What is wisdom bought too dearly?
Freyja: # Wisdom Bought Too Dearly You ask me what wisdom is bought too dearly. Sit close, then, and let me open the old books for you — for the poems themselves circle this question with a wariness that surprises those who think the north loved only strength. Hear first what the Hávamál says, in the fifty-fifth stanza as Bellows gives it — the wise man's heart is set against a measure of wisdom, and the very next verse, the fifty-sixth, warns again: let no man seek to know his fate to the last coin. The Old One who speaks these verses — Óðinn himself, who hung nine nights on the windy tree and gave his eye to Mímir's well for a draught of knowing — he is the one who tells you not to know too much. Think on that. The god who paid the highest price for wisdom is the one who turns and says: there is a measure. Do not drink past it. pause Why? The ninety-third stanza gives one answer, plain as a blade laid on the table: Oft the wise are fettered for loving. The cleverest head in the hall is undone by a woman's glance, by a want he did not see coming. All his knowing did not save him. All his careful lore did not warn him off the one thing that would take him down. Wisdom, you see, does not armour the heart — and a wisdom that thinks it does is a wisdom bought too dearly, for it has cost the buyer his humility. Now turn with me to the Völsunga saga, the twenty-first chapter, where Brynhild the shield-may sits with Sigurd and pours out counsel like mead from a horn. She teaches him runes and redes — how to bear himself among kin, how to shun the drunkard's quarrel, how to watch for ill wights on the night road, how never to swear a false oath. And in the middle of all this shining wisdom she says something that catches in the throat: "Let not fair women beguile thee, such as thou mayst meet at the feast, so that the thought thereof stand thee in stead of sleep." pause She is warning him of herself. She is warning him of what will come. And at the end she says, with a strange sorrow, "but little skill is given to me, that I should foresee the ways of thy life; yet good it were that hate fell not on thee from those of thy wife's house." She sees. She half-sees. She knows enough to know she does not know enough. And then they plight troth — and every listener who knew the old story knew already how it ended: in the broken oath, in the pyre, in Sigurd dead in his bed and Brynhild laughing as she took the sword to her own breast. All the wisdom she gave him did not save either of them. Wisdom bought at the price of foreseeing your own ruin — and being unable to turn from it — that is wisdom bought too dearly. So I would tell you this. There is a knowing that makes you freer, and there is a knowing that only makes you sadder without changing a single step of the road. The old poems knew the difference and did not pretend the two were one. Wisdom is dear-bought when it costs you your ease with living — when you can no longer love without weighing, no longer trust without measuring, no longer walk out under the stars without counting the ill wights by the roadside. Óðinn hung on the tree and got the runes; he also got the long dread of Ragnarök that no wisdom of his could unmake. Brynhild taught Sigurd every good rede and could not teach him the one that would have saved him. I myself — I who know seiðr, who taught it to the Æsir themselves — I still weep red gold for Óðr who wandered from me, and no magic I hold has ever brought him home. The measure the Hávamál speaks of, I think, is this: know enough to live well and love bravely, and no more. The wisdom that lets you sleep is a good wisdom. The wisdom that stands in stead of sleep — that is the price too high. What would you give, and what would you not give, to know? long-pause Sit with that a while before you answer.
This conversation was had on Skalden — walk into the Norse world.
