kylec | Slow Havamal: 76

The 76th verse states that cows and family die, and you will die the same way. However, your good reputation, well-earned, never dies.

Crawford notes parallels between this verse and the “vanities” of Ecclesiastes, as well as sentiments in other Old Norse sources, and the Old English poem The Wanderer. The transience of the material body and material relations has struck more than a few authors over the millennia. But there are aspects that live on, and Havamal suggests we turn our attention to them.

Specifically, we should cultivate a good reputation. This, Odin says, never dies. The catch is that it isn’t happened upon by chance, or stolen from a distracted friend. A good reputation can only be earned, I assume painstakingly. A reputation is what others say about us. That means it’s based on conspicuous—and sometimes subtle—deeds observable by others. When we are kind, or strong, or honest, people notice, and whatever they notice for good or ill, they will not hesitate to chatter about. A single decent act is hardly enough for a reputation, and maybe not enough to catch someone’s attention. It’s the pattern of behavior that matters. We are our most common actions, provided they remain unspoiled by vile contradictions.

I have argued elsewhere that the most sensible definition of a virtue is a category of behaviors that benefits the community to which one belongs. This fine reputation you’re earning is liable to fall within a range of words that others see as desirable traits for family and neighbors. Virtuous acts often involve giving more than you take, placing yourself behind and below others, and sacrificing the easy route, the comfortable resting place, for the enrichment of your people. It requires skin in the game—not empty virtue-signaling. I don’t mean to say that a virtuous life is miserable. There are plenty of virtues that are pleasant and immediately rewarding to engage in. But we do have to give up the more visceral pleasures at times. A comfort foregone today can be a boon tomorrow, not because asceticism and suffering is in itself noble, but because when it’s well-chosen, others benefit, and they will remember.

All this talk of dead cows and relatives reminds us that few things about us will last. A reputation is one of them. We can see this as stories, or a legacy, but I want to think of it in more interesting terms. It might be akin to the physical corpse we leave. Unlike our carbon bodies, though, this one isn’t dead. It can continue to grow and evolve, to influence people in unexpected ways. It may soon become “inaccurate” from a pure factual standpoint if it swells too much. Doesn’t a man grow when he’s left to live in good health? The notion a reputation should remain static makes as little sense as freezing our age and personality at one stage. An excellent reputation can overcome many shortcomings in life as it grows in strength and inspires others beyond what we were able to do in our physical presence.

It’s perhaps more like a child than anything. We have a hand in shaping it at first, but it outlives us, and will mature via its own inertia once we’re gone. There’s no controlling what happens. Good men have been vilified later, and scoundrels earn a charm they never had in life. The best we can do is to make it consistent while we live.

The reputation is not the soul, but maybe they’re kin. It contains vestiges of the personality, but a deeper current of the evolving character—those innate qualities beyond your personal tastes. Regardless what we may think happens after death, we have seen too many reputations haunting our world like ghosts to deny their power. In that sense, we prepare for our afterlives every day, in every word, deed after deed.