kylec | Slow Havamal: 68

The 68th verse lists four things that are “best” for mortals: fire, sunshine, good health if you’re lucky enough to have it, and living beyond reproach.

I don’t know if or how the Norse divided the world into elements, but all four things listed here as blessings for mortals fall neatly under the traditional western element of fire. When it comes to happiness and health, no other single element covers it better. Fire and sunshine are easy correspondences. Physical vitality also usually falls here, and heat is seen as treating many illnesses of the body, while metaphorical warmth heals the melancholic or phlegmatic mind. Living beyond reproach means embodying virtue. When one is a shining example, a leader, a spiritual beacon, this too belongs to fire.

I doubt that these are ALL the things good for mortals, but they have a powerful effect. We warm our hearth and cook, light the land and soak up Vitamin D, live vigorously and well. Just as a fire warms our mood after a cold journey, the properties of the traditional element animate us. Whether we have a cold, or are feeling a little blue, a jolt of life and energy helps to restore us. Fire IS energy, and the reason we love it is because it brings us what we need from an external fuel, sparing us the use of our own. We might survive shivering, but few would prefer that to a hot meal and a warm bed.

As the vitality of life leaves us, our faces sadden and sag, and our physical health drains. Like the light of the sun, we often take health for granted when it’s present. All it takes is a headache, or a stubborn illness to remind us what we should have been grateful for all along. Without the slow crackle of this constant flame, we can’t do many of the things that we take to be a fundamental part of life. When I’m under the weather, I often marvel at how I took for granted the absence of pain, and make a note to be grateful the next time I’m in that state. With a few exceptions, the return of life makes me forget that misery was even possible, and unless I’m prompted to write an essay on it, I forget to say thanks.

Fire also corresponds to the soul and the spiritual life in the western tradition. It is the light of spirit that shows us how to live, and the spark we carry for others to see when we’re happy and virtuous. Maybe fire is the best of things because it helps us rise to states better than those we normally inhabit: cold, dark, sick, morally impoverished. Likewise, it has the tendency to leap to the nearest kindling—a gift readily spread. Fire is good for us because life is good.

That means anything we do to keep our personal flame going benefits us as well as those around. Good food and exercise and sunlight. A bad mood turned right-side up. Attention to our actions, what examples they offer, and how to stoke the flame of living beyond reproach. Maybe even a warm fire and a kettle on the coals, and a coal to offer the one who shows up, drawn by the glow, that he might light whatever it is he’s gathered.