Guest, Host, Wanderer Pt. 1

The Hávamál, that reliquary of northern ancestral wisdom, doesn’t open with instructions for us on how to worship the gods. It doesn’t open with mystifying esoteric concepts or exhortations to cast our hearts and minds towards the heavenly.

The very first verse is simply about how to walk through a door, into a hall.

I’d argue there’s a fundamental and important reason the Hávamál spends so much space on being a good guest, being a good host, and instructions on how to travel with one’s wits about them.

Over the next few articles, I want to dig into these ideas, because I believe they are concepts that many people have lost, but that are central to who we are, not only as pagans, but to people of European descent.

It’s an interesting fact that the Hávamál doesn’t spend much time on esoteric matters. There are verses, especially later in the text and scattered throughout, that lend themselves to that kind of reading, but a great deal of the manuscript explores things we’d consider practical, down to earth, useful stuff we can use in daily life.

That’s one of the things I liked about it from the first time I read it as a kid, and it’s one of the things I keep coming back to as an older man. There are very few situations that have come up in my own personal life, that I couldn’t trace back to a verse.

Every time I return to it, like the old adage goes, I’m not the same man, and it’s not the same book.

The reason the concept of reciprocal hospitality was so important to our ancestors is that manners, courtesy and etiquette are the mechanisms of advanced civilization. The hall, where hospitality was both given and received, was where strangers became friends. It’s where alliances were formed, where marriage plans were made, and importantly, where reputations were built.

It’s where stories were told, which means it’s the place where people had the chance to become immortal. Many of the actions that led to these mighty reputations happened outside the hall, but it was in the hall where things were plotted, planned, and agreed to, and in some cases sworn to over drink the night before, if you know the story of the Jomsvikings.

This was where the skald thrived.

This was where stories came to life and names were made immortal.

Because of this, ensuring that all was well within the confines of this social temple was critical to it serving its important functions and being somewhere that people could come to utilize them.

A brief illustrative story from my younger days:

There was a time when our club spent a great deal of time with other outlaw organizations, especially motorcycle clubs.

We still do, to a degree, but at this particular time we were thick as thieves with a well known one percenter club on our side of the country. There was no formalized relationship there - it was strictly hanging out, drinking beer, shooting pool, playing music and that sort of thing.

We were well established in our own group, but we had some people in that club we could call friends, people who understood we weren’t interested in joining theirs, and none of them were interested in joining ours. We just enjoyed each other’s company.

On some level there were other factors at play too, plenty of guys in their organization looked at a group of thirty or forty young motorcycle enthusiasts, all lifting weights, tattooed, always fighting, and thought we’d make a good pickup for them. This was expressed more than once but always denied with a friendly “we’re good, thanks.”

I got invited by one of these friends to a national event, something I’d never been to.

I didn’t spend much time beforehand thinking about how it would go or who I’d know there - I just threw on a support shirt I’d been given a couple years earlier, one I’d cut up and re-stitched to “show class.” It has the club’s rocker on it, and read: “snitches deserve stitches” across the front.

I showed up to the clubhouse, immediately noticing the tall posts wrapped in black plastic around the entire place, so you couldn’t see in or out. I introduced myself properly to the prospect at the gate, and asked where I could park my bike. At the time, I couldn’t afford a Harley, I had some Japanese cruiser, flat blacked with bones hanging off it. I thought it looked cool. The guy I asked didn’t. He told me to take it down and park it “ way down there at the end of all the Harleys.”

The place was packed with rough looking people. I’d been around plenty of rough people before, so I figured I’d just go introduce myself. I didn’t even make it to the front door.

Grills going, kegs out, a stripper inside somewhere, and lots of noise to distract my mission of just finding some of the guys I knew. Before I could find anyone from the local chapter, a guy confronted me, heavily tattooed, with a huge 1% diamond obscuring most of his face. Clearly had a few hard years behind him, and a couple of others with him who didn’t look like spring chickens either.

Words got exchanged, essentially him asking who the hell I was. I told him. They didn’t like that I had my own colors on very much, even though I’d been assured this was “totally fine.” Then he noticed the support shirt.

As it turned out the rules had changed. You weren’t supposed to wear the actual lettering from their top rocker anymore, even on a support shirt, and I hadn’t gotten that memo. They were furious.

It looked like things were about to go badly. I couldn’t see a single friendly face in the crowd, there were maybe a hundred people there and it was just me and my stupid uncool bike. I won’t say I didn’t start sweating just a bit harder in that Virginia heat.

Eventually an older patch member came over, asked what was going on, looked at the shirt, and said the rules had been different when I got it, not to worry about it. He said he actually liked what I’d done with the shirt, that it “showed class.” I didn’t push my luck and see what he thought of my bike.

He asked who I knew, I told him, and he walked me over to my friends. Everything was fine after that.

Somebody hearing that story might say, what a bunch of jerks. They might be partially right. The outlaw motorcycle community is not exactly known for its friendliness to people who break their rules.

But the real issue was that I’d been a poor guest. I hadn’t done what Hávamál verse one tells us to do: when you arrive somewhere, be observant, see what’s going on, learn the culture.

Sometimes that means asking questions ahead of time. I’d gotten approval to wear my colors, but I hadn’t thought to ask about the shirt. You have to use your head to understand what you’re walking into, because a lot of being a good guest is observation and awareness, and it takes humility to recognize that you’re walking into somebody else’s house.

That means abiding by their rules. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know I was breaking one. I broke one anyway.

In this way, a lot of this comes down to being prepared for wherever you’re going.

It doesn’t matter if it’s an outlaw clubhouse or a church bake sale. Know the rules as much as you can before you walk in.

I’ve gotten better at this over the years, and I think this kind of awareness, reading a culture and a situation, is a learnable skill. I’ve walked into many other “halls” since then, and made a point of reading the room right away: who has an issue with you off the bat, what the hierarchy looks like, who calls the shots.

You need to understand these dynamics, both to protect yourself and to avoid creating chaos as a guest.

The same thing applies in a gym.

I’ve mostly trained Jiu Jitsu in places where nobody cares if you rolled gi or no gi (for the uninitiated this means wrestling in samurai pajamas or not in samurai pajamas), and all submissions were fair game. Leg locks, heel hooks, everything.

You were just expected to take care of your training partners and not injure people on purpose - get a reputation for hurting people and you might not be welcome back.

I went to train at a different gym once, and reflexes took over during a roll. A guy put his foot somewhere he shouldn’t have, and I locked up a heel hook (gently, I’m not a monster!), looked him in the eye, the universal grappling expression for “do you want me to finish it or tap?”

The head coach across the room lost it - in a martial arts gym as a guest, you’re really not supposed to push these kinds of boundaries. This has nothing to do with some old samurai code or something like that, it’s simply the expectation that you take care of the people whose house you’re in.

He told me flatly that they didn’t do that there while in the gi.

I apologized, no excuses, just told him I should have asked what was and wasn’t on the table before rolling. He could see I wasn’t trying to escalate anything, and everyone let it go. But I could have avoided the whole embarrassment just by asking first and being aware of the culture in that room.

This gets at something we’ll cover more the third part of this series: that traveling well means being a good guest wherever you land. There are verses in the Hávamál about how ordinary wits are fine at home, but on the road you have to sharpen yourself.

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Only a fool assumes everywhere works the same way as it does at home, or that everyone acts the same way as the people he’s used to. This can be a really disastrous assumption.

In the sixth verse of Hávamál, it also warns against being too eager to show up somewhere and looking like the smartest guy in the room, which is essentially a warning against running your mouth too much in the wrong way.

So many of us are guilty of wanting this kind of validation wherever we go. I certainly have been.

Yet, I’ve found that a lot of my best conversations followed a simple setup:

When I asked questions I actually cared about the answers to, and then genuinely listened to what I was told. Building relationships can seem complicated, but this approach works whether you’re building friendships with other men or something romantic with a woman. Everyone likes talking about themselves. Being a good guest means making it reciprocal: ask people things you actually care about, pay attention to what they tell you, and remember it later. That’s how you deepen a relationship.

You might not be the smartest person in the room, and probably aren’t, but by being a genuine one, and one intent on the conversation, you’re likely to still make an impression.

Later verses tell us that where we find good hospitality, we should leave more than we take. Essentially if we drink a beer, leave a six pack, to put it in plain terms.

It tells us not to overstay our welcome.

These are all basic things that we must have awareness to notice, so we have to pay attention.

It means if you’re a guest somewhere, be the first one up to grab a can off the ground and throw it away. Wake up before everyone else and dig out the fire pit. Nobody’s ever angry at a guy who does useful things and shows respect, and he’s often remembered and welcomed back.

This kind of “generosity of behavior” can turn into something where you’re trying so hard to be a good guest and your host is trying so hard to be a good host that you end up almost competing over who can outdo the other. It’s a noble thing to find yourself caught up in. Most people have had the experience of reaching for the check at dinner, only for a generous friend to grab it first, and you go back and forth insisting you’ve already got it.

It’s this the same instinct at work that leads to friendship, reputation, and lasting honor.

Finally, being a guest is an obligation.

Our lore says a great deal about gift demanding gift, about these exchanges being reciprocal, about a word answered by a word and a deed answered by a deed. Odin himself wandered as a guest through countless halls, and he understood how to do it in a way that made people glad to see him everywhere he went, and made sure he was treated well wherever he landed.

That’s a wonderful skill to have, and a wonderful kind of person to be, the sort of guest who gets a warm welcome back because people remember him fondly.

It all comes down to understanding where you’re going, showing humility and respect, and putting in a bit of effort and courtesy toward the place you’re staying.

Do that, and you get a lot back: people remembering you as the one who showed up, understood the room, gave great counsel or conversation, and maybe even had things cleaned up before he left.

That’s the kind of guest people want back.

I think too many of us look at the world and wish it were more welcoming, without asking whether we’re being good enough guests ourselves.

Next time, we’ll talk about hospitality from the other side, how to be a good host and why that skill matters so much.

After that, we’ll get into traveling itself.

I’ve been to a lot of places in my life, in and out of this country, and hung out with all kinds of people, good and bad and in between.

Hopefully those stories will be worth something, or at least a laugh at some of my own foolish decisions along the way.

Ultimately, the hope is that I get to host some of you in the future, or enjoy time as your guest, where we can prove we’ve all learned the lessons so well laid out by those who came before us.

XCII

- PW

PS: To learn more about the esoteric approach to the Germanic traditions, consider having a look at

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