This chapter will outline the interpretations of 'wyrd', surveying the case for a potential pre-Christian personification.
Jacob Grimm in his seminal Deutsche Mythologie pinpoints ‘wyrd’ within a Teutonic lineage, whose origins derive from an Old Norse rendering of urðr[1], anglicised as urd. Grimm based the relation of wyrd to urðr upon philosophical grounds, corresponding the personification as one of three Nordic Norns [2], as a form of linguistic preservation of a pre-Christian, Teutonic mythology.
Grimm surmised ‘Whatever grows deep into a language and spoken tradition cannot remain outside mythology (…) the aforementioned universal grammatical and poetic animation may even trace its origin to a mythical prosopopoeia' [3].
Scottish epilogist Alexander MacBain similarly described language as the fossilization of the cultural mythology: ‘Language is but the physical side, as it were, of mythology, and the mental side of it must be considered before the action of language can be appreciated properly’[4].
Under this premise, interpreting ‘wyrd' as a form of prosopopoeia, cognate with ‘Urðr’, integrated with MacBain’s language as fossilization of mythology, I will briefly outline the mythological references, presenting the ‘romantic’ interpretation of 'wyrd'.
Nordic Tradition
Located in the Scandinavian tradition, prominently among Old Norse poets, ‘Urðr’ was a key figuration alongside the sacred ash-Tree of Yggdrasil. As presented in the 19th Stanza of Völuspá Saga, underneath Yggdrasil, resides the Urðarbrunnr-the well-spring of fate.
hár baðmr, ausinn hvíta auri;
þaðan koma döggvar þærs í dala falla;
stendr æ yfir grœnn Urðar brunni [5].
(A high tree sprinkled with shining drops;
Come dews therefrom which fall in the dales:
It stands ever green o’er the well of Weird.)
There are two notable prosopopoeia presented in this passage. First, Yggdrasil: the sacred ash-tree, believed to uphold the earth at the cosmological center of the universe. From Yggdrasil, there stems three springs, or wells, Urðarbrunnur, Hvergelmir and Mímisbrunnur.
As seen in the passage above, the translators rendering of Urðar brunni ‘as ‘well of Weird’ aligns to Grimm transposition. Here Urðar is in auxiliary form, suffixed with -ar, to serve as the plural indefinite accusative of Urð, singular indefinite, which distinguishes Urðar brunni as 'well of fate'- and Urð, as Fate.
Ernest Tonnelat speculated that the designation of Urð, and Wyrd initially served a concept to symbolise the dispersion of a happening-as an inevitable occurrence of events-which ‘little by little transformed into a proper name (…) that of a kind of goddess who was both just and inexorable’-through the course of which two other Norns were assembled, for three sisters [8].
Þaðan koma meyjar margs vitandi
þrjár, ór þeim sal er und þolli stendr;
Urð hétu eina, aðra Verðandi,
skáru á skíði, Skuld ina þriðju;
þær lög lögðu, þær líf kuru
alda börnum, örlög seggja [9].
There are the maidens, all things knowing Three in the fall which stands ‘neath the Tree One is named ‘Weird’, the second, ‘Being’- Who grave on tables-but ‘Shall’, the third.
Urð (the wisest- whom the well is named after)-represents she who will become [10]. One contemporary retelling is Norse Mythology by Neil Gamin, whom simplifies the Norns as complex personifications: he presents them as ‘wise maidens’, otherwise ‘mistresses of fate’[11]. Urd, ‘she is fate and destiny’: Verdandi,‘becoming'-and hers is the present’: Skuld, ‘whose name means “that which is intended”, and her domain is the future’[12]. These ‘giantesses’, were depicted as spinsters who wove the threats of fate[13], drew water from the Urðarbrunnr to nourish Yggdrasil (poured water from the ‘Well of Fate’ into the roots of the world).
Ernest Tonnelat comments that the Norns ‘were learned in the old customs, the ancient precepts of right and wrong, and could judge the fate each man merited, and could judge the fate each man merited, for the Aesir could no more escape their destiny than could men’.[14]
The notion of 'wyrd', as derivative of 'urðr' as prosopopoeia, suggests an anthropomorphic preservation of an Old Nordic allusion to Fate, located in the ancestral lineage relating to a Germanic mythological concept.
MacBain summarizes such a process behind the fossilization of an ancient allusion surviving still within modern word: ‘when the feeling and personification impressed on language had passed into a more intellectual age, the result was misinterpretation and a too literal acceptance of many of the warm and vivid epithets employed of old’[15].
Bibliography [1] Jacob Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie pp.835-6 2nd edition, chapter xxix [2] Norn was also a Northern Germanic and West Scandinavian language- sibling to the Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian-spoken in the Northern Isles of the Scottish archipelagos. Then named Nordøjar): in ….century Hjaltland and Orknøjar, or Orkneyjar (in Norn), the Hebrides and Orkneys. Distinct from the Shetlands dialects, which is a variant from Middle-English, the origins of Norn are believed to arise from the 8th century arrival of Viking Settlers, lasting short of a thousand years, dwindling into extinction by the eighteenth century: absolved by the mergence into Scots (an Anglic, West Germanic language). Kingdom of Norway’s 1468-9 pledge of the Isles to Scotland. [3] Grimm, 1st edition, p.229, 2nd 378 [4] Alexander McBain, Celtic Mythology and Religion (Inverness, A & W Mackenzie, 1885) p.8 [5] The Elder, or Poetic Edda, Sæmund's Edda (London, Viking Club Translations Series, 1908) p.283 [7] It furthermore recorded in 772 AD that Charlemagne, in Westphalia-during his expedition to in Saxon lands- purposefully destroyed one of the pillars of Irmensul, a move to denigrate the venerated ‘pagan’ monument. (Depicted in "The Destruction of Irminsul by Charlemagne" by Heinrich Leutemann 1882) World Mythology p. 255 [8] Mythology, Larousse Encyclopaedia, p.255 [9] The Elder, p.284 [10] Mythology, Larousse Encyclopaedia, p.255 [11] Mythology, Larousse Encyclopaedia, p.288 [12] Gaiman Neil, Norse Mythology (Oxford: Bloomsbury, 2017) p.21 [13] Mythology, Larousse Encyclopaedia, p.288 [14] Mythology, Larousse Encyclopaedia, p.288 [15] MacBain, Celtic Mythology and Religion, p.23
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