Step 3 of 12 · Sorrow and Healing
The pine on the hill
Why this step
Stanza 50 is a picture of loneliness: a pine on a hill withers, with neither bark nor needles to shelter it, and so does a man whom nobody loves. The entry says it is often read today as a picture of how much we depend on the people who shelter us. A sorrow carried alone leads to the next question, which is whom to let in.
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.
From the Lorebook
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.