Love, Longing and Folly

The Hávamál has more to say about love than its reputation suggests, and much of it is about folly, honestly told. This trail follows the poem’s love stories and sayings alongside the cards and runes that share their subject. It has nine entries: one rune, two tarot cards and six passages from the Hávamál.

Some of the poem’s lines about love are sweeping claims about women that most readers today do not accept. This trail leaves those passages out, which remain in the Hávamál index with their own notes. It keeps the stories in which the speaker is the one made a fool of, and the stanzas that treat love-folly gently. Hávamál stanzas are from Olive Bray’s 1908 translation. The connections are editorial choices made for this site, not a claim that the old sources formed one system.