The Norns and Fate

The Norns are the weavers of fate in Norse mythology. They sit at the well of Urd beneath the world tree Yggdrasil, and from the waters of that well they draw the white silt that is the matter of all things. They are older than the gods of Asgard, and even the gods are subject to their weaving. Their names — Urd (the past), Verdandi (the present), and Skuld (the future) — are the three tenses of being, and to speak of them is to speak of the shape of time itself.

This article is part of the Norse Folklore section, which itself sits within the wider survey of European Folklore.

The Norns in the Prose Edda

The clearest account of the Norns is in the Prose Edda of Snorri Sturluson, written about 1220. In the Gylfaginning, Snorri tells of how the Æsir, the gods of Asgard, sat in their seats and consulted the Norns, and how the Norns drew the threads of fate and made them fast to the great world tree. Snorri quotes the older Völuspá, the “Prophecy of the Seeress”, which is the first poem in the Poetic Edda:

Three Norns I saw, the first named Urd, the second Verdandi, the third Skuld. They laid down the law, they chose the lives of the children of men, the fates of the dead.

The Völuspá is the great text of Norse eschatology, and the appearance of the Norns at the beginning of it is no accident. The poem tells the story of the world from the first making to the last battle, and the Norns are there at both ends. They are the ones who know what is to come, and they are the ones who, in the end, are silent — they do not speak at the death of the gods, but they are the ones who, in the new world that rises after the burning, will be present still.

The Well of Urd

The Norns sit at the well of Urd, also called the well of destiny, beneath one of the three roots of Yggdrasil. The root of Yggdrasil that runs to the well of Urd is the root that runs to Asgard itself, and the Norns are therefore at once the servants of the gods and the ones who hold the gods in being. From the well of Urd they draw the white silt with which they water the tree, and from the same silt they weave the threads of fate. They are the custodians of the older order, and the figures of memory.

The imagery of the well is older than the Norns themselves. Sacred wells, holy springs, and the waters of the underworld are part of a much wider European pattern: the spring at which the world is renewed.

Urd, Verdandi, Skuld

The names of the three Norns are themselves a lesson. Urd is the past, what has been. Verdandi is the present, what is becoming. Skuld is the future, what is owed. The three together are the whole of time, and the threefold pattern is older than the Norse. The Greek Moirai — Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos — are the same figure under different names. The Roman Parcae and the Slavic Sudice are part of the same family. The comparison of the Norse Norns with these other figures is a long-standing subject of comparative mythology, though each tradition is a culture of its own and the borrowing between them is a matter of common Indo-European inheritance rather than direct descent.

The point of the triple form is not so much the number three as the structure. The Norns are not a trio of beings but a single office held by three figures: the act of weaving, which is the act of measuring out the lives of the world. To think of them as three sisters is, in some sense, a folkloric translation of a much older truth: that the past, the present, and the future are not three things but one thing.

The Lesser Norns

In addition to the three great Norns, Snorri and the saga writers sometimes speak of a larger company of lesser norns, also called nornir, who attend to the lives of particular people. The birth of a child is, in many saga accounts, accompanied by a visit from the norns, who “lay down the law” of the child’s life. In some accounts the norns are kind, and they weave a long and happy life; in others they are stern, and they weave a life of sorrow.

The Wyrd of the Anglo-Saxons

The English cousin of the Norse Norns is the concept of Wyrd, the Anglo-Saxon word for fate or destiny. The Anglo-Saxons, who had migrated to Britain from the North in the fifth and sixth centuries, brought with them the same older religious sense, and the Old English poem Beowulf speaks of the Wyrd as a force that governs the whole of the world. The word survives in the modern English weird, and the older meaning — fate, the shape of things — is still visible beneath the newer one.

The Wyrd of the Anglo-Saxons is, like the Norns of the Norse, the deeper figure of the past, the present, and the future held in a single act. The Anglo-Saxons did not have, in the same way as the Norse, a named set of three goddesses, but the sense of an older fate-power at the foundation of all things is the same.

The Greek Moirai

The closest cousin of the Norns in the wider European tradition is the Greek Moirai, the three Fates of the Greek pantheon. Clotho spins the thread of life; Lachesis measures it out; Atropos cuts it. They are the daughters of Nyx (Night) in some accounts, and they are older than the gods of Olympus. The pattern is the same as the Norse: three figures, one act, the measure of a life.

The comparison shows how widely the figure of the three Fates is spread across the older Indo-European world. The Norse, the Greek, the Roman, the Slavic, the Celtic — all have the same set of three goddesses who measure out the lives of men.

Appealing to the Norns

The Norns, in the popular tradition, could be honoured. A child born with a difficult norn might be given a name of good omen. A warrior going into battle might carry a nornar-veig — a drink of the norns — to strengthen the thread of his life. A woman in childbirth might call upon the Norns to aid her. The Norns are not, in this sense, remote: they are the figures of the household as well as of the cosmos, and they are present in the ordinary round of life.

At the same time, the Norns could not be bargained with. They are the shape of time, and the shape of time is not changed. A man might make offerings to the Norns, but the offering does not turn aside the thread. The Norns, in this reading, are not cruel; they are simply the way things are, and the right relation to them is the acceptance of the way things are.

Even the Gods Are Subject

The Norns are older than the gods of Asgard, and even the gods are subject to them. Odin, the All-Father, is great among the gods, but he cannot escape the doom that the Norns have woven for him. The great battle of Ragnarök, in which the gods fall and the world is destroyed by fire, is foreseen by the Norns and woven into the structure of time. The Völuspá knows what is to come, and the Norns, who are silent at the moment of the gods’ death, are still the figures of the new world that will arise.

This is, perhaps, the deepest meaning of the Norns. They are not the servants of the gods but the custodians of the older order. When the Norns fall silent at the end, it is not because they have been defeated but because the order of the world is being remade.

Sources and Further Reading

Snorri Sturluson. The Prose Edda. Translated by Anthony Faulkes. Everyman’s Library, 1987. The principal medieval source for the Norse Norns.
Larrington, Carolyne, trans. The Poetic Edda. Oxford World’s Classics, 1996. Contains the Völuspá and the other poems in which the Norns appear.
Lindow, John. Norse Mythology: A Guide to Gods, Heroes, Rituals, and Beliefs. Oxford University Press, 2001.
Davidson, H. R. Ellis. Gods and Myths of Northern Europe. Penguin, 1964.