Wyrd Designs: Q & A – The Nine Noble Virtues

K.N. asked, “What are the Nine Virtues? (Are they something to really reach for, or are they idealistic [perfectionist] goals?)”

Dear K.N., to answer your question we’ll need to first look back at the 1970’s and the start of the modern heathen reconstructionist movement. As a new and budding religion, trying to talk about your religion to those of other faiths or even help codify a way of life to those who have converted to the new path is a tricky thing. Christianity and Judaism has the Ten Commandments, which are a list of ethical and moral values to live by.

Into this void, step some of the founders of the Odinic Rite, and by searching through the lore (specifically the havamal and sigdrifumal) they chose of the many virtues present nine which they felt represented the guidelines through which they wanted to teach people to live and strive for. The Odinic Rite’s Nine Noble Virtues are: courage, truth, honor, fidelity, discipline, hospitality, self-reliance, industriousness, and perseverance. These virtues therefore, become a teaching tool.

Through the years other Asatru organizations and groups have created their own versions of the nine noble virtues. Sometimes the lists dramatically differ, in other cases they’re mostly the same with one or two exceptions. Some Asatru groups have even incorporated a solely modern invention of using a candle-lighting tradition as seen in Judaism’s Channukah celebration, or Kwanza, encompassing the nine noble virtues during the yuletide: one new candle, for one new virtue lit each night.

So why are there nine noble virtues, when anyone who has studied the lore can tell you there’s easily more than 100 virtues listed throughout the lore. I’m not 100% sure, but considering that nine appears to be a holy number in the Northern Tradition, linking to the nine worlds in the heathen cosmology, and the nine nights and days that Odin hung on the tree… it wouldn’t surprise me if this was in part the reasoning to there being nine such virtues. Not to mention nine is a relatively succinct number when compared to trying to find and list all of the virtues found throughout the large body of work that comprises our lore.

Not all of those in the Northern Tradition use the Nine Noble Virtues, though I’d say most of us have at least a passing familiarity with them. Personally, I don’t use the nine. I really see the entire lore being summed up in not nine, but rather two virtues via which all others are parts thereof: troth and frith: being truthful in your actions and deeds, and behaving rightly in the customs of your community or the community you are passing through at all other times. But that’s me, and my opinion in this case is certainly not the norm.

The nine noble virtues as a teaching tool both to those within Asatru, and in discussing the religion to those from other religious traditions that are unfamiliar with our religion, can be quite handy. I don’t think that the virtues, these nine or the others in the lore are unobtainable, and they should be what we strive towards. But I think most people understand we are only human, and life is messy. Sometimes we will fail to live up to them, but the true mark of our characters is in the attempt to do so I think.