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Chapter 2. Connections 46
of noble parentage, shape good lives, but as for those people that become the
victims of misfortune, it is the evil norns that are responsible’. ” 35
However, if the concept of the future was, at best, hazy for the ancients, then so
was the idea of predestine. There are quite a large number of folktales where “fate”
is cheated and an equally large number where fate is not cheated although good
attempts were made. The point is that, for the ancients, the future was not fixed
absolutely but only tentatively.
It’s a fairly common belief that most early peoples believed in a fixed destiny. 36
Unfortunately, the names Urð (cognate:“weird”; OE Wyrd), Verdandi, and Skuld
are often translated in the classical fashion to mean “Past,” “Present,” and “Future.”
It is also necessary to consider that not only do modern scholars tend to view the
Norns in such a fashion, but that by Snorri’s time Christianity had a solid foothold
in the northern countries.
“It is also clear, however, from all that has been presented that the Christianization
of the pagan Germanic peoples eventually must have created very
great conceptual problems for them. The temporal reorientation toward
the future, which the Christian conception stresses so strongly, involved a
180-degree wrench away from the past toward a future that did not even exist
prior to Christianization . . . . The term (Wyrd) comes to denote a somewhat
ambiguous concept in Christian times; sometimes it seems to refer to the
will of God, at others to something like Fortune (and, as such, subservient
to God’s will), but it was there forcing itself meaningfully into the speech
of those new Christians who struggled to reconcile it somehow with their
recently acquired Christian orientation and belief.” 37
Because Christianization occurred prior to the recording of the eddaic and sagaic
literature (since anyone who was capable of writing in the roman script had been
trained by the Church), one needs to be very careful not only in the translation-interpretation
but also in the content of what was actually written. In any case, it is obvious from
the time of Tacitus down that the early Germanic people held some concept of
dispensers of destiny or ørlög, but information is lacking in the northern literature
as to the nature of what was actually dispensed. Until the early part of this century,
there was a living tradition among the Norwegian Samí (Laplanders) of the three
Goddesses of childbirth who were known as the Daughters of Madderakka. Their
35 Snorri, p. 18.
36 This is another area where people tend to ignore the evidence as it is presented by the
anthropologists. Moderns often hold set beliefs and then ”page through history books” looking for
the evidence that they are right. Getting into the habit of reading anthropology texts from front
to back with an open mind is a skill that can be learned and cultivated.
37 Bauschatz, p. 154.