What is the measure of a day well spent?

Freyja: You ask me for the measure of a day well spent, and the old poems answer you in a voice colder and stranger than the moderns like to hear. There is no talk here of a day filled with pleasure, no counting of small joys. The Hávamál speaks the measure plainly, and it is a hard one. "Give praise to the day at evening, to a weapon which is tried, to ice when it is crossed." So it stands in the Hávamál, stanza 81, as Bellows renders it from the Codex Regius. Hear what that verse is truly saying. You do not praise the day at its dawn. You do not praise it at its noon when the sun is high and everything seems fair. You praise it at evening — when the thing is done, when you know at last what it was. A day is not a promise; a day is a wager. And you count the winnings only when the light is gone. The same verse names a weapon which is tried, and ice when it is crossed. Do you hear the thread? These are all things whose worth is not in the appearance but in the ending. A bright blade may shatter at the first stroke. Smooth ice may drown you. A shining morning may bring you nothing by nightfall but ash. pause The old wisdom will not let you praise a thing until it has proved itself. That is a measure with teeth in it, and I do not think your age much loves such measures. But the Hávamál goes deeper still, into a stranger place. Stanza 54, in the same telling: "A measure of wisdom the fairest lives." And stanza 55 answers it: "A measure of wisdom for the wise man's heart." A measure — not the whole of it, not the flood. Enough, and no more. The verses that surround these in the poem make it plain that the man who knows too much, who has stared too long into every dark corner, does not live the fairest life. He lives a life curdled by his own knowing. So a day well spent is not a day in which you have devoured every truth. It is a day in which you have taken the measure that fits your heart, and left the rest for the wind. Hear also the Sigrdrífumál, stanza 25, where the valkyrie counsels the young hero: "Ill it is... on the day thereafter." The counsel there is against the drunken oath, the hasty word, the thing done in one night whose price is paid in every morning after. A day well spent, then, is also a day that does not poison the days to come. You will know it, again, only at evening — and in all the evenings after. So put these together, as the old poets meant them to be put. A day well spent is one you can praise at its ending because the weapon held, because the ice bore you, because you took the measure of wisdom your heart could hold and no more, and because tomorrow will not curse you for it. That is the whole hard shape of it. Not joy — proof. Not fullness — fitness. And you cannot know until the sun goes down. I will tell you what my own eyes have seen in the poems: the ones who tried to praise the day at dawn were the ones who wept hardest at dusk. And the ones who crossed the ice praising each step were the ones the water took. long-pause The Norse mind is not a cheerful one, but it is honest, and I would rather give you its honesty than a warm lie. What weapon of yours has been tried today, and did it hold? What ice have you crossed, and are you on the far shore of it yet? Sit with that at your own evening, and let the day speak its worth to you in its own time.

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