Slow Havamal: 37

[kylec]

In the 37h verse, the first three lines about having a home from verse 36 are repeated. Then we hear that it will wound our heart if we have to beg every meal.

We start with another instance of repetition and variation. At times, Havamal doubles down on the first half-stanza, then expands on it differently in the second. That’s a sign to pay attention. Maybe all the traveler metaphors risk going to the reader’s head and setting him upon a vagabond’s life. That’s clearly not the point. To reiterate from the last essay, a home is something like the midpoint of a circle. It’s the place from which we extend our periphery. It’s nice to have a literal home that feels safe and keeps us out of the weather. It’s also nice to have routines, principles, and a stable way of viewing that world that leads to consistent results.

In this verse, it also serves a purpose that may be foreign to modern readers. It’s suggested that if you don’t have a home, you will have to beg your meals, an your pride will be hurt. So the home is something that produces resources that serve our basic needs. I get my food from the grocery store, but a Norseman probably got it from his crops and his livestock, products of the home. He didn’t just return at the end of the day to sleep there. His life was intimately bound up in the place.

To lack a home is to lack the means of sustaining yourself. We risk becoming a parasite on others’ resources. Begging a meal strains the neighbors, but equally, leaning too heavily on others for emotional needs, or being unable to think our own thoughts, is a kind of homelessness in those respective spheres. As social creatures, we’re valued more when we can boast self-sufficiency, an maybe even a surplus to provide for others in need. Sometimes that begins humbly. Last week we saw that two goats under a faulty roof is a worthy start. Our home isn’t static. It grows with our capacity to care for ourselves and extend help to others.

We’ll feel much better about ourselves if we know we are capable of meeting our own needs. It can begin with an assessment of the areas of our lives in which we rely on others for anything. There’s no shame in it, but in all likelihood, there are opportunities to establish something like the humble shanty with two goats. Though we’d probably like to have much more than that, it’s a start. In what ways do I burden others? What skills will make me a more complete person, and maybe even benefit someone else in the long run? The answers to questions like these will lead us home.

Comments

[boccaderlupo]

Interesting one. Have you read Hesiod's Works & Days? While there's myth woven into it, much of the poem is concerned with the poet exhorting his brother not to be a loafer and take care of his basic needs, which is reminiscent of this verse.

I guess a lot of "wisdom literature" is just that, practical advice about living. What's compelling about these verses that you share is that they have a lot of social context...not merely surviving (in the popular imagination, the Norsemen is just running from battle to battle nonstop, ha), but doing the right thing by your peers and such.

Axé

[kylec]

Yes, I enjoyed Works and Days quite a bit, and you're right that for whatever mythos these works contain, it's tied up in a lot of practical advice. That's a very interesting observation I'm going to have to mull over. We would probably separate our myths (if we acknowledged we had them) from our cultural rules for proper behavior, but maybe the Greeks and Norse would find such a separation ludicrous.