kylec | Slow Havamal: 115

In verse 115, Odin counsels Loddfafnir never to seduce another man’s wife.

Loddfafnir has already heard of the perils of sleeping with certain kinds of women—in particular, sorceresses. Now he’s advised not to sleep with ANY woman who’s already married to another. This might seem like a universal cultural value, enforced with differing degrees of severity. However, there have been a number of documented societies where voluntarily trading spouses was the norm, and it persists among individuals in societies where it’s frowned upon. Early accounts of certain Greenland Eskimo populations come to mind as examples of the former.

Clearly dark age Scandinavia was not a fan. Odin doesn’t describe the fallout in the same detail he provides about the sorceress, but presumably we all know it well-enough. The husband may decide to repay the adulterer with steel. Besides that, a vow has been broken and a family harmed. We don’t take vows very seriously these days, but they carried a lot of weight when people used to believe in the deities they swore to. Breaking a cultural taboo can earn one exile, or at the least a wary eye.

If we consider a culture as a system of behaviors, including a list of those behaviors NOT to engage in, we can grant that a divergence creates instability in the system. Imagine a novel species introduced into a stable ecosystem. Everything there has achieved a balance, and whether or not we understand it, every part of that society plays its role in maintaining that balance. Sure, any worthy system can sustain a few shocks and resettle itself, just as a few adulteries won’t destroy a society that finds them distasteful.

But if they become rampant, the vows and the relationship of marriage lose all meaning—or take on such a different meaning that the effect is the same. If the institution of marriage was an important aspect to the society’s stability, and sleeping with another man’s wife runs a marriage, then the health of the wider community stands at risk. The adulterer satisfies his own desire at the expense of the wider community. In earlier essays, I’ve argued that sacrificing on behalf of the community is a useful definition of virtue. Then sacrificing the community for the self might well be called a vice.

Even if Loddfafnir gives up a little fun, he will benefit more in the long run by being a member in good standing of a stable society, capable of handling shocks and readjusting itself, since those transgressions are in the minority and don’t constitute enough of a problem to destroy a sacred institution.