Hospitality

Finally returning to my series on the Nine Noble Virtues in Heathenry (and returning at least for the time being to blogging in general), I’d like to explore the virtue of hospitality. This virtue happens to be my favorite virtue, as I consider it to be a pinnacle of human achievement. In my original article, I said of hospitality that it “…does not lock itself indoors, nor does it suffer the hindrance of inconvenience. It is the greatest of the nine virtues because to have it, one must also have the other eight.” It seems like a pretty bold claim, for a virtue that some consider to mean little more than serving a meal to the occasional guest; but there is another way in which to view hospitality, a way in which this virtue represents humanity at its best, and it is in this way that I tend to regard it ….

First, I’d like to have a look at a few concepts of hospitality, left to us in the corpus of our lore. Some of our most common references to hospitality are in the Heathen poem, Hávamál (”Words of the High One,” or Odin):

3. Fire he needs | who with frozen knees
Has come from the cold without;
Food and clothes | must the farer have,
The man from the mountains come.

4. Water and towels | and welcoming speech
Should he find who comes, to the feast;
If renown he would get, | and again be greeted,
Wisely and well must he act.

Food, drink, warmth, and comfort are some of the physical needs that these two stanzas indicate should be provided to the guest by the host. These stanzas, if taken literally, would also seem to indicate an almost ritualized approach to hospitality. Since I’m not usually a fan of taking the lore literally, I would like to point out that there are examples in the lore of a guest arriving at another’s hall where towels and water aren’t mentioned (namely Vafþrúðnismál, and Skáldskaparmál XVII). In the one example I’m aware of fire being offered to the guest, the host wound up falling on his own sword (Grímnismál, prose introduction and ending). So while ritualized hospitality does have its own aesthetic and social charm, I do not see a mandate for it in ancient or modern Heathen practice.

The two stanzas from Hávamál signify to me that someone we welcome as a guest should simply feel welcomed and comfortable. Their basic needs should be looked after: if the guest is cold, see to his or her warmth; if the guest is hungry or thirsty, see to his or her food and drink; if the guest is tired, see to the guest’s sleeping arrangements. Essentially, offering a guest the hospitality of your home is to share your home – I see this as offering someone a chance, for a short while, to live as part of the home. As such, I don’t think heaping luxury on a guest is a wise expression of hospitality, unless heaps of luxury are normal things around the home. An example of this is the ample amounts of food and drink that can be offered to a guest at Valhalla by the gods … while some might see this as an example of why offering a feast to guests is the ideal, I keep in mind that inexhaustible amounts of food and drink are the daily routine for Valhalla. Valhalla can offer a grand feast to its guests because it offers a grand feast to its residents on a daily basis (Gylfaginning XXXVIII).

An approach to hospitality that focuses more on sharing and less on formalized ritual or luxuriating should not be seen as a light or casual approach – sharing, the degree to which we can share, and the broad spectrum of things we are capable of sharing, is one of the things that defines humanity (as does our capacity for selfishness and apathy toward others, sadly). Sharing what we have with someone is not just living up to a virtue, it’s honoring one of our distinguishing attributes, and there is nothing light or casual about this. I liken it to the misunderstanding many have regarding the Heathen relationship to our gods: many non-Heathens take our lack of formalized reverence for disrespect, when it’s actually one of our highest expressions of sacredness.

If renown he [the guest] would get, | and again be greeted,
Wisely and well must he act.

We are also reminded by this line (from the stanza cited above) that the guest shares responsibilities when it comes to hospitality. As with host responsibilities, Hávamál provides us with some guest responsibilities, most of which are common sense and basically boil down to the guest not abusing the host’s hospitality. Bookmarking the subject of guest responsibilities for later, where this line ultimately leads is to the question of with whom we should share hospitality, and whether or not it is in accordance with this virtue to actually refuse hospitality to someone. For an indication from the lore, I offer the following stanza, from Hávamál:

136. Strong is the beam | that raised must be
To give an entrance to all;
Give it a ring, | or grim will be
The wish it would work on thee.

In a more modern sense, this stanza warns of leaving our homes open to all. That, combined with the previous line about guests acting wisely and well if they would be invited to return, makes it pretty clear that at least insofar as this poem is concerned, the hospitality of our home does not need to be offered to everyone. If our Heathen forebears believed differently, then their doors would have simply opened, uncontested, for their enemies … somehow, that doesn’t seem to have been a likely practice. Guests who abuse hospitality or are in some other way a nuisance to their host do not need to be invited back. The way I look at it is to judge whether or not the potential guest would be able or willing to exist harmoniously in my home – if not, then that person will not be a guest in my home, simple as that. This, then, brings us back to guest responsibilities.

A guest’s single responsibility, as far as I’m concerned, is to exist harmoniously in whatever home they are staying in. A proper host should see to the comfort of his or her guest, and a proper guest should see to it that he does not himself become a discomfort or burden to his host. At this level, the sharing is reciprocal and evenly matched … although an uncommon perspective that requires a bit of flexibility of interpretation, the host-guest relationship of sharing can be seen as one of sacrifice, where both give of themselves in honor of something greater (though often unspoken): community.

The sacredness of sharing, then, is how I tie this virtue to representing humanity at its best. This might explain why our ancestors believed our gods would sometimes approach them as guests, to test their hospitality – it certainly helps to explain why I believe it. How does it require that all other of the Nine Noble Virtues first exist, though? The first part of this answer is found in the first line of my hospitality maxim:

True hospitality does not lock itself indoors, nor does it suffer the hindrance of inconvenience.

To share of ourselves with others, we do not have to be under our own roof. On the road, in the wilderness, or even on the city bus, it’s possible to provide comfort and safety to others. We can consider others to be guests in our presence, wherever that presence happens to be – just as we can consider ourselves to be guests in the presence of others. If we look at ourselves as potential guests or hosts wherever we go, and we define these roles of hospitality as described above, then we have a template for conduct that encourages us to try to exist in harmony with our environment, not be a burden or nuisance to others, and be ready to help others when we can. While this may seem to be a very broad usage of hospitality, it is to some extent attested to in these stanzas from Hávamál:

47. Young was I once, | and wandered alone,
And nought of the road I knew;
Rich did I feel | when a comrade I found,
For man is man’s delight.

52. No great thing needs | a man to give,
Oft little will purchase praise;
With half a loaf | and a half-filled cup
A friend full fast I made.

Although I often look to my patron, Njord, when it comes to ideas of hospitality, our mighty Thor is perhaps a more readily explainable example of my perspectives on this virtue. Thor is, among many things, a god who enjoys travel. Thor is also a god who provides us with safety. When Thor travels, he does so in his chariot, drawn by the goats, Tanngrisnir and Tanngnjóstr. Thor can slaughter these goats, providing a meal for himself and his company (as in Gylfaginning XLIV) while on the road; so it can be said that wherever Thor goes, he can provide food and safety to those in his presence. At the same time, Thor can make an uninvited guest rue his transgression (as in Alvíssmál). Thor, when viewed in this light, exemplifies all of the Nine Noble Virtues, including hospitality.

With this in mind, it should be possible to conceive of Hospitality requiring Courage, Truth, Honor, Fidelity, Discipline, Self-Reliance, Industriousness, and Perseverance. It takes some of these virtues just to have something to offer to someone else in the first place, while others are required for either making others feel safe around you, or allowing you to feel safe around others. Because this is the only virtue that truly requires the presence of all others of the Nine Noble Virtues, I consider it to be the greatest among them – just as Thor is considered greatest among our gods. Because hospitality also embodies the very same spirit of sharing, of give and take, of sacrifice that has enabled us to survive all these thousands of years, I say that it is not just a virtue, but that it represents one of our greatest achievements as living beings.