Slow Havamal: 60

[kylec]

The 60th verse says we ought to know a number of things: how to dry firewood, bark for roofing, and how much to use in each time and season.

The practical instruction of Havamal continues with advice to learn how to process trees and use all parts to good purpose. In the Scandinavian countries, this was no trivial matter. Firewood could mean the difference between surviving the winter or not. Their bark roofs kept out the elements, and many useful implements were made of wood. It’s easy to forget that most people in human history couldn’t find these things at Home Depot, or hire someone else to do the work for them.

From a single entity, a tree, a Norseman could build a house, furnish it, build a ship, make tools, cover a structure, and warm himself. I’m sure in my modern ignorance I’m leaving out many more. He had a deep relationship with the land and the living things on it, and they satisfied all his needs. But none of it was handed over ready-made. It was his responsibility to learn how to coax each use out of a fallen tree, or an animal hide. His role was man-as-transformer. From the raw materials, he carved a life to suit him, and it took no small amount of strength and skill.

Today, I often feel like man-as-conjurer. Even with good tools I doubt I could get much use out of a tree. It would be at best clumsy compared to a man even a few generations prior. I go to work, and when I want something, arrives at my door, or I speed to a nearby building where I can pick it up. I never see the tree, the cow, the vein of ore. I’m not entirely sure how the process unfolds. It’s true, I have what I need to survive in my world as it stands. Maybe that’s all that can be expected of someone. But it’s a world of fantasy, in which things arrive whole cloth from far away. I don’t know all the elements this computer contains, where they came from, or how they were assembled. Someone does, but he doesn’t know the same for a good many of the things he relies on.

Then who is it who conjures? How did I even know I needed or wanted this thing that plays such an important role in my life? The value of most of my things were impressed upon me by others, not a hunger or a need for shelter pulsing organically in my body. No one man wrought them. Their source remains a work of my imagination.

Verse 60 reminds us it’s not enough to know how to provide for ourselves, but also the right measure for each time and season. We can’t burn as much firewood as we want, because there is a limited amount, determined by my local woods and the work of my axe. It has to last until more wood can be felled. If I overdo it, like the early Icelandic settlers who cut trees only to realize they didn’t replenish as fast as they hoped in such a high latitude, the consequences can be grave.

To know your resources; how to use them; how much you can use. A failure at any of these points could cost a man his life at one time. I reckon it still can, though the particular way that chain shatters may require some imagination.