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Chapter 2. Connections 40
considered spatial relationships. Rather than being separated by time, they are
separated by distance only or in what we would call a cause-effect relationship, one
event leading into another. Complex temporal relationships are often less obvious
in the early writings of Germanic culture and are probably somewhat more difficult
for modern man to conceptualize let alone understand. Modern white Americans
can be heard to say, for example, “I had nothing to do with the slave trade; that
was over a hundred years ago!” in response to remarks made by black Americans
about current living conditions, employment opportunities, and general attitudes
of white America towards the black community. Modern folk generate an excuse
out of the apparent temporal separation between events to absolve themselves from
the responsibility of engaging in right action; instead, they use this as an excuse to
turn their heads away, to ignore racial prejudice. The tired cliché “All that we have
is the present” is another way that people can remove themselves from and blind
themselves to events that have gone before, but such a belief would have seemed
odd to an ancient Scandinavian sitting near the fire in a mead hall listening to a
poet/ singer recite glorious battle songs composed in honor of a long dead king.
For the ancient Teutonic peoples, the past was the very foundation upon which
the present floats. Events taking place in the past directly determined the status
of the present. For the ancients, the responsibility for past action was not to be
ignored.
“Thence wise maidens three betake them–
under spreading boughs their bower stands–
Urð one is hight, the other, Verthandi,
Skuld the third: they scores did cut,
they laws did make, they lives did choose:
for the children of men they marked their fates.
(Völuspá 20, Hollander, 1962)
In the above verse, the Old Norse word usually translated as “fate” is ørlög. For the
purposes of poetry, the translation may serve well enough, but from a philosopher’s
or a cultural anthropologist’s point of view, “fate” or “fates” is a very poor choice.
The ON word, lög, and its companion, lag, are defined in the Glossary to the Poetic
Edda thusly:
lag n. ’lay,’ order, disposition: heyra lag orða ‘to catch the drift of words. In the
pl. (lög) a) preordained fate: leggja lög ‘to determine someone’s fate’; b) law.
lög, see lag (Völuspá 20) and lögr.