Slow Havamal: 151

[kylec]

In verse 151, Odin says the sixth spell he knows is for when someone carves a curse against him in the roots of a tree. He calls the spell down on its carver so it harms him instead of Odin.

We see attestation in the sagas of people carving curses in the roots of trees, presumably in runes. A woman uses one against Grettir, and he cuts himself and gets an infection when trying to chop it up, which leads to his death. Sounds like he could have used Odin’s spell.

I’m not sure why tree roots are used, other than they are convenient to carve on. Perhaps there’s some connection with the world tree. Roots feed the rest of the structure, so it’s possible that placing a curse t the roots calls down harmful influences from some similar structure in humans, that they can spread throughout his life.

Many practitioners of magic consider any kind of cursing to be poor form and a practice that comes back to haunt you. That includes sending a curse back rather than “dodging” or “swatting it down.” This may not apply to a god like Odin. Or it may, and he might accept the consequences happily in order to teach someone a lesson.

The most interesting aspect of these verses is that they tell us what kinds of magic were likely common or at least held in high esteem. We see that curses were often flung around, and there had to be some way to get back at the sender as a means of protecting one’s self. Making them sip from their own poison would have appealed to many victims, and it isn’t that different from classical forms of justice of the Hammurabi type, which seem to me to represent a stage between the highly abstract forms of late civilization and the turmoil of a dark age when justice is whatever you can do back to the other guy, usually murder. This returning of the spell is more exact, in that it doesn’t harm the curser any more or less than the harm they chose to cause.