One of the foremost Haavamaal experts, Ludvig Holm-Olsen, points out that:

"Here, but not on Iceland, the Heron flies (13), the young pines and oak grow (50,137), the wolf hunts (50,58), the reindeer run in the mountain (90), monuments of stone crowd the road (72), the kings ruled (15, 86, 114, 146) and here it was customary to burn corpses (71, 81) a custom that was abolished with the arrival of Christianity and a custom was not common in Iceland.... We can therefore be fairly certain that large parts of Haavamaal were Norwegian poetry that the Icelanders have taken care of."