Hávamál
Better the living
It is better to be alive than dead, and a body with a limitation can still do much. Nobody cares for a corpse.
Reference: stanzas 70–71 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems); Notes to the Hovamol (The Poetic Edda)
The text, stanzas 70–71
70.
More blest are the living than the lifeless,
'tis the living who come by the cow;
I saw the hearth-fire burn in the rich man's hall
and himself lying dead at the door.
71.
The lame can ride horse, the handless drive cattle,
the deaf one can fight and prevail,
'tis happier for the blind than for him on the bale-fire,
for no man hath care for a corpse.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 70–71 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
In plain English
The living are more blessed than the lifeless; it is the living who get the cow. The speaker saw the hearth fire burning in a rich man’s hall and the man himself lying dead at the door.
The lame man can ride, the man without hands can drive cattle, the deaf man can fight and win. It is better to be blind than to lie on the funeral pyre, because nobody has any care for a corpse.
- Olive Bray (editor and translator), The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems (opens in a new tab) (1908), stanzas 70–71 (Bray’s numbering) Rights: Public domain. Published in 1908, so in the public domain in the United States. Text as edited online by D. L. Ashliman, Folklore and Mythology Electronic Texts, University of Pittsburgh.
In the manuscripts and scholarship
The first line of the stanza that begins “it is better to live” is not what the Codex Regius has. The manuscript reads “and a worthy life” where editors now print “than to lie a corpse”. Bellows says the emendation was suggested by Rask as early as 1818 and that most editors have followed him, so the line as printed on this page is an editor’s repair of a faulty manuscript reading. The stanza belongs to the poem’s first section, the collection of everyday counsels.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936), Notes to the Hovamol
Modern interpretation
Today this is often read as a statement that a limit is not the end of your usefulness. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Which of your limits have you counted as ending something, when this stanza would count them only as limits?