Hávamál
Three images of unsafe ground
The love of women whose thoughts are lies is likened to a young horse driven over ice, a ship steered without a rudder in a wild wind, and a lame man chasing a reindeer on thawing fell.
Reference: stanza 88 (Bray’s numbering) (The Elder or Poetic Edda, Commonly Known as Sæmund’s Edda, part I: The Mythological Poems)
The text, stanza 88
88.
Like the love of women whose thoughts are lies
is the driving un-roughshod o'er slippery ice
of a two year old, ill-tamed and gay;
or in a wild wind steering a helmless ship,
or the lame catching reindeer in the rime-thawed fell.
- 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 88 (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 love of women whose thoughts are lies is like driving a two-year-old that has not been roughshod over slippery ice, ill-tamed and frisky. It is like steering a rudderless ship in a wild wind, or like a lame man trying to catch a reindeer on a fell thawing from the frost.
- 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 88 (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
As with stanza 83, the claim about women is a generalisation that most readers now reject. The three pictures work on their own as images of acting where you cannot keep your footing. That is a modern reading.
Questions to sit with
- Where are you trying to move quickly on ground that will not hold you?