Didn't want to put this into the showcase forum as it isn't my work, but I'd highly suggest reading the "Hávamál". It's an old Icelandic Viking story written sometime after 800 AD.

It's written in Icelandic, but there's many translations out there:
http://www.pitt.edu/~dash/havamal.html


I've started reading through this but I won't have enough time tonight. It looks really good though...