35 – Fate

John lindow

The idea of fate — in the world of gods, in the world of heroes, and in the world of ordinary people — finds expression in numerous rather varied outlets in the older written sources and has also captured the imagination of later scholars and artists. The concept was a staple of the older study of germanic culture and religion, but some more recent scholarship has recognized classical and Christian influences. Briefly, fate may be defined as what must happen to a person or persons, beyond his or her control, usually beyond his or her knowledge.

fate was also beyond the intervention of human agency and in PCRN, as far as we can see, was associated with the agency of supernatural beings and the gods.

at least in the old Norse textual tradition, fate is closely associated, although not exclusively, with what must last happen to a person, namely death.

Sources

fate as a concept plays a role in many eddic poems and heroic myths and in the sagas of icelanders. Besides the relevant passages themselves, the etymology and historical semantics of the terminology used can be viewed as source material for the concept of fate. in addition, there are several beings who to some degree personify fate. although there is pictorial evidence both for narratives in which fate is involved and for beings associated with fate, this evidence does not illuminate conceptions of fate. Nor is there any particularly relevant data from the archaeological record or from placenames, with one possible excep-John Lindow, Professor Emeritus of scandinavian, University of California, Berkeley The Pre-Christian Religions of the North: History and Structures, Volume ii, ed. by Jens Peter schjødt, John lindow, and anders andrén, PCRN-HS 2 (Turn hout: Brepols, 2020) pp. 927–950

BREPols

PUBlisHERs

10.1484/M.PCRN-EB.5.116962

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tion mentioned below. More recent customs documented in the ethnographic record may relate to pre-Christian conceptions of fate.

Myth

Perhaps the clearest example of the importance of fate is the anthropogony of the eddic poem Vǫluspá. at the conclusion of the catalogue of dwarfs, the narrative voice of the seeress resumes at stanza 17.

Unz þr í r qvómo

ór því liði,1

ǫflgir oc ástgir,

æsir, at húsi;

fundo á landi,

lítt megandi,

asc oc Emblo,

ørlǫglausa.2

(Until three gods, strong and loving, came from out of that company; they found on land capable of little, ash and Embla, lacking in fate.) (p. 6) in the following stanza the æsir Óðinn, Hœnir, and loðurr endow this first couple with various aspects of life: ǫnd, óðr, lá and læti, and litir góðir. While there has been much discussion about what exactly is meant with these terms (è36), it seems clear that none has to do with the fate that askr and Embla lack. These endowments of the æsir would seem to address the problem of askr and Embla being ‘lítt megandi’ (capable of little — that is, of nothing). fate, it seems, comes from a different source. after the æsir have endowed askr and Embla with the aspects of life, the seerees goes on with her vision.3

19. asc veit ec standa,

heitir yggdrasill,

hár baðmr, ausinn

hvítaauri;

þaðan koma dǫggvar,

1 Both manuscripts have feminine þrjár (three), but the following masculine plural adjectives, as well as the masculine plural æsir, require emendation to masculine þrír.

2 Use of the masculine accusative plural ørlǫglausa instead of the neuter for masculine and feminine elides the distinction between the sexes.

3 This is the order of the stanzas in R. in H they are reversed, and the endowing of fate follows directly on the animation of askr and Embla.

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þærs í dala falla,

stendr æ yfir, grœnn,

Urðar brunni.

20. Þaðan koma meyjar,

margs vitandi,

þrjár, ór þeim sæ [H: sal],

er und þolli stendr;

Urð heitir eina,

aðra Verðandi

–scáro á scíði–,

sculd ina þriðio;

þær lǫg lǫgðo,

þær líf kuro

alda bornom,

ørlǫg seggia [H: segja].

(19. an ash i know that stands, yggdrasil it’s called, a tall tree, drenched with shining loam; from there come the dews which fall in the valley, green, it stands always over Urd’s well.

20. from there come the girls, knowing a great deal, three from the lake [H: hall]

standing under the tree; Urd one is called, Verdandi another — they carved on a wooden slip — skuld the third;

21. they laid down laws, they chose lives for the sons of men, the fates for men [H: they say fates].) (p. 6)4

larrington chooses the literal translation of the verb lǫgðu (laid down); although the sense of course is ‘establish’, the physical laying down of laws and fates of men may be important. she also correctly translates ørlǫg as plural, although the noun is plurale tantum and thus incapable of rendering number.

We note that the noun seggr, which in the genitive plural qualifies the fates that are laid down, ordinarily means ‘warrior’ but in eddic poetry also has the general sense ‘man’, as it is translated it here. We also note that a form of the root of the verb verb kjósa ( kuro líf, ‘choose lives’) also occurs in the noun valkyrja (literally ‘carrion chooser’, that is, valkyrie). We treat the clause ‘skáru á skíði’ (here rendered ‘they carved on a wooden slip’) in the section below ‘The Vocabulary of fate’.

4 in her translation, larrington has chosen to break the overlong stanza 20 into two stanzas, one of them (21) shorter than is normal.

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although the passage does not explicitly state that these maidens are norns, snorri does so in Gylfaginning, and we accept that snorri is correct.5 The norns thus represent one of the important aspects of the complex notions associated with fate. an entire chapter of this work is devoted to the norns (è59), so here we only take up issues involving the relationship of norns to the broader conceptions of fate. The first of these is the very existence of beings who personify fate, as opposed to the broader and more elusive concepts of fate that are also to be found. as a collective, the norns recall the classical Moirai and Parcae, especially in the triplets of Vǫluspá st. 19–22 and snorri’s reworking of it. No mythological source states or even implies that the norns were to be numbered among the æsir/ ásynjur, that they dwelled in Ásgarðr or had a connection with it, or that they had any genealogical relationship with the æsir. instead, they have a cosmological component, since the well of Urðr ( Vǫluspá st. 20) is by the World Tree, at the very centre of the cosmos: indeed, at the very intersection of the horizontal and vertical axes, where conceptions of time and knowledge meet (è38). The expression ‘Urðar brunnr’ (well of Urðr) was clearly known to early poets. surely the most interesting example of its use was in a fragmentary verse by Eilífr goðrúnarson ( Fragment, Eilífr) to the effect that the king of Rome (Christ, according to all commentators on the verse) has his throne south at the ‘Urðar brunnr’. Eilífr is famous for Þórsdrápa, a poem celebrating Þórr’s journey to and victory over geirrøðr and his daughters, and this stanza is all that remains of whatever poetry he may have composed after converting to Christianity. Despite its apparent simplicity, the helmingr is not without textual problems (ohrt 1937–38; Weber 1970), but it seems apparent that Eilífr was able to recycle the cosmological conception of the norn Urðr into a new context.

another formulaic expression in eddic poetry and to a lesser extent in skaldic poetry is ‘judgement of the norns’, which is a kenning-like circumlocution for ‘fate’. it is realized lexically in three ways: ‘dómr norna’ (judgement of the norns), ‘kviðr norna’ (sentence or decree of the norns), and ‘skǫp norna’ (decrees of the norns). These translations can hardly capture the semantic ranges; suffice it to say that kviðr has the greatest legalistic overtone of the three and skǫp the least, since skǫp as simplex is itself a word for fate (see below). Both dómr and (especially) kviðr imply performative speech acts, and so we infer such a mean-5 Bek-Pedersen is in our view overly cautious about the Vǫluspá poet’s silence on whether the maidens are norns (Bek-Pedersen 2011a: 73–88; è59). old Norse poetry does tend toward the elliptical.

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ing for skǫp.6 This formula implies that the fate imposed by the norns can be formulated into words.

against these formulaic expressions drawing on the image of the norns as a group are references to a single norn (e.g., Reginsmál st. 2; Sigrdrífumál st.

17). if it is genuine, the lausavísa attributed to Kveldúlfr in Chapter 24 of Egils saga has an early, Norwegian attestation of this usage. When he learns that his son Þórólfr has been killed, Kveldúlfr laments ‘norn erum grimm’ (a [or the]

norn is grim to me). a stanza in snorri’s Skáldskaparmál attributed to Kormákr Ǫgmundarson and assigned by editors to his Sigurðardrápa (second half of the tenth century) states that when battle raged, ‘komst Urðr ór brunni’ (Urðr emerged from the well). These cases imply that the norns also acted when someone died or when death was at hand.

The lifeless and fateless askr and Embla of Vǫluspá st. 19–22 may be the manlíkun (human forms) fashioned by the dwarfs according to stanza 10 (steinsland 1983); in Gylfaginning snorri says they are logs. in any case, they must have fate in order to live, and the norns endow it at precisely the moment when the two become alive. This might imply a different view from that adduced above (i.e., that the norns act in connection with death). instead, the implication is that the norns endow humans with fate at the moment of birth, and one eddic poem explicitly supports such an implication: namely, Helgakviða Hundingsbana I st. 2–4.

2. Nótt varð í bœ,

nornir qvómo,

þær er ǫðlingi

aldr um scópo;

þann báðo fylki

frægstan verða

oc buðlunga

beztan þiccia.

3. snero þær af afli

ørlǫgþátto,

þá er borgir braut

í Brálundi;

þær um greiddo

gullin símo

oc und mána sal

miðian festo.

6 la farge and Tucker (1992: 240) also gloss skǫp in this verse as ‘decrees’.

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figure 35.1. a so called ‘weaving sword’ from Våga in oppland, Norway, dated to the Viking age. The design of the weaving sword is similar to contemporary spear heads.

The object illustrates the female domain of textile production, but also its associations to warfare, probably through the mythological notion of female figures of destiny weaving the fate of warriors. Photo: ørnulf Hjort-sørensen, Kulturhistorisk Museum, Universitetet i oslo, oslo.

4. Þær austr oc vestr

enda fálo

þar átti lofðungr

land á milli;

brá nipt Nera

á norðrvega

einni festi,

ey bað hon halda.

(2. Night fell on the estate, then came the norns, those who shaped fate for the prince; they said the war-leader should be most famous and that he’d appear the best of princes.

3. They plied very strongly the strand of fate, as strongholds were breaking in Bralund; they prepared the golden threads and fastened it in the middle under the moon’s hall [sky].

4. East and west they concealed its ends, the prince possessed all the land between; Neri’s kinswoman to the north threw on fastening; she said it would hold forever.) (pp. 110–11)

although highly suggestive, this passage is relatively unique, both in putting the norns on the scene at a birth and in having them turn the ‘strands of fate’ or golden threads. The fate that they shape for the prince seems to be his glory as a ruler (st. 2), and it appears that with their strands or threads which they fasten to the sky and to east, west, and north (st. 3–4), they determine the extent of his territory (see Bek-Pedersen 2011a: 127–32 for discussion of the passage). The broken fortresses in Brálundr (a place not elsewhere known) remain mysterious, as does the identity of Neri.7

The related compound ørlǫgsíma (fate-thread) is attested in Reginsmál st. 14, where it seems to refer to the fame of the hero sigurðr.

Reginn predicts that sigurðr’s fate thread will spread or remain, depending on how one reads the obscure verb þrymja, over all lands. in either 7 see von see and others (2004: 181–82) for discussion of Neri.

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case, Reginn is probably talking about sigurðr’s reputation or fame, since he never becomes a renowned leader. This fame survives sigurðr’s death.

one other stanza may put the norns at a birth: namely, Fáfnismál st. 12. in it, sigurðr asks the dying dragon fáfnir this question:

hveriar ro þær nornir,

er nauðgǫnglar ro

ok kjósa mœðr frá mǫgum?

(which are those norns who go to help those in need and bring children forth from their mothers?) (p. 155)

in its use of the verb kjósa (choose), the vocabulary here recalls the norns in Vǫluspá st. 20, who ‘chose lives’ for askr and Embla. This parallel suggests that sigurðr is asking about norns giving fate at birth, if that is what ‘kjósa mœðr frá mǫgum’ (literally ‘choose mothers from sons’) means here (discussion in Bek-Pedersen 2011a: 37–40).

The strands and threads associated with the norns suggest a connection with textile work. although we never explicitly see the norns at such work, the eddic poem usually called Darraðarljóð (spear-song), transmitted in Njáls saga and according to the saga overheard in Caithness around the time of the battle of Clontarf, plays clearly on the notion of the weaving of the fates of warriors.

The poem is put into the collective mouths of valkyries who will choose the dead, and it contains the recurring lines ‘Vindum, vindum | vef darraðar’ (let us wind, let us wind, the web of the spear). according to stanza 2, they use a loom in which the weft is human intestines and the weights human heads.

since valkyries are death-beings, the association of their weaving with battle and death seems appropriate. it seems, however, that the valkyries, unlike the norns, focus fate exclusively on the hour of one’s death.

given the focus of germanic heroic literature on a hero’s ‘good death’, the tropes of fate appear frequently. The best example may be offered by Hamðismál, the last poem of the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda and perhaps in some ways a summation of the heroic in that particular medieval artefact. Hamðir and sǫrli killed their half-brother Erpr before setting out to attack Jǫrmunrekkr, and without Erpr’s help, they manage only to sever Jǫrmunrekkr’s legs and arms.

Hamðir speaks some of the most famous words in old Norse heroic literature: 28. ‘af væri nú haufuð,

ef Erpr lifði,

bróðir occarr inn bǫðfrœcni,

er við á braut vágom,

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verr inn vígfrœcn

— hvǫttomc at dísir —

gumi inn gunnhelgi

— gorðomz at vígi — .

29. Ecci hygg ec ocr vera

úlfa dœmi,

at vit mynim siálfir um sacaz,

sem grey norna,

þau er gráðug ero

í auðn um alin.

30. Vel hófum við vegit,

stǫndom á val gotna,

ofan, eggmóðom,

sem ernir á qvisti;

góðs hǫfom tírar fengið,

þótt scylim nú eða í gær deyia,

qveld lifir maðr ecci

eptir qvið norna.’

(28 ‘off his head would be now, if Erp were alive, our brother bold in battle, whom we killed on the road, the man so fierce in war — the disir drove us to it — the man inviolate in fighting — they spurred us to slaughter.

[29] ‘i don’t think it is for us to follow the wolves’ example and fight among ourselves, like the norns’ bitches, greedy beasts, brought up in the wilderness.

[30] ‘We have fought well, we stand on goth corpses, weary from the sword-edge like eagles on a branch; we have won great glory if we die now or yesterday, no man outlasts the evening after the norns have given their verdict.’) (p. 234) The norns’ bitches in stanza 29 must be wolves. in this context they invoke the trope of beasts of battle, who are present when warriors meet their fate, that is, die on the battlefield. it is worth pointing out that on the rune stone at Tumbo kyrka (sö 82, Samnordisk runtextdatabas), the word þuþr (understood as old Norse dauðr ‘dead’, referring to the man being commemorated), is directly in front of the mouth of a canine beast carved into the centre of the stone.

if it was fated that Hamðir and sǫrli should kill their half-brother Erpr when they did, then the line ‘hvǫttomc at dísir’ (the disir drove us to it) (p. 234) associates the dísir, another collective group of supernatural females, with fate (è58); here we discuss only the most direct association with fate. a connection with death is one of the salient features of the dísir, not least in eddic

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figure 35.2. Rune stone at

Tumbo in södermanland,

dated to about 1000 (sö

82, Samnordisk run text-

databas). The image and

text illustrate how a man

being killed in a battle is

viewed as being eaten by

a wolf. The word dauðr

(dead) is placed directly

in front of the wolf ’s jaws

(cf. andrén 2000a).

Photo: Cecilia ljung.

poetry. Þiðranda þáttr implies a battle to the death between groups of dísir over the fate/death of Þiðrandi, and spá-dísir (prophecy- dísir) exercise a protective function in battle. although a relationship with fate is less clear, the death of King aðils in the dísarsalr (hall of the dís) at a dísablót (sacrifice to the dísir) might be part of this complex, and the beings sacrificed at gamla Uppsala, at what is likely to have been the dísablót (è28), may seem too to meet their fate.

it would, however, be unwise to push this evidence very far, and it is clear that the various groups of female figures for the most part to some extent do have separate profiles and identities. Thus, although the fylgjur (lit. ‘those (female) who accompany’) clearly have something to do with fate, it seems that their role consists more in signalling and sharing an individual’s fate than in shaping or enforcing it.8

Gautreks saga ch. 7 has a scene, often the subject of comment, in which the gods Óðinn and Þórr bestow fate (‘dœma ørlǫg’) on the hero starkaðr. starkaðr has been fostered by one Hrosshárs-grani, who leads him to a clearing in a forest on an island where eleven persons sit in a kind of assembly with an empty 8 Else Mundal (1974) distinguishes between animal fylgjur, who share an individual’s fate, and female fylgjur, who do not. on fylgjur in general, see (è36).

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chair presumably for Hrosshárs-grani, whom they greet as Óðinn (è30 and è36). The bestowing of fate(s) comprises an alternation between Þórr and Óðinn, in which one ordains something and the other counters it: starkaðr will have no offspring (Þórr); he shall live three human lifetimes (Óðinn); starkaðr will commit an unspeakable act ( níðingsverk) in each (Þórr); he shall possess the best weapons and clothing (Óðinn); starkaðr will possess no land (Þórr); he shall have money (Óðinn), but the money will never seem enough to him (Þórr); starkaðr shall have victory and prowess in each battle (Óðinn), but he will be grievously wounded in each (Þórr); starkaðr shall master poetry (Óðinn), but he will not remember what he composes (Þórr); starkaðr will seem loftiest to the greatest men (Óðinn), but the common people will despise him (Þórr). While these divine decrees certainly constitute biographical details of an Óðinn hero (è36), they are unlike fate as it is presented in most of the sources, and the concept of fate presented here may relate especially to the sphere of Óðinn. it is worth pointing out that both Þórr and Óðinn frequently use the verb skapa (shape) for their decrees, and Þórr once uses the verb phrase liggja á (ordain); the related noun álǫg refers to magic spells of the sort that spoil people’s lives.

The gods too are subject to fate. in the Codex Regius version of Vǫluspá (but not in the Hauksbók version, which lacks the Baldr story), the seeress sees Baldr’s fate. Probably the stanza before she reveals it is also relevant, since it contains valkyries, but the vision of Baldr’s fate proper begins in stanza 31: Ec sá Baldri,

blóðgom tívor,

Óðins barni,

ørlǫg fólgin

(32. i saw for Baldr, for the bloody god, odin’s child, his fate in store.)9 (p. 8) This fate is of course his death, here at the hand of his brother Hǫðr by means of mistletoe. The seeress also sees the vengeance that is taken for this killing, apparently on both Hǫðr and loki. This vengeance is an integral and vital part of the Baldr myth (lindow 1997a; è46), and perhaps it therefore constitutes part of Baldr’s fate. This requires fate to be thought of as not only the circumstances of one’s death but also the narratives that are told in connection with that death. for Hamðir and sǫrli, it was enough to know that they 9 larrington renders the final words ‘ørlǫg fólgin’ as ‘his fate in store’. Equally plausible would be ‘his hidden fate’.

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died heroically;10 Baldr’s death — his fate — was inextricably tied up with the immediate aftermath.

The long-term aftermath of his death seems to have been, in the eyes of the poet whose Vǫluspá is retained in Codex Regius, the fates of all the gods.

Eddic poets call this ‘ragna rǫk’ or ‘tíva rǫk’, conventionally rendered ‘fate of the powers’ and ‘fate of the gods’, but rǫk really refers to the whole story, not just to deaths of the gods, and thus may not be part of the technical vocabulary of fate, except perhaps in this one instance.11 Be that as it may, the deaths of Baldr and the other gods illustrate an important point: namely, that the gods, like everyone else, are subject to fate. The Baldr story as we have it in snorri’s Gylfaginning will serve as an example of the irreversibility of fate: frigg knew that Baldr was to die but could not avert it; Hermóðr’s agreement with Hel to reverse death was undertaken, in the end, to no avail. Both cases may have been near misses (if only frigg had got the oath from mistletoe; if only Þǫkk had wept — what stjernfelt 1990 called the ‘minus-one effect’), but the closeness only shows how impossible it would be to reverse fate.

The Vocabulary of Fate

Much of the scholarship on fate has, quite reasonably, focused on the complex vocabulary that is deployed around the concept (see further von Kienle 1933; Boyer 1986a; and liberman 1994). it is worth bearing in mind that when we find these fate-words in manuscripts, they may represent attempts to reconcile pagan concepts of fate to Christianity. D. H. green (1998: 381–90) offers an illuminating discussion of this process in the attested germanic languages.

Ørlǫg

as the above paragraphs have shown, the neuter plurale tantum noun ørlǫg is a primary term for fate in eddic poetry. some lexica give ‘war’ or ‘battle’

as another meaning, but the actual semantics of the passages are difficult to pin down. old Norse ørlygi also means ‘war’ or ‘battle’, but de Vries (1962a: 10 Here one may note the famous verses on the honour that survives a man ( Hávamál st.

76–77). The orðstírr (fame) and dómr (judgement) that he wins are bound up in the narratives that survive. see further below, ‘fate and Honour’.

11 We employ the usual form rǫc and dictionary meaning, but note that Haraldur Bern-harðsson (2007) has put forth a forceful argument for the form røk and thinks the word may originally have meant something like ‘rebirth’.

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683) regards it as a loanword ( Fremdwort). although the etymology remains unclear,12 it is instructive that the other germanic languages also have similar terms for ‘fate’ (old English orlæg, old High german urlac) and ‘war’ (old English orlegi). Whatever the etymology, poets (and speakers who considered the matter) would presumably have seen some kind of semantic overlap between fate and battle, since the fate of a hero is to die in battle.

Urðr

as was mentioned above, one of the norns who give fate to the first humans is named Urðr. Cognates in the other germanic languages are nouns for fate: old English wyrd, old High german wurt, old saxon wurth. a commonly proposed etymology associates the word with the indo-European root * wert (twist; cf. latin vertere ‘turn’), which in turn has yielded old Norse verða (become).

according to some observers, fate might then be related to cycles or to textile work, as was briefly mentioned above. These possibilities will be discussed below in the section ‘scholarship’. for now it suffices to say that the existence of a common term with a more or less common meaning suggests a deep history for the conception embodied by this word. in both old English and old Norse, the concept seems to have been personified (in the other languages we lack sufficient attestations to know much about the word) as a female figure, but in old English especially the common noun is what one sees, meaning not only ‘fate’ but also, and more usually, ‘occurrence’ or ‘event’ — what happens to someone, as we might put it. in old Norse the noun is basically restricted to poetry, where it means ‘death’ and, unlike Urðr and the cognates, bears masculine gender (finnur Jónsson 1931: 584 s.v. urðr); or perhaps, if one wishes to retain the etymological sense, it means something closer to ‘dire fate’ (la farge and Tucker 1992: 273), which amounts to the same thing. it is attested once in the plural, in Sigurðarkviða in skamma st. 5: ‘gengo þess á milli | grimmar urðir’ (The terrible fates intervened in this) (p. 178). The context is as follows: sigurðr, acting on behalf of gunnar, has wooed Brynhildr, placing a sword between them in bed. Brynhildr has never known anything bad, but cruel fates are to intervene. The plural is usually explained as parallel to plural nornir in stanza 7 (see von see and others 2004: 328–29).

12 although the word may have originated in a participle meaning something like ‘what is laid down’, there are apparent etyma in various germanic languages with divergent phonologi-cal form of the second component that seem to require a different explanation (de Vries 1962a: 683).

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Skǫp

Besides the expression skǫp norna (decrees of the norns) simplex skǫp also can mean ‘fate’. it is plural of the neuter noun skap (mind, disposition, character, state, condition) and is related to the verb skapa (shape, form). snorri uses this verb in Gylfaginning at the point when he identifies Urðr, Verðandi, and skuld as norns: ‘Þessar meyjar skapa mǫnnum aldr’ (p. 18) (These maidens shape life for people) (p. 18). Skǫp too has cognates in the other germanic languages.

although several different forms are attested (green 1998: 384–85), it is interesting that the old English poem Widsith (l. 135) uses the direct cognate in the dative plural with an instrumental sense to suggest the idea of minstrels being directed by fate or chance as they wander from one lord to another; to this may be compared, for example, Ynglingatal st. 10. Skǫp was used fairly commonly in poetry: skǫp could be góð (good; Sigurðarkviða in skamma st. 58); ill (bad; Oddrúnargrátr st. 34); rík (powerful; Fáfnismál st. 39, Kormákr lausvísa 40).

it could be made to grow ( vaxa; Atlakviða st. 39), which is to say move toward its conclusion, or to increase ( œxla; Atlamál st. 2), which has much the same meaning. Eddic poetry has an idiom, ‘vinna skǫpum’, which is probably best translated ‘overturn one’s fate’. it is always negated, indicating that one cannot, in fact, overturn one’s fate, avoid one’s appointed death. The poet of Grípisspá found it useful for ending his poem. first, grípir ends his prophecy of sigurðr’s life and career:

52. ‘Því scal hugga þic,

hers oddviti,

sú mun gipt lagit

á grams ævi;

munat mætri maðr

á mold koma,

und solar siot,

enn þú, sigurðr, þiccir’.

(52. ‘This shall console you, leader of the army, this luck’s laid down in the prince’s life: no mightier man will walk on the earth, under the sun’s dwelling, than you, sigurd, seem to be’.) (p. 146)

sigurðr responds:

53. ‘sciliomc heilir!

Munat scǫpom vinna,

nú hefir þú, grípir, vel

gort, sem ec beiddac;

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fliótt myndir þú

fríðri segia

mina ævi,

ef þú mættir þat.’

(53. ‘let’s part and say farewell, one can’t overcome fate; now, gripir, you’ve done just what i asked you; swiftly you’d have told of me a life more pleasant, if you’d been able!’) (p. 146)

The half-line ‘alt eru óskǫp’ in Hávamál st. 98, with a negated form of skǫp, seems to refer to disorder.13 assuming that this reading is correct, one may infer that skǫp — that is, fate — is part of the order of the world, and that if it could in fact be overturned, disorder would follow.

Skepna

also related to skapa (shape) is skepna. it is attested once in eddic poetry with the meaning fate ( Guðrúnarkviða I st. 24), but is more generally found in Christian poetry, where it refers to (god’s) creation.

Mjǫtuðr

Cognate with old English meotod (fate, god), mjǫtuðr (literally ‘measurer’; cf. gothic mitaþs ‘measure’) is used in verse for ‘fate’ or ‘death’. The two meanings may be seen to converge in snorri’s discussion in Skáldskaparmál of Heimdallr.

Heimdalar hǫfuð heitir sverð; svá er sagt at hann var lostinn manns hǫfði í gǫgnum.

Um hann er kveðit í Heimdalargaldri, ok er síðan kallat hǫfuð mjǫtuðr Heimdalar; sverð heitir manns mjǫtuðr.) (p. 19)

(a sword is called Heimdall’s head; it is said he was struck through with a man’s head. He is the subject of the poem Heimdalargaldr, and ever since the head has been called Heimdall’s doom; man’s doom is an expression for sword.) (p. 76) What fate should have measured is not immediately clear, but the most obvious possibility is the length of a lifetime, since one does not live a day beyond what the norns decree ( Hamðismál 30).

13 The line goes on ‘nema einir viti | slícan lost saman’ (unless only few together know of such a vice). The translation is certainly conjectural, but nema (unless) does suggest something negative in the previous clause.

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Auðna

This word (and the rare poetic alternative auðr) shows an indo-European root for ‘weaving’ and thus would form part of the evidence for associating fate and weaving. There is nothing in the semantics of the term to verify that assumption, however. Auðna survived the conversion and could be used of the fate assigned by the Christian god.

Skáru á skíði

These words are fundamentally associated with the anthropogonic myth in Vǫluspá and clearly make up part of the way the norns endowed askr and Embla with fate. The verb skera (past plural skáru) means ‘carve’, and the noun skíð or skíði is formed from a dental extension of the indo European root * skei (cut, part, separate) and usually has to do with wood that has been cut (Pokorny 1959–69: i, 921; de Vries 1962a: 491). some observers have compared the expression to the description of Tacitus concerning augury in Germania ch.

10: the diviner inscribes signs or letters ( notae) on strips of wood ( surculi) cut from a branch and reads the future in them. some observers understand notae as runes and think the norns carved runes to set fate, but if runes were carved in the line in Vǫluspá, the verb would be rísta, not skera; and a skíð/ skíði must be a large piece of wood, like a plank, not a slip that can be lifted, so the passage in Tacitus can hardly be related to the line in Vǫluspá. anne Holtsmark thinks of calendar staves (Holtsmark 1951), but then we might expect skora rather than skera (Bek-Pedersen 2011a: 115; è25). John lindow (2015) proposes that the norns may have carved images: like the art underlying ekphrastic poetry, images would fix fate immutably.

Fate and Time

one passage does seem to reveal a different sense of the term ørlǫg than those discussed above in connection with the death of heroes: namely, Lokasenna st. 25.

frigg is speaking to Óðinn and loki, who have been trading accusations of ergi.

‘ørlǫgum ycrom

scylit aldregi

segia seggiom frá,

hvat iþ æsir tveir

drýgðot í árdaga;

firaz æ forn rǫc firar.’

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(‘The fates you met should never be told in front of people, what you two Æsir underwent in past times; the living should keep their distance from ancient matters.’) (p. 85) Here the fates ( ørlǫg) of Óðinn and loki are in primeval times rather than in the future; that is to say, what has already happened can be covered by the concept of fate (or the vocabulary of fate) apparently just as readily as what is to happen. it is interesting and perhaps significant that the actions covered by ørlǫg constitute ergi: Óðinn accuses loki of milking a cow or being a milking cow, and loki accuses Óðinn of behaving like a vǫlva. These actions would of course open them up to charges of ergi, which would affect their reputations in a way similar to the reputation that a hero might earn fighting bravely and fall-ing at a time the norns had determined.

if fate is endowed at birth (by the norns) and constitutes one’s death and, sometimes, important events in one’s life, it follows that for each individual, fate has a temporal component. The temporality of fate might be reflected in the names of the three norns: Urðr, Verðandi, skuld. Verðandi is quite clearly the present participle of verða (become), and some scholars have associated Urðr with the past and skuld with the future. as was mentioned above, Urðr too was derived from verða, in a usual way: cf. the pairs finna (find) and fundr (meeting, ‘finding’), or bjóða (invite) and boð (party). While there is nothing temporal about these nouns (a meeting or party can have happened, can be happening, or can happen in the future), the vocalism of Urðr might have been analysed (falsely) by speakers as analogous to urðu, the past plural of the verb verða, thus associating Urðr with the past. Skuld derives from the modal verb skulu (related to English ‘shall’) and is identical with the noun skuld ‘debt’. The verb may suggest future, as may the notion of a date or obligation, insofar as payment constitutes a future obligation (cf. old Norse skuldadagr ‘day when a debt falls due’).

a notion of time is implicit in the old Norse adjective feigr (fated to die soon), which has cognates in the West germanic languages (old English fæge, modern English fey, old High german feigi, old saxon fegi) and probably is to be regarded as derived from common germanic vocabulary. The etymology is not known (de Vries 1962a: 115 s.v. feigð). one possibility is that the word derives from a root meaning ‘hostile’, and another is that it is related to the verb fá (mark, colour) and signifies that a man was marked for death. The latter might imply that the doomed man was coloured, for those with second sight, with gore or blood, but it is probably more important to stress that the conception of fated impending death went back to common germanic times than to speculate on the etymology.

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a passage from Hamðismál st. 10 will serve to illustrate the semantics of upcoming death associated with the term. sǫrli is addressing guðrún before the brothers set out on their doomed expedition against Jǫrmunrekkr.

Brœðr grát þú þína

ok buri svása,

niðja náborna

leidda nær rógi;

okkr skaltu ok, guðrún,

gráta báða,

er hér sitjum feigir á mǫrum,

fjarri munum deyja.

(Weep for your brothers and your dear sons, close-born kinsmen, brought to strife; for us both, gudrun, you shall weep too, we who sit here, doomed men on our horses, far from here we’ll die.) (p. 231)

sometimes the fey nature of a man was recognized after the fact. The Rök runic inscription (Ög 136, Samnordisk runtextdatabas) shows this plainly in the opening words of this longest of all runic inscriptions.

**aft uamuþ stonta runaR þaR n varin faþiR aft faikion sunu. **

(in memory of Væmod stand these runes. and Varin wrote/coloured them, the father in memory of his doomed [feigr] son).14

for additional discussion of the issue of fate and time, see below under scholarship.

**Fate and Honour **

as the above survey will have shown, fate is an indispensible trope of the heroic ideal as presented in old Norse poetry, particularly eddic poetry and the sagas.

according to this trope, fate appoints the when of one’s demise, but one has control over the how, and if one dies properly in battle, one wins honour, perhaps inextinguishable honour (è21). Two stanzas of Hávamál (76–77) express this ideal:

Deyr fé, deyja frændr,

deyr sjálfr it sama;

enn orðstírr deyr aldregi

hveim er sér góðan getr.

14 Translation adapted from Samnordisk runtextdatabas.

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Deyr fé, deyja frændr,

deyr sjálfr it sama;

ek veit einn, at aldri deyr,

dómr um dauðan hvern.

(Cattle die, kinsmen die, the self must also die; but the glory of reputation never dies for the man who can get himself a good one.

Cattle die, kinsmen die, the self must also die; i know one thing which never dies: the reputation of each dead man.) (pp. 22–23)

But since one could not know which was to be one’s last day, one’s final battle,15

one presumably had to behave honourably at all times. Before dismissing the trope as a purely literary diversion, one must consider the swedish rune stones that suggest that ‘masculinities’, as susanne Thedéen calls them, are constructed through the way men meet their death (Thedéen 2009).

The literary nature of the trope can, however, be glimpsed in a stanza of the Hrynhenda of Óláfr Þórðarson hvítaskáld, schoolmaster, author of the Third Grammatical Treatise, and, like his uncle snorri sturluson, a poet at thirteenth-century courts. according to Hákonar saga Hákonarsonar, the stanza concerns the unrest that followed upon Jarl skúli’s claim to the throne in 1239, and Óláfr invokes not only immutable fate but also the immutable honour of the adversaries.

fláræði kom framm of síðir;

fríðbann hóf þá ǫfund manna;

eigi má við ørlǫg bægjask

jǫfra sveit, þótt ráðug heiti.

stórr vas harmr, þars stríddu harrar

stála hregg, þvít æ mun beggja

rausnarkapp ok ríki uppi,

ramri þjóð, meðan jǫrð heldr flóði.

(Treachery emerged at last; the malice of men then led to a peace-ban; a host of princes cannot contend against fate, though it is called wise. it was a great sorrow to the mighty people when the lords fought a storm of weapons [battle], because the eagerness for glory and the power of both will always be remembered, as long as the earth adheres to the sea.) (p. 663)

15 Hávamál also warns against knowing one’s fate in advance; see below.

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Fate and Law

in Vǫluspá, when the norns ‘chose lives’ for askr and Embla, they also ‘laid down laws’. lives and laws are thus parallel here, although it is not clear what the seeress or the poet meant with this parallelism: are the norns establishing the laws of life and death for all humans, or the metaphorical laws that will direct the fates of the first humans? or is the legal system in which people live their lives, the laws themselves, a gift of the fate beings? The discussion is complicated by the variant readings of the last two words of the stanza. in R we find

‘ørlǫg seggja’ (fates of men), yet another aspect of what has been laid down or chosen. in H, however, we find ‘ørlǫg segja’ (declare fates), making of the laws laid down and lives established a speech act undertaken by the norns.

More generally, law interacts with fate in the heroic literature through honour: sometimes one must break a law to maintain or enhance one’s honour, and heroes tend to blame such outcomes on fate (Meylan 2014b). This trope is particularly common in the sagas of icelanders. although honour plays an enormous role in the careers of such doomed heroes as gísli of Gísla saga, gunnarr in Njáls saga, or grettir in Grettis saga, their demise comes about in the logic of the saga plot as a result of a conflict between their fates and the legal situations in which they find themselves. To take but one example, the plot of Gísla saga depends upon the failure of the four main protagonists to carry to its conclusion the blood-brother oath (a legal procedure) of Chapter 6, when Þorgrímr will not bind himself to Vésteinn and, consequently, gísli will not bind himself to Þórgrímr. gísli uses the vocabulary of fate to describe what has happened and what is to happen.

Nú fór sem mik grunaði, ok mun þetta fyrir ekki koma, sem nú er at gert. get ek ok, at auðna ráði nú um þetta.

(This is what i thought would happen. What has taken place here will come to nothing. i suspect fate will take its course now.)

Conceptions of fate are central to the sagas of icelanders (Wirth 1940; for a modern view, see, for example, Vésteinn Ólason 1998a: 166–79). in these sagas, and more generally in the old icelandic literary canon, these conceptions frequently manifest themselves in prophecy, experienced in dreams or spoken by a seer.

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Fate and Prohecy

as the Baldr myth shows, prophecy could reveal one’s fate. This motif is hardly limited to the mythological corpus.

as was noted above, the seeress in Vǫluspá saw Baldr’s fate. Especially in old Norse poetry, the faculty of vision is associated with determining the otherwise invisible fate of an individual. in Grípisspá, for example, grípir runs through the course of events that are to come in young sigurðr’s life. in the earlier part of the poem, while putting his questions to grípir, sigurðr repeatedly stresses that grípir can ‘see ahead’ or ‘forward’ or ‘in advance’ (‘sjá fram’)

— that is, see the future. These references occur in stanzas 8, 10, 20, 22, 28, 30, and 32, and in 28 sigurðr states explicitly his belief that grípir can predict the operations of fate: ‘þvíat þú ǫll um sér | ørlǫg fyrir’ (because you see all fate(s) in advance). This is the mid-point in the narrative, as grípir begins to narrate the fatal events concerning Brynhildr that will cost sigurðr his life.16 from here on the narrative tone changes, as sigurðr engages far more directly with what grípir is telling him. The poem is interesting not only for the emphasis on seeing the fate that is to come, but also in its movement from fate as the course of a life, which is what sigurðr asks about in the opening stanzas, to fate as death, which is how the poem ends. in the final stanza, as noted above, sigurðr states that fate cannot be averted (‘Mun-at skǫpum vinna’).

a gnomic stanza in Hávamál (56) seems to reflect these ambivalent notions about knowing one’s fate.

Meðalsnótr skyli

manna hverr

æva til snótr sé;

ørlǫg sín

viti engi fyrr

þeim er sorgalausastr sefi.

(averagely wise a man ought to be, never too wise; let no one know his fate beforehand, for he’ll have the most carefree spirit.) (p. 20)

This is the third of three gnomes beginning with ‘Meðalsnótr’ (moderately knowledgeable) and praising moderation of knowledge.

16 in the last lines of stanza 25, grípir tells sigurðr: ‘dægr eitt er þér | dauði ætlaðr’ (on a certain day death is appointed for you).

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Cult

a cult pertaining to fate may well be seen in the various phenomena relating to divination and to magical acts undertaken to affect what is to happen — in effect, in some cases, to change fate (è25–26 for discussion). The amount of material in the medieval sources is remarkable, and given the emphasis Tacitus also places on divination, it would seem that the conceptual world of PCRN

embraced the paradox: fate was given and unknowable, but one could try to know it, and there may have been specialists one could employ or actions one could undertake to change it. The death of Baldr may be a perfect mythic example: his dreams are bad, and the gods understand what they mean; and frigg undertakes to change the fate he has been given. Her inability to do so, despite the cooperation of nearly the entire cosmos, may well have been one important implication of the myth in PCRN, underscoring that even the gods must bow to fate. or the implication may simply be the bond that ties honour to fate: one must struggle as valiantly as possible against fate, that is, one’s death in battle. in that light, Óðinn’s preparations for Ragnarǫk, gathering an army that is doomed to fall, participate in the same complex. amulets and other protective objects must indicate conceptions of a fate that is less than fully fixed, that can be held at bay through the intervention of higher powers.

Jan Paul strid’s derivation of the placename orlunda in Östergötland, sweden, from something like * wurþazlund- (Urðr’s grove) suggests cult activity to Urðr (strid 2009: 86–87). although she is careful to avoid claiming that the dyngja (women’s work space), which is recognized archaeologically, was a ritual space, Karen Bek-Pedersen speculates that it ‘had the potential for taking on connotations of magic and of issues outside the masculine realm’ (2011a: 109), and that these connotations may be reflected in the mythology of the norns.

The Rök inscription (Ög 136, Samnordisk runtextdatabas) was intended as a memorial for a dead man, as were most of the Viking age runic inscriptions.

Nearly everyone would agree that the text goes on to reflect a death ritual, even if we do not understand exactly how or why. The use of the term feigr (doomed to die soon) for the son being commemorated thus associates an aspect of the vocabulary of fate with cult activity.17

Nineteenth- and twentieth-century ethnological recordings from Norway and the faroe islands refer to the custom of preparing nornagraut (norns’ por-17 The inscription from Västra Ryds kyrka (U 606, Samnordisk runtextdatabas) has the sequence Æstin ufik, which has been interpreted as Eysteinn ófeigr (Eysteinn the un-fey), but this seems reading questionable, and the nickname would not throw light on concepts of fate.

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ridge) in connection with childbirth. although conceptions of the norns and fate were presumably no longer active, scholars have regarded this custom as derived from pre-Christian ritual meant to propitiate the norns during childbirth and, presumably, to secure the newborn child a good fate (see Bek-Pedersen 2011a: 38–40 for discussion).

Scholarship

Persons familiar with classical mythology — and that would have included just about everyone from the nineteenth century through the 1968 student unrest — would probably have seen or expected a conception of fate similar to that presented by the Moirai and Parcae. Thus fate would essentially be bound up with the norns, and spinning or weaving would be at the centre of the conceptions about them. This goes back at least to Jacob grimm (1882–83: 405–17) and was commonly repeated in both scholarly and popular treatments of Northern mythology and religion. Most recently, it is treated in its indo-European context by West (2007: 379–86). While the materials surveyed in this chapter show that the norns were important to conceptions of fate, they are part of a greater whole, and the aspect of spinning or weaving is less important than was previously thought (Bek-Pedersen 2007).

scholars put fate at the centre of the discourse on germanic culture and religion during the period between the two world wars (e.g., Kauffmann 1923–26; van Hamel 1928–36; von Kienle 1933; Naumann 1934b; Ninck 1935; gehl 1939). These scholars departed from the premise that the germanic concept of fate was unique and that it was central to the lives of the various germanic peoples. Both etymology and texts supported the historical analysis typical of the era,18 generally leading to hypotheses about how darker, varied, and more impersonal notions of fate gradually gave way over time to more personified fate, usually with Óðinn figuring prominently in the discussion (e.g., Ninck 1935; gehl 1939). But in general it is fair to say that scholars of the time were drawn to the paradox of gods who could not control fate but had to submit to it.

This view of the special nature of germanic fate informed analysis past the middle of the last century (e.g., Mittner 1955; Neumann 1955; ström 1967b).

in 1969, however, gerd Wolfgang Weber published his book Wyrd. Weber chose the old English form because it is actually more widely attested than old Norse Urðr/urðr, despite the far more consistently Christian point of view 18 separate analyses devoted to the textual traditions include Therman (1938) and Wirth (1940).

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in old English literature. Weber showed how these conceptions of personified fate reflected augustinian thinking about fortuna fatalis (the goddess fortuna in her fateful role), which was common in the Middle ages.

although Weber thus removed a goddess of fate from the germanic pantheon, scholars have continued to look for the special features of pre-Christian notions of fate in the North. Paul C. Bauschatz took up the question of the relationship between fate and time (1975, 1982). Bauschatz arugued for an analogy between the linguistic structure of the germanic languages, which lack a simple future tense,19 and the experience of time and fate in PCRN. Thus the fundamental distinction, according to Bauschatz, was bipartite: past and non-past. as we would see it, fate is set in the future, but according to the argument of Bauschatz it is also anchored in the past, mythologically so in the speech acts of the norns, at the centre of the universe, endowing humans with fate.20 This view has not gained traction.

anthony Winterbourne (2004) devoted a monograph to the issue of Time and Fate in Germanic Paganism (so the subtitle). Using philosophical reasoning, Winterbourne argues vigorously that time is not fate, a conclusion with which Bek-Pedersen (2011a) concurs. indeed, it seems unlikely that any analysis of PCRN would lead to the conclusion that fate and time are wholly identical, and the question may hold greatest interest within the academic field of philosophy. it does, however, seem equally clear that fate takes place within time, and that poets at least conceived of fate using the vocabulary of time:

‘qveld lifir maðr ecci | eptir qvið norna’ (no man lives an evening beyond the decree of the norns) ( Hamðismál st. 30).

Concluding Remarks

although previous scholarship almost certainly exaggerated the character and importance of notions of fate in PCRN, it is certain that pre-Christian notions of fate are not the same as those held in the modern world (ström 1967b) or, presumably in other times and places. The anthropogonic myth of Vǫluspá, with askr and Embla lacking fate and the norns providing it, implies that no human life is possible without fate, from which one might infer that human life is impossible without fate. furthermore, fate was for the most part focused on 19 Compare latin ibo from ire and the English translation, ‘i shall go’, which uses a modal verb. in the older germanic languages, the present tense could have future meaning.

20 This is not to deny the importance of the past in prophecy, as in Vǫluspá, in which the seeress begins her vision of what is to come with what has already been, namely cosmogony.

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the hour of one’s death, not on the details of one’s life or career. The evidence to the contrary seems to involve disasters in life: acts of ergi, such as those Óðinn and loki were guilty of according to Lokasenna, or the níðingsverk of starkaðr according to Gautreks saga. from these it may be possible to infer the importance of honour: at the points where fate falls, honour is (always?) at stake.

fate as we have it in the record was highly gendered. Even if we remove the putative goddess Wyrd/Urðr from the pantheon, those who give fates are female. This includes not just the norns but also the dísir, whose association with death is prominent, and the valkyries. The latter are a special case, since they displace the decision about a warrior’s individual fate from a male deity, Óðinn, to a female intermediary. as they are articulated in the literary record, valkyries can truly choose, thus activating the agentive aspect of the noun valkyrja (chooser of the slain): they choose to substitute love for death, thus postponing a warrior’s fate (at least for a time; è60). furthermore, the association of fate words with textile work suggests female hands turning fate.

The gendering of fate leads to the question: can a woman have a fate? fate as we see it in the literary record (and as we can infer its operation in swedish rune stones; see above, ‘fate and Honour’) is only at stake for warriors. Here we may note that at Ragnarǫk, we learn the fates only of male gods, not of goddesses, even of freyja. given this fact, we may wonder if anyone, male or female, may have a fate outside the class of warriors or others who use weapons, such as the men in the sagas who participate in bloodfeud. against the idea of women not having fate is the anthropogonic myth in Vǫluspá, which makes no indication that askr’s lack of fate is any more important than that of Embla,21 and from this we may perhaps infer that non-warrior males might also have fates.

any discussion of this issue must recognize the lopsided nature of the written record: the texts that inform notions of fate are primarily those, such as eddic poetry, that inform notions of the heroic. That fact may ultimately have to do with the importance of warrior bands and the role of memory in that particular social group (è24).

21 But see n. 2 above, which points out an elision between the distinction between sexes at this point in the poem.