Editing Hávamál (section)

==Textual history==
The only surviving source for ''Hávamál'' is the 13th century [[Codex Regius]], with the exception of two short parts.<ref group=note>The first stanza is also found in the manuscripts of the ''[[Prose Edda]]'' (in slightly different versions), and three lines of a later stanza are also found in the manuscripts of ''[[Fóstbrœðra saga]]'' (again in slightly different versions).</ref> The part dealing with ethical conduct (the ''Gestaþáttr'') was traditionally identified as the oldest portion of the poem by scholarship in the 19th and early 20th century.
Bellows (1936) identifies as the core of the poem a "collection of proverbs and wise counsels" which dates to "a very early time", but which, by the nature of oral tradition, never had a fixed form or extent.

To the [[gnomic poetry|gnomic]] core of the poem, other fragments and poems dealing with wisdom and proverbs accreted over time. A discussion of authorship or date for the individual parts would be futile, since almost every line or stanza could have been added, altered or removed at will at any time before the poem was written down in the 13th century.
Individual verses or stanzas nevertheless certainly date to as early as the 10th, or even the 9th century. Thus, the  line ''deyr fé, deyja frændr'' ("cattle die, kinsmen die") found in verses 76 and 77 of the ''Gestaþáttr'' can be shown to date to the 10th century, as it also occurs in the ''[[Hákonarmál]]'' by [[Eyvindr skáldaspillir]]. The ''Hávamál'' has been described as a 10th-century poem in some sources.<ref>''Vendel Period Bracteates on Gotland'' p. 37</ref>