them closely, they were once larger than they were.  Their skin hangs loose in places, looking like their skin was draped over them.  One ignores them at one's own peril, though - they've been around the block and they've survived to tell the tale, and each of them has come by a reputation for being wise, in an age where wisdom is hard to recognize, in their lifetimes.  I believe that this is what Havamal references in its discussion of old men draped in skins.

Given how central a figure his grandfather June Crawford was to Jackson Crawford, I find this particular interpretation apt, and also a little surprising that it never occurred to him - especially when the very last portion of The Wanderer's Havamal is the "Cowboy Havamal," which feels an appropriate place to end this, too.

Travel, see the country,
never miss a chance to get outdoors.
You’ll only get smarter
by knowin’ more people, more places,
more ways to be a man.