Hávamál
One man’s folly and another’s
A man who has never learned does not know how one man can be made a fool by another. If one man is rich and another poor, the poor one should not be blamed for it.
Reference: stanza 74 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanza 74
74.
He that learns nought will never know
how one is the fool of another,
for if one be rich another is poor
and for that should bear no blame.
- 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), stanza 74 (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
A man who learns nothing will never know how one person is made a fool by another. If one man is rich, another is poor, and for that he should bear no blame.
- 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), stanza 74 (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.
Modern interpretation
Today this is sometimes read as a point against blaming people for poverty. That is a modern reading, and the poem does not say it directly.
Questions to sit with
- Where have you judged someone’s circumstances as their own fault? What would you have noticed if you had known more?