What should I teach the young about courage?

Óðinn: # On What to Teach the Young of Courage You ask me what to teach the young of courage. Sit, then. I will not give you a lesson to nail on a wall. I will open the old verses, and you will see what they held to be true — and what they would not lie about, even to a child. Begin here, at the Hávamál, verse forty-eight. The lives of the brave and noble are best — sorrows they seldom feel. But the coward fears all things. That is the old counsel, plain as a stone. Mark what it does not say. It does not say the brave live long. It does not say the brave are spared. It says their sorrows are fewer — because the coward pays sorrow twice: once in the dreading and once in the thing itself, and often a third time in the shame after. pause Teach the young that fear paid in advance is fear wasted. The blow, when it comes, is only the blow. The coward suffers it a hundred times before it lands, and once more when it does. Then turn to the Helgakvitha Hundingsbana, the first lay, verse twenty-one. "Fear him not," the poem says — spoken to steady a fighter before the weapons clash, before the unwilling meet the willing. Teach the young this: courage is not the absence of an enemy worth fearing. Courage is the word spoken to a companion whose knees have gone soft. Half of bravery in the old tales is not what one man does alone — it is what one steady voice does for the man beside him. The young should learn to be that voice. The world has need of it. Now hear Hogni in the Atlamol, verse thirty-two, when the doom is closing and the household is loud with talk: "Take courage, ye wise ones — though many may speak, words avail little." pause There is the harder teaching. Many will speak. Words avail little. Courage is not the loud thing; it is the thing done when the talking is finished and the talking did not help. Teach the young to mistrust the mouth that boasts of its own bravery — that mouth has not yet been tested. The brave in the old poems are often the quiet ones, who see the thing that must be done and set their shoulder to it without oratory. And there is a further edge to be taught, that the sagas do not soften. In the Heimskringla, in the preface to the tale of Stiklastad, a chief speaks before the battle against King Olaf — and hear what he says: if the leaders show fear, "the spirit will leave their hearts, and the next thing will be that each will seek his own safety." One man's fear is a plague. It runs from heart to heart like fire in dry grass. Teach the young that their courage is not only their own — it is a thing owed to those beside them. To flinch when others watch you is to steal courage from them. This is a hard word, but it is true, and the young are strong enough to hear it. Yet do not teach them that courage is recklessness. In the same passage the chief says plainly: if the leaders are not confident, "we had better not risk a battle." Even the old warriors knew — the brave man is not the one who rushes every fight. He is the one who knows which fight is his, and, having chosen it, does not flinch. The Lokasenna sneers at the god who is bold in his seat but will not go out and fight. Teach the young to fear that shame more than they fear the blow — the shame of the loud tongue and the still feet. long-pause So what shall you tell them, in the end? Not that they will be spared. Not that the brave live. Cattle die, kinsmen die, and they themselves will die — this the old book says elsewhere, and I will not hide it from the young either. Tell them, rather, that fear paid before the hour is fear thrown into the sea. Tell them that a steady word to a shaking friend is worth more than a boast. Tell them that when the many are speaking and the words avail little, someone must move — and it may as well be them. Tell them their courage is a gift they give to those beside them, and their cowardice is a theft. And when they ask you — as they will — what if I am afraid anyway? — do not lie. Tell them the brave are afraid too. The poems do not say otherwise. The poems say only that the brave act, and the coward waits, and the waiting is the longer sorrow. pause What courage will you ask of them first, do you think — the courage to act, or the courage to speak steady to another? These are not the same road, and the young often have one before the other.

This conversation was had on Skalden — walk into the Norse world.