Step 6 of 9 · Endings, Mourning and What Lasts
Better the living
Why this step
Stanzas 70 and 71 argue from the other side. The living are more blessed than the lifeless, and the speaker saw a hearth fire burning in a rich man’s hall with the man himself dead at the door. The lame can ride, the handless can drive cattle, and nobody has any care for a corpse. The entry reads part of this as saying that a limit is not the end of your usefulness.
The text, stanzas 70–71
70.
More blest are the living than the lifeless,
'tis the living who come by the cow;
I saw the hearth-fire burn in the rich man's hall
and himself lying dead at the door.
71.
The lame can ride horse, the handless drive cattle,
the deaf one can fight and prevail,
'tis happier for the blind than for him on the bale-fire,
for no man hath care for a corpse.
- 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 70–71 (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.
From the Lorebook
It is better to be alive than dead, and a body with a limitation can still do much. Nobody cares for a corpse.