Icelandic Wisdom Quotes

Blíndur er bóklaus ma∂ur. Blind is a man without a book.

Many are brave but do not redden their sword in the chest of another.

Odin’s wisdom is embodied in Hávamál (‘The Sayings of the High One’), a collection of anonymous Viking Age gnomic verses supposed to have been composed by Odin and preserved in a single thirteenth century Icelandic manuscript. Hávamál is not concerned with metaphysical questions, only with the kind of pragmatic common-sense wisdom valued by practical people. Cultivate friendships, never take hospitality for granted and repay gifts with gifts. Do not make enemies unnecessarily or pick foolish fights. On campaign, keep your weapons close to hand. Do not drink too much mead or ale, it robs a man of his wits. If you do not know what you are talking about, keep quiet: it is better to listen. Exercise caution in business and always beware of treachery and double dealing. Always deal honestly yourself except with your enemies: deceive them if you can. The advice is sometimes contradictory: Hávamál berates the coward who thinks he will live forever if he avoids fighting while also declaring that it is better to be a live dog than a dead lion.

What are the implications of ethnic identity for multi-racial and multi-ethnic societies? Tatu Vanhanen of the University of Tampere, Finland, has probably researched the effects of ethnic diversity more systematically than anyone else. In a massive, book-length study, he measured ethnic diversity and levels of conflict in 148 countries, and found correlations in the 0.5 to 0.9 range for the two variables, depending on how the variables were defined and measured. Homogeneous countries like Japan and Iceland show very low levels of conflict, while highly diverse countries like Lebanon and Sudan are wracked with strife. Prof. Vanhanen found tension in all multi-ethnic societies: “Interest conflicts between ethnic groups are inevitable because ethnic groups are genetic kinship groups and because the struggle for existence concerns the survival of our own genes through our own and our relatives’ descendants.” Prof. Vanhanen also found that economic and political institutions make no difference; wealthy, democratic countries suffer from sectarian strife as much as poor, authoritarian ones: “Ethnic nepotism belongs to human nature and . . . it is independent from the level of socioeconomic development (modernization) and also from the degree of democratization.” Others have argued that democracy is particularly vulnerable to ethnic tensions while authoritarian regimes like Saddam Hussein’s Iraq or Tito’s Yugoslavia can give the impression of holding it in check. One expert writing in Foreign Affairs explained that for democracy to work “the party or group that loses has to trust the new majority and believe that its basic interests will still be protected and that there is nothing to fear from a change in power.” He wrote that this was much less likely when opposing parties represent different races or ethnicities. The United Nations found that from 1989 to 1992 there were 82 conflicts that had resulted in at least 1,000 deaths each. Of these, no fewer than 79, or 96 percent, were ethnic or religious conflicts that took place within the borders of recognized states. Only three were cross-border conflicts. Wars between nations are usually ethnic conflicts as well. Internal ethnic conflict has very serious consequences. As J. Philippe Rushton has argued, “The politics of ethnic identity are increasingly replacing the politics of class as the major threat to the stability of nations.” One must question the wisdom of then-president Bill Clinton’s explanation for the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia: “[T]he principle we and our allies have been fighting for in the Balkans is the principle of multi-ethnic, tolerant, inclusive democracy. We have been fighting against the idea that statehood must be based entirely on ethnicity.” That same year, the American supreme commander of NATO, Wesley Clark, was even more direct: “There is no place in modern Europe for ethnically pure states. That’s a 19th century idea and we are trying to transition into the 21st century, and we are going to do it with multi-ethnic states.

I imagine the mad forces that might have conspired to produce all this, the arcane weaving of threads that ends with me on a dirt road in Iceland. It was impossible. It required the gathering of whole constellations, a harvest of countless stars funneled into a single cup and rolled out, a pair of sixes, a million times in perfect succession. But it had happened. Already I'd seen the proof of it and held it in my hands. And it happened again every moment, for surely the meeting of any two souls required the same arithmetic. If it seemed improbable, maybe that was only my own narrowness of vision. Mireille said there might not be an end to this. But if I could reach an ending, was it possible that the veil would be lifted, that I'd rise to a higher vantage point and see something utterly simple, the purest design of all?

She had the courage to retain compassion, the intelligence and strength to grow wisdom. This is the meaning of resilience.

Then spoke Gangleri: 'Where is the chief centre or holy place of the gods?' High replied: 'It is at the ash Yggdrasil. There the gods must hold their courts each day.' Then spoke Gangleri: 'What is there to tell about that place?' Then said Just-as-high: 'The ash is of all trees the biggest and best. Its branches spread out over all the world and extend across the sky. Three of the tree's roots support it and extend very, very far. One is among the Æsir, the second among the frost-giants, where Ginnungagap once was. The third extends over Niflheim, and under that root is Hvergelmir, and Nidhogg gnaws the bottom of the root. But under the root that reaches towards the frost-giants, there is where Mimir's well is, which has wisdom and intelligence contained in it, and the master of the well is called Mimir. He is full of learning because he drinks of the well from the horn Giallarhorn. All-father went there and asked for a single drink from the well, but he did not get one until he placed his eye as a pledge. Thus it says in Voluspa: I know it all, Odin, where you deposited your eye, in that renowned well of Mimir. Mimir drinks mead every morning from Val-father's pledge. Know you yet, or what?

The omnipotence of God makes no sense if it requires the all-causingness of God. Good people quit God altogether at this point, and throw out the baby with the bath, perhaps because they last looked into God in their childhoods, and have not changed their views of divinity since. It is not the tooth fairy. In fact, even Aquinas dissolved the fatal problem of natural, physical evil by tinkering with God’s omnipotence. Again, Paul writes to the Christians in Rome: “In all things God works for the good of those who love him.” When was that? I missed it. In China, in Israel, in the Yemen, in the Ecuadoran Andes and the Amazon basin, in Greenland, Iceland, and Baffin Island, in Europe, on the shore of the Beaufort Sea inside the Arctic Circle, and in Costa Rica, in the Marquesas Islands and the Tuamotus, and in the United States, I have seen the rich sit secure on their thrones and send the hungry away empty. If God’s escape clause is that he gives only spiritual things, then we might hope that the poor and suffering are rich in spiritual gifts, as some certainly are, but as some of the comfortable are too. Maybe “all your actions show your wisdom and love” means that the precious few things we know that God did, and does, are in fact unambiguous in wisdom and love, and all other events derive not from God but only from blind chance, just as they seem to. What, then, of the bird-headed dwarfs? It need not craze us, I think, to know we are evolving, like other living forms, according to physical processes. Statistical probability describes the mechanism of evolution—chance operating on large numbers— That is, evolution’s “every success is necessarily paid for by a large percentage of failures.” In order to live at all, we pay “a mysterious tribute of tears, blood, and sin.