Norns

Summary

The norns are women in Norse myth who decide the lifespans and fates of people. The best known are three, Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld, who live at the well of Urðr under a root of the tree Yggdrasil. In Völuspá the seeress says: from there come maidens knowing much, three from the lake beneath the tree; one is called Urðr, the second Verðandi, the third Skuld; they carved on slips of wood, laid down laws, and chose lives for the children of men and the fates of men.

Snorri adds in Gylfaginning that a fair hall stands by the well, from which the three maidens come, and that they shape people's lives. Then he says there are other norns who come to every child that is born to shape its life, some of the gods' kin, some of the elves', some of the dwarves'. Gangleri objects that the norns share out fates very unequally, some people having a good life and a long one, others poverty and a short one, and is told that good norns of good descent shape a good life, and that when people meet misfortune, evil norns are the cause. Every day the norns take water from the well with the clay that lies around it and pour it over the tree so that its branches neither dry nor rot, and the water is so holy that whatever falls into it turns white like the membrane inside an eggshell. To this well the Æsir ride every day over the bridge Bifröst to hold their court. The youngest norn, Skuld, also rides with the Valkyries to battle to choose the slain.

In the heroic poems they appear at births. On the night the hero Helgi was born the norns came to the house, twisted the threads of his fate with all their strength, fastened golden cords beneath the moon's hall, and hid the ends in the east and the west, so that his land lay between them; one of them cast a thread to the north and bade it hold for ever. The dwarf Andvari says that "a wretched norn" shaped him in ancient days to live in water. And the two brothers at the end of Hamðismál, facing death, say that no man lives an evening after the norns' verdict.

The idea the story turns on is that fate is laid down at birth and kept up every day. The norns choose a life when a child is born and set down laws, then return each morning to the same task, watering the tree that holds up the world so that it does not die. Fate in this story is both a verdict and a form of care. Men know that it limits their lives and accept it, as the brothers of Hamðismál do, and they explain the unequal shares of luck by good norns and evil ones.

We read the name in the Arabic tongue like this. The project's Semitic essay reads Old English wyrd, fate, as Arabic warada, so that fate is al-wārid, what comes upon a person. Wyrd is the same word as Urðr: the final r of Urðr is the Old Norse nominative ending, and Norse dropped the w at the start of the word, as it did at the start of Odin's name, while Old English kept it. The word is w, r, d, the letters of warada. In Lane, warada al-māʾ is to come to the water to drink from it, warada ʿalayhi amrun lam yuṭiqhu is "a thing befell him which he could not master", and the mawrid is the watering place one comes to. On this reading Urðr is "what has come": what arrived and befell, which is what the story makes it, a fate that befalls people, and a well to which the gods come every day. Verðandi is from the same verb, verða, to become, happen, in the form of a present participle: "the one arriving".

Linguistic Root

Urðr, Verðandi and warada

Cleasby and Vigfusson give urðr as "a weird, fate", set it beside Old English wyrd, note that it is obsolete in prose and survives in poetry, and add that it is the name of one of the three norns. They give Verðandi as "the 'Being'" and Skuld as "a debt, due", from skulu. Orel derives Germanic *wurþiz from the verb *werþanan, to become, the source of verða. Bosworth–Toller gives Old English wyrd as "what happens, fate, fortune, chance", notes that scribes used it to gloss Latin Parcae, the Fates, and quotes Beowulf, "fate goes ever as it must", and The Wanderer, "fate is fully fixed".

Lane gives warada al-māʾ, "he came to the water, whether he entered it or not", warada ʿalaynā, "he came to us", warada ʿalayhi amrun lam yuṭiqhu, "a thing befell him which he was unable to master", and waradathu al-ḥummā, "the fever attacked him periodically". The mawrid is a watering place, and the wārida is the road by which one comes to water.

The sounds follow the Juthoor sound laws. W is w, and in Verðandi it is a v pronounced close to w; r is r; Norse ð and Old English d answer Arabic d, and d, ð and t run together in the Germanic languages. The loss of w before u at the start of a word is a known rule of Old Norse. The core sense is the same on both sides: the Germanic verb "to become, happen", the Arabic verb "to come, befall", and fate in both is what comes upon a person.

Norn and Skuld

Cleasby and Vigfusson give no origin for norn, and the Semitic essay does not read it. We read it, as a proposal on the method, with Arabic nīr: Lane gives nīr as the woof of a cloth and as the canes and threads of the loom when they are put together, and records the saying huwa yusdī al-umūra wa-yunīruhā, "he commences things and completes them", and "you are neither a munīr nor a mulḥim in this affair". On this reading a norn is the one who holds the woof, who weaves an affair and finishes it, which is what the norns do when they twist and fasten the threads of Helgi's fate. N is n and r is r; what remains is that norn has o where nīr has ī, and that its final n has no counterpart.

We read Skuld, on the same method, with qalada: in Lane qalada al-ḥabla is to twist a rope, a qild is a single strand of a rope, qalladahu al-amra is to lay an affair on someone as an obligation, and qalada al-zarʿa is to water growing crops. The Arabic word joins twisting, obligation and watering, which are the norns' tasks: they twist threads, bind people to their fates and water the tree. Q answers k, l and d remain, and a debt in Norse is a due one is bound to, as an affair is laid on one's neck. What remains is the initial s, which qalada does not supply.

The Semitic essay sets Norse fate beside naṣīb and qisma, allotted share, in Arabic tradition, and beside the Greek Moirai.

Key Mythic Narratives

The hero Sigurðr asks the dying dragon Fáfnir about the norns who come to women in childbirth and free mothers of their children, and is told that they are of very different birth and share no kindred: some of the Æsir, some of the elves, some daughters of the dwarf Dvalinn; this is the stanza Snorri quotes.

Sigrdrífumál lists the places on which runes were carved, among them "the norn's nail", and Völuspá says the norns carved on slips of wood, so their fate is something written.

Another stanza of Völuspá names Skuld among the Valkyries ready to ride, so one name joins the norn who decrees and the Valkyrie who chooses the slain.

Symbolic Reading

The essay "Rereading Norse Myths" reads the three norns as past, present and future, and calls their work the recording of history. The names support it, Urðr "what has become", Verðandi "what is becoming", Skuld "what shall be" or "what is owed", and so does their carving on wood. The older poems, however, make the norns a large company of different origins present at every birth, so the threefold division into times describes the three at the well, not all the norns.

Cross-Cultural Parallels

In the Enūma eliš Tiamat fastens the Tablet of Destinies to the chest of Kingu, who decrees destinies for her followers, and Marduk then takes it from him. Fate there is a tablet owned by a ruler and seized in war; with the norns it is the work of women at a well, who decree and water every day, and none of the gods owns it. Nabu stands as the writer of destinies in Babylon, and the norns carve on wood, so in both fate is something written. The norns meet the Valkyries in Skuld, and Mímir's well in that each well under the tree has its own work: wisdom at Mímir's, judgment and watering at Urðr's. The threads of fate run to their end at Ragnarök, where what was decreed falls on the gods themselves.