Hávamál
Do not blame the lover
No one should blame another for what love has led them into. A fair form can catch the wise, and the might of love makes fools of once-wise people.
Reference: stanzas 91–92 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanzas 91–92
91.
-- Never a whit should one blame another
whom love hath brought into bonds:
oft a witching form will fetch the wise
which holds not the heart of fools.
92.
Never a whit should one blame another
for a folly which many befalls;
the might of love makes sons of men
into fools who once were wise.
- 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 91–92 (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
No one should ever blame another whom love has brought into its bonds. A bewitching form will often fetch a wise man, while it does not hold the heart of fools.
Again, no one should blame another for a folly that comes to many. The might of love makes fools of the sons of men who were once wise.
- 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 91–92 (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.
How the stanzas are built
Stanzas 91 and 92 open with the same line, “Never a whit should one blame another”, and then give two reasons: that a fair form can catch the wise, and that love makes fools of the wise.
- 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 91–92 (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
These lines sit in the long stretch of the poem about love and women. The whole poem survives in the Codex Regius, written in Iceland around 1270. Bellows, whose edition numbers these stanzas two higher than this page, treats stanzas 81 to 95 as an introductory passage on women’s faithlessness and thinks it probably entered the poem first, drawing in the story of Billing’s daughter as an illustration.
Bellows also notes that from stanza 81 the verse form changes, and he reads the stretch up to 102 as a sign of how the poem grew by piecemeal additions. Wikipedia’s summary likewise calls 81 to 102 an ad hoc insertion. Neither claims to know who joined the pieces or when.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936)
- Wikipedia, Hávamál (opens in a new tab)
Modern interpretation
Today this is often read as an unusually kind moment in the poem: love-folly is common, so judge it gently. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Whom have you judged for something love or longing made them do? What would you say to them now?