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Poetic Edda

Full strong the signs,  full mighty the signs That the ruler of gods doth write.
144.[1] Othin for the gods,  Dain for the elves, And Dvalin for the dwarfs,Alsvith for giants  and all mankind, And some myself I wrote.
145.[2] Knowest how one shall write,  knowest how one shall rede?Knowest how one shall tint,  knowest how one makes trial?Knowest how one shall ask,  knowest how one shall offer?Knowest how one shall send,  knowest how one shall sacrifice?
  1. ↑ Dain and Dvalin: dwarfs; cf. Voluspo, 14, and note. Dain, however, may here be one of the elves rather than the dwarf of that name. The two names also appear together in Grimnismol, 33, where they are applied to two of the four harts that nibble at the topmost twigs of Yggdrasil. Alsvith ("the All-Wise") appears nowhere else as a giant's name. Myself: Othin. We have no further information concerning the list of those who wrote the runes for the various races, and these four lines seem like a confusion of names in the rather hazy mind of some reciter.
  2. ↑ This Malahattr stanza appears to be a regular religious formula, concerned less with the runes which one "writes" and "tints" (cf. stanza 79) than with the prayers which one "asks" and the sacrifices which one "offers" and "sends." Its origin is wholly uncertain, but it is clearly an interpolation here. In the manuscripts the phrase "knowest?" is abbreviated after the first line.

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