Nic Doyle

The Nine Noble Virtues are something I try to live my life by.  I find that they are a great set of guidelines.  They offer you a set of goals to achieve.  When you try to live your life by these virtues you might find that your dealings with other people and situations in general start to change.  How they happen, the process, the end result.  People might start to see you in a new light.

The moral codes of the Odinic Rite were codified from The Hávamál and The Sigrdrífomál (poems from the Elder Edda) in the early 1970′s by two of the OR’s founding members, John Yeowell (aka Stubba) and John Gibbs-Bailey (aka Hoskuld). Since that time they have been widely adopted and although others have felt the need to change and adapt them, to us they remain as laid down by our founders. – Odinic Rite

The Nine Noble Virtues are:

• Courage – The bravery to do what is right at all times.

• Truth – The willingness to be honest and say what one knows to be true and right.

• Honor – The feeling of inner value and worth from which one knows that one is noble of being and the desire to show respect for this quality when it is found in the world.

• Fidelity – The will to be loyal to one’s faith, to one’s folk, to one’s self and the oaths that are taken.

• Discipline – The willingness to be hard with one’s self first, then if need be with others.

• Hospitality – The willingness to share what one has with one’s fellows, especially when they are far from home.

• Self Reliance – The spirit of independence which is achieved not only for the individual but also for the family, clan, tribe and nation.

• Industriousness – The willingness to work hard, always striving for efficiency as a joyous activity in itself.

• Perseverance – The spirit of steadfastness that can always bring one back from defeat or failure – each time we fall we recognize failure for what it is and if the purpose is true and good, we persevere until success is won.

These are not to be confused with the variants from the Asatru Folk Assembly. The variants are as follows:

1. Strength is better than weakness.
2. Courage is better than cowardice.
3. Joy is better than guilt.
4. Honor is better than dishonor.
5. Freedom is better than slavery.
6. Kinship is better than alienation.
7. Realism is better than dogmatism.
8. Vigor is better than lifelessness.
9. Ancestry is better than universalism.

More groups choose to go with the original Nine Noble Virtues as presented by the Odinic Rite, in the first part of this article, instead of the variants shown above.

The Nine Charges were also codified by the Odinic Rite in the 1970’s and they are as follows:

• To maintain candour and fidelity in love and devotion to the tried friend: though he strike me I will do him no scathe.

• Never to make wrongsome oath: for great and grim is the reward for the breaking of plighted troth.

• To deal not hardly with the humble and the lowly.

• To remember the respect that is due to great age.

• To suffer no evil to go unremedied and to fight against the enemies of Faith, Folk and Family: my foes I will fight in the field, nor will I stay to be burnt in my house.

• To succour the friendless but to put no faith in the pledged word of a stranger people.

• If I hear the fool’s word of a drunken man I will strive not: for many a grief and the very death groweth from out such things.

• To give kind heed to dead men: straw dead, sea dead or sword dead.

• To abide by the enactments of lawful authority and to bear with courage the decress of the Norns.