Hávamál
The pine on the hill
A pine standing on a hill with no bark or needles to shelter it wastes away. The speaker compares it to a man whom nobody loves.
Reference: stanza 50 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanza 50
50.
The pine tree wastes which is perched on the hill,
nor bark nor needles shelter it;
such is the man whom none doth love;
for what should he longer live?
- 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 50 (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 pine tree that stands on a hill withers away, with neither bark nor needles to shelter it. The same is true of a man whom nobody loves; the speaker asks what he should go on living for.
- 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 50 (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 often read as a picture of loneliness, and of how much we depend on the people who shelter us. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Who is the “bark” in your life, and whose bark are you?