5.0.0 SO WHAT IS A NORN? The Actual Reference Material

5.1.0 As far as the “classical” version of Norse Mythology is concerned, the Norns are pretty much just backdrop characters:

As we scan the landscape of Asgard we see a cave (or manor) nestled beneath the root of Yggdrasil that grows there with a spring welling forth and filling a pool or well. White swans swim on the surface and the rocks and root surfaces around it are a pure white as high as a person could reach from their being coated daily with clay and water from the spring. Living in the cave (or manor) are three sisters, one an older woman (Urdr), one a motherly figure (Verdandi), and one a young girl (Skuld), perhaps clad as a warrior. They are often seen watering and tending to the root of the world tree they live under, or are seated on a rise before it either spinning a cord, weaving a cloth, or carving and reading runes on strips of bark taken from Yggdrasil,. Periodically, the youngest one will take whatever is being worked on and destroy it, at which point the others will start again on something new.

Nearby is a circle of impressive thrones and benches where the gods gather daily to judge the souls of the dead and discuss matters of great import to the worlds. On occasion, gods such as Odin, or even mortals, come to see them and seek answers concerning the fate of things. The three usually answer these questions in some cryptic manner which is often seemingly unintelligible at first but always prove to be right.

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5.1.2 And that's about it as far as the generic background of the Norns goes. Where they came from, why they have this job, and who gave it to them are all pretty much unknown and uncommented on. To demonstrate, here are some excerpts from the Eddas, the Poetic Edda and Snorri Sturluson's Prose Edda concerning Yggdrasil, Mimir, and the Norns. They represent nearly all the direct source material for the standard version of the Norns.

Excerpted from the Poetic Edda:
(Commentary is my own interpretations.)

4.
Before Bur's sons
raised up heaven's vault,
they who the noble
mid-earth shaped.
The sun shone from the south
over the structure's rocks:
then was the earth begrown
with herbage green.

Vegetation grew all over Midgard/(new)Jotunheim as soon as the sun appeared over it, this was before the gods had created the dome of the sky that covers it.

5.
The sun from the south,
the moon's companion,
her right hand cast
about the heavenly horses.
The sun knew not
where she a dwelling had,
the moon knew not
what power he possessed,
the stars knew not
where they had a station.

The heavens are very disorganized, night and day were unsure of when and where they were to do their thing.

6.
Then went the powers all
to their judgment-seats,
the all-holy gods,
and thereon held council:
to night and to the waning moon
gave names;
morn they named,
and mid-day,
afternoon and eve,
whereby to reckon years.

This indicates how the gods organized the sun and the moon to create days and months, thereby systematizing time so it could be measured. Unfortunately. . . .

7.
At tables played at home;
joyous they were; (the gods)
to them was naught
the want of gold,
until there came
Thurs-maidens three, (Thurs means giant, the Norns are of Jotun/giant stock.)
all powerful,
from Jötunheim

With the worlds created and the order of time established, the gods have a period of freedom to relax and just enjoy themselves. There was no need or desire to gather gold or power in order to prepare for any future. Then the Norns arrive and drop a little bombshell on the gods' party, that is, they inform everyone:
For all things that live, mortal or immortal, this life is transitory, good and bad things are going to happen to everyone, and when its over there will be a reckoning and judgment as to what the outcome of that life will be.
By doing so they introduce the desire to alter this fate and future to the divine beings, which leads to a competition amongst Jotuns and gods to amass the power (gold and political strength) in oder to try and control this thing called destiny. The gods manage to negotiate the rights to judge the souls of the mortal beings they will create to live on Midgard. All others will be seemingly determined by the Norns or those who sent them.
Its also possible, considering what happens in the next stanza, that what the Norns bring in addition are the final instructions for how the different worlds are to be finished, which sets the gods to work.

8.
Then went all the power,
to their judgment-seats,
the all-holy gods,
and thereon held council,
who should of the dwarfs
the race create,
from the sea-giant's blood (Yimir)
and livid bones.

One of the actions decided on by the gods is to create the race of dwarves, who by being able to shape and fabricate the physical world around them into new forms will help finish the acts of creation (and perhaps aid the gods in controlling this fate thing).

17.
Until there came three
mighty and benevolent
Æsir to the world
from their assembly.
They found on earth,
nearly powerless,
Ask and Embla,
void of destiny.

18.
Spirit they possessed not,
sense they had not,
blood nor motive powers,
nor goodly colour.
Spirit gave Odin,
sense gave Hoenir,
blood gave Lodur,
and goodly colour.

Having finished up creating the worlds as indicated by the Norns, the gods now create mankind to inhabit the middle one.

19.
I know an ash standing
Yggdrasil hight,
a lofty tree, laved
with limpid water:
thence come the dews
into the dales that fall
ever stands it green
over Urd's fountain.

20.
Thence come maidens,
much knowing,
three from the hall,
which under that tree stands;
Urd hight the one,
the second Verdandi,
on a tablet they graved
Skuld the third.
Laws they established, (the norns)
life allotted
to the sons of men;
destinies pronounced.

The Norns, meanwhile, set up shop under Yggdrasil and start doing their jobs of deciding the fates of people - man, Jotun, elf, dwarf, or god. By specifically naming “the sons of men”, it's SEEMINGLY implied that the other four MAY have the opportunity to argue about their fates in life with the three sisters. Men get what they get, unless the gods actively intervene. (Also, please note that the relative ages of the Norn sisters are not indicated but are all described as Thurs- MAIDENS. The idea of their ages being old, mature, and youthful is maintained in other sources, but their ages are not very far apart. They might even be triplets, such things are common in mythology.)

5.1.3 Prose Edda Transcriptions From The Lost Gods of England by Brian Branston:

“That particular Ash is of all trees the hugest and most stately. Its branches overhang all the worlds and strike out above the heavens. The three roots of the tree, spreading far and wide, support it aloft: one root is with the gods, another with the Frost Giants (where formerly there used to be the Yawning Gulf), and the third stands over Niflheim: under that root is the Roaring Cauldron called Hvergelmir with the dragon Nidhogg gnawing the root from below. But under the root which twists towards the Frost Giants there is Mimir's well (for he is called Mimir who is warden of the well) . Mimir is full of wisdom since he drinks at the well out of Giallarhorn....

The third root of the Ash stands in heaven and beneath it is the spring (exceedingly sacred) named the well of Urdr. That's where the gods have their judgment seat. Every day, over Bifrost the Rainbow Bridge the Powers gallop to it; that's why it is called the Aesir's Bridge....

A hall stands there, fair, under the ash by the well, and out of that hail come three maids, who are called thus: Urdr, Verdandi, Skuld; these maids determine the period of men's lives: we call them Norns; but there are many norns: those who come to each child that is born, to appoint his life; these are of the race of the gods, but the second are of the Elf-people, and the third are of the kindred of the dwarves, as it is said here:
Most sundered in birth I say the Norns are;
they claim no common kin:
Some are of Æsir-kin, some are of Elf-kind,
some are dvalinn's daughters.”
Then said Gangleri: “If the Norns determine the weirds of men, then they apportion exceeding unevenly, seeing that some have a pleasant and luxurious life, but others have little worldly goods or fame; some have long life, others short.” Hárr said: “Good norns and of honorable race appoint good life; but those men that suffer evil fortunes are governed by evil norns.”

There's an eagle roosting in the boughs of the Ash Tree, wise beyond all knowing, and between his eyes sits the hawk Vedrfolnir. A squirrel, by name Ratatosk, darts up and down about the tree bearing spiteful tales between the eagle and Nidhogg. Four stags browse over the branches of the Ash and nibble at the bark. I'll tell you their names: Dainn, Dvalinn, Duneyrr and Durathrorr. And there's such a nest of serpents with Nidhogg in Hvergelmir no tongue could tell their tale....

It is further said that these Norns who dwell by the Well of Urdr take water of the well every day, and with it that clay which lies about the well, and sprinkle it over the Ash, to the end that its limbs shall not wither nor rot; for that water is so holy that all things which come there into the well become as white as the film which lies within the egg-shell, - as is here said:
I know an Ash standing called Yggdrasill,
A high tree sprinkled with snow-white clay;
Thence come the dews in the dale that fall—
It stands ever green above Urdr's Well.
That dew which falls from it onto the earth is called by men honey-dew, and thereon are bees nourished. Two fowls are fed in Urdr's Well: they are called Swans, and from those fowls has come the race of birds which is so called.”

5.1.4 Outside of these sources, what is to be found about the Norns in Norse Mythology is rather fragmentary and incomplete and most of what else is said about them has been the result of scholarly inference and guesswork. Which leads to the next problem, conflicting goals of research.

5.2.0 Who Says What

5.2.1 Most in-depth work on Teutonic/Norse mythology is being done for purely academic purposes. Therefore absolute accuracy and the ability to adequately substantiate claims is essential. Researchers must stick to hard translations of actual text materials and are loath to try and read between the lines without extensive background work. In a field such Teutonic/Norse mythology where the resources are scattered, fragmentary, and diverse in their reliability, source locations and dates of origin, this causes the scholarly works to be rather limited in scope and/or focused on specific areas of document sources or content.

That is why there are so many different interpretations (and even spellings of the names and things) in the world of Teutonic/Norse Mythology. There IS no definitive source and any coherent account is inherently the result of patchwork interpretations of incompatible sources. Most researchers tend to try and avoid the big picture as much as possible for fear of getting mired down in conflicting sources, and those that do try are often involved in bitter conflicts over just how their interpretations resolve those conflicts.

5.2.2 For this reason I've leaned rather heavily on Dr. Rydberg's interpretations of Teutonic/Norse Mythology for the following discussion. While his work is rather old, it's based on fairly solid, academically believable interpretive conventions and he seems to have managed to compile the most complete overview of the subject available that is not almost fiction. His work, however, is not without controversy, as Dr Rydberg's interpretations espouse some rather radical and academically unpopular ideas.

5.2.3 His work was done in Sweden (and in Swedish) in the 1880s through the start of the 20th century and was therefore not very well known outside academic circles in the English speaking world. And what was known was mostly dismissed by the pundits then as being too far out and lacking in sufficient hard evidence to support most of its claims (and it still is in some circles). Still, a close reading shows his research to have been quite thorough in covering all the available source materials of his time and shows how he went to great (and often tedious) lengths to explain his reasoning.

His efforts seem to cover most of the other available source material and it's informative to discover how many of his interpretations have entered the “standard” version through the back door of “critical review of individual elements.” I've been able to trace most of the information about the Norns I've gathered elsewhere back to his books as a POSSIBLE primary source. So while having continuously cross checked his versions of things against some very modern encyclopedic resources and articles about Norse/Teutonic mythology to avoid actually conflicting with the modern sources to any great degree, the following can be said to be highly extracted from his works.


5.3.0 URDR versus HEL

5.3.1 One prime area of contention (as was pointed out to me by Welsper the Cat awhile back when I first used these works as a source) is that according to Dr. Rydberg, Urdr and Hel are the same person. This IS a major shift in the cast and is not to be done lightly, but Dr. Rydberg had done a thorough job of backing up this claim.

5.3.2 The most salient points are that first of all Hel, both the person and the place, are referred to in the mythology long before Loki's daughter is sent there. Therefore there was someone named Hel in charge of the realms of the dead well before Loki's kid turned up. Also the Hel who rules the land of the dead rules all of the dead, not just the damned-to-be-tormented ones. And the guests in her halls are not just human souls but all other intelligent creatures who have ever had organic life, including Jotuns, elves, dwarves, and even gods. She's in many ways the equal in authority and power to the chief of the gods, Odin, in the judgment of the dead, and in fact IS the judge of the non-human dead that come to the underworld, including the gods. Her authority is so great in fact that the very gods must go, humbly hat-in-hand and beg for the return of Baldur, Odin's own son, from her halls. And can't force the issue.

This is a being beyond being trifled with.

And yet we're supposed to accept the mythology that says this being was initially forced to take this job by the same gods who are now helpless to confront her? And that the gods, who sent her alive but crippled into the underworld not as punishment for evil deeds but because they found her appearance unsettling and were worried about how her parents might use her to further their campaign against the rule of these same gods, have therefore given her this powerful position of ruler of the underworld realm of the dead where they now have no authority over her? We're also expected to accept that these gods will also decide to imprison her brother (Fenrir) and father (Loki) in the very heart of this area where she has total authority and the gods have next to none in order to keep the two of them out of circulation?

As more than one researcher has said, none of that makes much sense.

5.3.3 It's far more reasonable to assume Hel is one of the first rank of divine beings, probably dating from the same generation as Odin and his brothers, or possibly older. She's of the old Jotun stock that resembles and inter-marries with the gods and would be one of (or closely related to) the primeval giants that created the lower world from the regions of Niflheim around Hvergelmir. This would place her authority over these lower world regions on a hereditary basis that the gods could never challenge and allow her to negotiate with the gods on afterlife issues as an equal.

5.3.4 As for Loki's daughter, sending her to Hel would be placing her under the authority of someone who would be unaffected by her parents influences but could make good use of her appearance and talents. That there is mythological evidence for this is not surprising. Another name for Loki and Angrboda/Aurboda's little girl is Leikin, and we find her and her handmaidens named as the death-disir of disease. It is she and her assistants that bring (as directed by the Norns) the fatal diseases that end so many lives. During plagues she rides a deformed three legged horse (called appropriately enough a Hel-Horse) through the upper world. While always very dangerous, the diseases brought by the Hel-horse are not always fatal. When they're not, the sick person is regarded as having ransomed their life with the torture and loss of strength the disease has cost them, and in a symbolic sense has "given death a bushel of oats" (that is, to death's horse).

So it makes far more sense that Hel is a separate, older, and more powerful being and Loki's daughter is just one of her assistants with some supervisory authority..

5.3.5 So who is Hel? She rules over both the lands of the blessed dead and the damned, the two combined realms sometimes being called Hel after her but usually considered separately as Hel and Niflhel. Niflhel is that portion of the underworld reserved for souls condemned to die twice and thus suffer their torments immobile and silent. Hel is that region where the blessed dead live (the Elysian Fields) along with the site of the Judgment seats of the gods and (this is important) the place where new souls are prepared and sent to their future mothers. It's also the home of the well of Urdr and the three norns of fate and close by the more pleasant regions of (old)Jotunheim and the lands of the Vanir.

5.3.6 Dr Rydberg seemed to think that fate and death were so closely related in Teutonic/Norse mythology that they were blended into one personality. The ruler of death was the one who could resolve death; but the one who could determine the length of life, and so also could resolve death and the kind of death, was, of course, the goddess of fate. They must therefor be one being. Thus, he says, Urdr and Hel are the same person and has a long list of fairly persuasive reasons why.

5.3.7 I'm still not so sure, it remains possible Hel is actually just a regional administrator under Urdr and the Norns, with Leikin as one of HER middle management team members. This would keep the administration of death separate from the administration of life, but the Teutonic/Norse may not have seen it that way. The mythology works either way. All that said, rather than deal with creating a totally new actor on this mythological stage I'm going to go along with Dr. Rydberg and assume that rather than a name, Hel is the title of the goddess who administers the realm of the dead and that that goddess (for the time being) is Urdr.

What does seem certain is that while the ruler of the dead in Niflhel may someday revolt and join her father in a war against the gods, she's not the all powerful Queen of the dead, and that the Norns have the final say over nearly all issues of the afterlife.


6.0.0 SO WHAT IS A NORN? The Job Description


6.0.1 WHAT DO NORNS DO?
An updated version of an older topic that, oh, my goddess, actual mentions Oh/Ah! My Goddess! For those who might remember this older version, it was created shortly after my initial upgrade from casual OMG fan to obsessed OMG fan and was the result of an indiscriminate scanning of other OMG fan sites, New Age sites, Wiccan sites, old Norse sites, Educational sites, and any other site that the search words, “Norn, Urd, Weird, Verthandi, Skuld, Norse, and about two dozen others led me to. Since then I've tracked down a lot of the primary sources for those oblique references and come to better understand the decentralized nature of Norse mythology. The following will still include most of those earlier comments, only now rewritten to reflect their sources.

6.0.2 While some sources I've encountered seem to imply otherwise, the Norns were never in charge of time or had any authority over it. Time was considered a constant in the Norse world and was just something that was and none of the gods had any authority over it. What the gods HAD done was create the means by which time could be measured, and this had resulted in the recognition of time as a factor in life and history. And this had resulted in the Norns assuming the position of determining how time would effect the lives of gods and men. In this way the Norns were intimately connected to the monitoring of time, so calling in Urd and Skuld to deal with Yggdrasil's clock problem was in character.

6.0.3 As one of their more important tasks the Norns would daily take care of Yggdrasil, tending the root under which they dwelt with water and clay from Urda's well to keep it healthy. There is some confusion as to where this root and Urda's well were located, the classical version says it was in Asgard proper, but the earliest source material places it in the underworld along with Mimir's well and Hvergelmir. Either way, the Norns were responsible for Yggdrasil the world tree's health, so supervising the upkeep and maintenance of Yggdrasil the heavenly computer is also in character.

6.0.4 The Norns also appear to have had something to do with the birth of children, one of components of a new life being a seed or fruit that would grow on Yggdrasil and then fall into Urdr's well. From there it was fished out by the two swan maidens who lived in the well and then given to other disir, or lesser norns, who completed the process. (see 6.3.0) This would fit in with their next function.

6.0.5 But the main purpose of the Norns was to determine the fate of things, men, gods, nations, and the world. While usually seen as spinning or weaving the thread of fate, many sources have the Norns writing it in runes on a split branch or the bark of Yggdrasil (and in one case on a steel shield). At other times they would cast runes to read an individual's future. In the version where they are weaving a cloth out of various threads to display a person's life, Urda selected the threads, Verdandi did the weaving, and Skuld ripped it up when the life was over. (Urd's picky about things, like saki, Bell did have that knitting phase, and Skuld IS rather destructive.)

In the prelude to Wagner's opera “Gotterdammerung” the three Norns are shown sitting beneath a tree spinning. They pass a spindle of cord back and forth between them while relating the story that's happened in the first three operas. As they finish this recap, the thread they're handling suddenly breaks. In silence the three figures gather their implements and leave the stage. The end of the reign of the old gods is at hand and their job is finished. This determination was a team effort on the part of the three sisters, each having their part to play in the process:

6.0.5.1 Urda was the Norn of the past, or more accurately perhaps "that which has become" or "the past as it affects the present". Her job was to gather or select materials (from what had happened in the past) and combine them into the basic elements from which the present could be created. In a personal vein, she chose the relevant threads (or wrote the runes) from which a person's destiny was derived. Good, bad, or indifferent what you had to work with was what Urda gave you.

6.0.5.2 Verdandi (Verthandi) was the Norn of the present, or more correctly, "that which is becoming", or "what's happening now". Her position was to take the materials Urda had gathered, woven, or written and create "now" out of them. In a personal vein, she combined the elements (or read the runes) given her by Urda and by doing so made that person's destiny become real. By not reading them, or rearranging them, she could change that destiny. It wasn't real until it passed through her hands. This made her actually the most powerful of the Norns, but only in a transitory way.

She may also (by a VERY tenuous reference) have been the Norn that dispatched the soon-to-be-newborn children to their future mothers as part of her function of starting things. (In the TV anime Belldandy is shown constantly weaving, sewing, embroidering or knitting something. I think it's safe to say that these, along with her knitting and reading the runes for Urd in the manga, are meant to be not too subtle references to Verdandi's function in the old Teutonic/Norse myths)

6.0.5.3 Skuld was the Norn of the future, or more literally "that which SHOULD become", or "the future that will happen if the present doesn't change what the past is leading up to". (The future was never totally ordained by the earlier Norse versions of fate, it was only at the end of their mythology's development that it became inescapable.) Her task was to tear apart and destroy what Verdandi created (or read), thereby preventing stagnation and providing the raw materials for Urda to start over. In a personal vein, she decided when one's life was over, never a popular decision. The youngest of the Norns, she had the least sympathy for people, perhaps because she always lacked life experience to temper her judgment with. Still Skuld wasn't evil or unkind, just unyielding in her decisions.

Part of why Skuld was the most feared of the Norns might be found in how the Teutonic/Norse conceived of her job. The modern view of time is that of a long, straight line, with the future stretching out in front of the present and the past stretching out behind. The present, our now, travels down this line, smoothly converting the future into the past as it goes. This makes the concept of Skuld's domain of the future being a scary, frightening thing a little hard to understand. But the Norse, I believe, had a slightly different view of this process, which makes their attitude toward Skuld's domain a little more understandable. Time, for them, was essentially just the present. The past had ceased to exist as a vital force and could only be remembered for reference. The future was unknown and unformed, potentially good or bad. The only time that actually existed and could be evaluated was right now, today, this minute. And unless that today was swept away, there'd be no room for a tomorrow. So the future was an essentially destructive process that cleared the current present away for a succession of presents that were to come. Everything that was comfortable and known in the present would be erased by the future and replaced with the uncertainty of a new present. Death and loss could occur when that happened, so the future wasn't a very friendly concept.

6.0.6 In some later versions of the mythology the Norns were shown to not actually decide one's fate, they just let you know what it was if you cared to find out. In others they help you along on the way to your doom (Hello, Macbeth!). But the fact that Belldandy's job was to grant wishes that would change your life, and by extension your fate, puts her solidly in the Norn business. It could be said she causes people to achieve their fate by giving them their wish. Her being very accurate when she casts the runes is also in character.

Likewise, Urd's favorite game - Life Sugoroka Special, is about as classic a Norn activity as you could think of. I mean, a game where you spin a dial (supposedly a random choice, but subtly controlled by the eldest Norn, Urd) to see where you land on the board and then whatever is printed there will happen to you? Without a doubt Mr. Fujishima was using his background information for that episode.

6.0.7 Associated with Urda's well, the Norns, Mimir's well, and Odin's wife Frigg are the swan maidens, women who can turn into swans and fly about, this ability making them excellent for messengers, spies, and delivery agents. Girls with wings are well represented in the Norn's mythology, the swan maidens being disir (lesser norns) under Urdr's orders, the Norn's daughters (not too likely), their sisters, or just another type of disir in the neighborhood when they are mentioned with them. In a similar way the Valkyrie, the warrior maids who gather up the battle slain warriors under the orders of Odin, are also sometimes attached to the Norns as well, with the three Fates either being their older sisters, fellow Valkyrie with a special job, just one of the girls ("Skuld" is often included when the names of the Valkyrie are given, but it's never made clear if this is our "Skuld"), or the ones who give them their orders (that guy is gonna die soon, so stick around him).

Lind, by the way, is mentioned as a Valkyrie in only a few versions although she is named as the chief Valkyrie in a couple of them. Rind seems to have never been named as a Valkyrie, but she is mentioned as either a mortal princess or a lesser Vanir or Elle. Valkyrie and swan maidens are sometimes intermixed in the later versions of the mythology, hence those helmets with swan wings so popular in operas and romance illustrations. This leads us to those beings who are most closely related to the Norns in the hard mythology.