Hávamál
The Fatling’s sons
The Fatling’s sons once had full folds of stock and now carry beggars’ staffs. Wealth is brief and the most faithless of friends.
Reference: stanza 77 (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, stanza 77
77.
Full-stocked folds had the Fatling's sons,
who bear now a beggar's staff:
brief is wealth, as the winking of an eye,
most faithless ever of friends.
- 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 77 (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 Fatling’s sons had their folds full of stock and now carry a beggar’s staff. Wealth lasts only as long as the winking of an eye and is the most faithless of friends.
- 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 77 (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.
Where it sits
Stanza 77 follows the two “cattle die” stanzas (75 and 76, the passage “What does not die”) and turns from what lasts to what does not: wealth.
- 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 77 (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
Bellows numbers this stanza 76. In the Codex Regius it stands after the two “cattle die” stanzas, since the manuscript order he gives is 77, 78, 76, 80, 79, 81, so editors have moved it earlier.
Bellows glosses Fitjung, which he translates “the Nourisher”, as a name for Earth, so the “sons of Fitjung” are probably people, children of the earth, whose well-stocked folds have gone and who now carry the beggar’s staff. Bray’s “Fatling” renders the same name. The stanza closes with wealth as quick as the blink of an eye, the falsest of friends.
- Henry Adams Bellows (translator), The Poetic Edda (1936), Notes to the Hovamol
Modern interpretation
Read today, this is a statement about how quickly fortune turns. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- What do you rely on that could vanish as fast as a flock?