Step 1 of 9 · Friendship and Trust
Man is the joy of man
Why this step
The trail starts with a lost young traveller. In stanza 47 the speaker walked alone and bewildered, found another person and felt rich. “Man is the joy of man” is one of the poem’s most quoted lines, and the entry points out that the poem is describing that one traveller, not making a general claim. It gives the starting question: what do we actually get from other people?
The text, stanza 47
47.
Young was I once, I walked alone,
and bewildered seemed in the way;
then I found me another and rich I thought me,
for man is the joy of man.
- 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 47 (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
The speaker remembers being young, alone and lost on the road, and the wealth he felt on finding another person.