Jackson Crawford holds an MA in linguistics from the University of Georgia and a PhD in Scandinavian Studies from the University of WisconsinMadison. From 2011 to 2020 he taught the Old Norse language, as well as courses in Norse mythology and Old Norse saga literature, at major universities including UCLA, UC Berkeley, and the University of Colorado Boulder. During that time, he also served as a consultant on a popular video game, television programs, and major Hollywood films. Since 2020 he has been an independent educator, using his YouTube channel and popular translations of Norse myths and sagas from Hackett Publishing to reach hundreds of thousands of viewers and readers with well-sourced information about Norse language, mythology, and runes. His research interests today focus on the relationship of the runes to Mediterranean alphabets, as well as the use of linguistic criteria to determine the date of Old Norse texts.
"Hávamál, ‘Words of the High One’—purportedly delivering the wisdom
of Odin in his own voice—is one of the most important mythological
poems of the Poetic Edda and simply the most
important witness to early Norse cultural ethics. Jackson Crawford
has now given us a clean text and a new facing-page translation in
contemporary idiom. A highly trained linguist, Crawford has already
published with Hackett a complete translation of the whole of the
famous ancient anthology, the Poetic Edda, and acquired many
fans for his YouTube videos teaching Old Norse. Crawford is a poet
in his own right with a recognizably Western voice. A scholarly
commentary on the whole poem is an accomplishment made palatable
for the general reader by Crawford’s informal style. All in all, a
fresh start on the mysteries of this classic."
—Joseph Harris, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of English
Literature and Professor of Folklore, Emeritus, Harvard
University
"Jackson Crawford offers his readers an excellent entry into the
world of Hávamál, where the high-god Óðinn from the Old Norse
Pantheon mediates some age-old wisdom to his audience. Crawford
provides a clear translation that points directly into the original
text itself, while his extensive commentary emphasizes its nuances
and ambiguity, strips away popular notions of paganism, and draws
attention instead to the poem’s universal down-to-earth attitude.
The humorous and entertaining cowboy-version that Crawford offers
at the end serves as a tribute to the wisdom of his own
grandfather, a fitting epilogue that updates this ancient poem
which the Christian people of Iceland assembled from oral tradition
into a book in the thirteenth century."
—Gísli Sigurðsson, Research Professor and Head of the Folklore
Department, Árni Magnússon Institute, University of
Iceland
"Jackson Crawford's new translation of Hávamál is a
valuable addition to the rich textual history of this poem. Infused
not only by his learning and understanding of the medieval language
and culture but also by his own poetic creativity, this is a
translation that is likely to bring Hávamál to a new
audience. Of no less value is his more freely
translated Cowboy Hávamál, which, even more than most
translations, brings the vitality and poetic strength of this text
to the fore."
—Ármann Jakobsson, Professor of Icelandic and Comparative Cultural
Studies, University of Iceland
"A delightful and thought-provoking new edition of the poem, one
which brings Hávamál out of the purely academic or
unusual ideological camps into which it has often fallen and
re-instils it with the largely practical and human interest it must
have had for its audience. Crawford's scholarly expertise shines
through every aspect of this book, and this he combines with
understanding of how a wider audience is engaging with Old Norse
myth and legend, a situational awareness which is often not found
in academic writing but which is so vital for our times."
—Matthew Coker, in The Medieval Review
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