Ætt 1 · Pos. 4

Name

A human.

Meaning

The poems see a person through others. In the English poem a person is loved by their kin and glad among them; in the Icelandic, people are each other’s joy. Hávamál knows it from the road: alone, a traveller goes astray, and meeting another feels like wealth. Kin was made as much as born, through fostering, marriage and oath, and it outlasts death. The English poem knows that all are parted at last, when the body goes back to the earth, and the Nordic poems call people the earth’s own growth. The dead stay with the land, and with their kin.

The poems

English Rune Poem

Human is in gladness
dear to his kin;
yet each one
must fail the other,
because the lord wills,
by his judgement,
that wretched flesh
be given to the earth.

Icelandic Rune Poem

Human is the joy of humans,
and the increase of the earth,
and the adorner of ships.

Norwegian Rune Poem

Human is the increase
of the earth;
great is the hawk’s grip.

Swedish Rune Poem

Human is field of earth.