Wyrd
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Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon and Nordic culture roughly corresponding to fate. It is ancestral to Modern English weird, which has acquired a very different meaning. The cognate term in old Norse is urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personalized as one of the Norns, Urðr (anglicized Urd). The concept corresponding to "fate" in Old Norse is Ørlǫg.
The Well of Urd is the holy well supposed to harbor the head of Mímir the giant and the source of water for the world tree Yggdrasil.
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[edit] Etymology
Old English wyrd is, derived from Proto-Germanic *wurþiz, Proto-Indo-European *wrti-, a verbal abstract from the root *wert- "to turn" (Latin vertere), related to the Old English verb weorþan, meaning "to grow into, to become". In its literal sense, it refers to "that which turns out, that which comes to pass".
Modern English weird developed its sense from weird sisters for the three fates or Norns (Shakespeare in Macbeth has the three witches so called). They were usually portrayed as odd or uncanny in appearance, which led to the adjectival meaning (first recorded 1815).
The term ørlǫg is from ór "out, from, beyond" and lǫg "law", and may be interpreted literally as "beyond law", or as "fundamental/absolute/primary law".
[edit] Concept
In its wider sense, wyrd refers to how past actions continually affect and condition the future. It also stresses the interconnected nature of all actions, and how they influence each other. The concept has some relation to the ideal of predestination. Unlike predestination, however, the concept of wyrd allows for human agency, constrained and by past events, but nevertheless capable of shaping reality, an idea that is also prominent in the Dharmic concept of karma. Wyrd is "inexorable"[1] and "goes as she shall"[2], the fate (Norse ørlǫg) woven by the Norns. Indeed, the term's Norse cognate urðr, besides meaning "fate", is the name of one of the Norns, closely related to the concept of necessity (skuld). The name of the younger sister, Verðandi, is strictly the present participle of the verb cognate to weorþan.
According to Voluspa 20, the three Norns "set up the laws", "decided on the lives of the children of time" and "promulgate their Ørlǫg"[3]. Frigg, on the other hand, while she "knows all ørlǫg", "says it not herself" (Lokasenna 30). ørlǫglausa "ørlǫg-less" occurs in Voluspa 17 in reference to trees (as opposed to humans).
[edit] Well of Urd
The Well of Urd (ON: Urðarbrunnr) is the well in Asgard which fed one of the roots of the Yggdrasil. Also near the well in a hall are three Norns that tend the well. They engrave the fate of all humans onto the trunk of the Yggdrasil and attend to the needs of the tree. Odin dropped his eye into the well to gain the "Gift of Knowledge." Odin completed two other tasks to gain the "Gift of Poetry" and the "Mysteries of Nature."
[edit] References
- ^ "The Wanderer": "Wyrd bið ful aræd" (Fate remains wholly inexorable)
- ^ Beowulf: "Gæð a wyrd swa hio scel!" (Fate goes ever as she shall!)
- ^ trans. Kodratoff
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- What is Wyrd by Arlea Æðelwyrd Hunt-Anschütz
- Asatru and Heathenry by Swain Wodening Canote (ealdriht.org)
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