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Hávamál, The Saying of Odin, Stanza 26
Hail and welcome! This is Huginn's Heathen Hof, with your Daily Hávamál.
Original-
Ósnotr maðr
þykkisk alt vita
ef hann á sér í vá veru
hitki hann veit
hvat hann skal við kveða
ef hans freista firar
Translation-
The fool thinks
he knows everything,
when he's all alone.
He only discovers his ignorance
when questioned by other men
-Hávamál: Stanza 26
A while back, (When talking about Stanza 18) I mentioned the concept of "Armchair Anthropologists". Those people who write about far off places as if they know what they're talking about, even if they've never left their living room. Stanza 26 is hitting on a similar kind of idea.
It's easy to think you know everything about a topic, when there's nobody there to confront you about the gaps in your knowledge. We all do it! We watch survivor and we're convinced we could have done it better. We watch the big game and we KNOW we could have called that better than the referee. We read about our nations politics, and we're just SURE that our leaders must be complete idiots. It's so easy to say "I could have done that better" from the comfort of our couch.
Stanza 26 reminds us that we probably don't know all of the details, so maybe we should learn more about the situation before we rush to judge those involved.
Today's "Daily Hávamál" was brought to you by Huginn's Heathen Hof.
