The Norns
The Norns are the women of Norse myth who shape fate. Three are named, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, who live by Urd’s well at the foot of the world tree Yggdrasil; in the Völuspá they carve men’s fates on wood, and other sources make them spinners and weavers.
Meaning
The Norns are the powers of fate in Norse myth, who decide the course and length of a person’s life, the Danish encyclopedia Lex says. Three are named, Urd, Verdandi and Skuld, who live by Urd’s well beneath the world tree Yggdrasil; besides them, Snorri says, there are many norns, who come to each child that is born. The word norn is of disputed origin (Lex), and Dictionary.com gives its English pronunciation as nawrn. They are known from the Poetic Edda and Snorri’s Edda, preserved in Icelandic manuscripts of the 13th and early 14th centuries, which the National Museum of Denmark notes were written by Christian writers. They have a place in modern Heathenry too: Sweden’s Nordiska Asa-samfundet calls them some of the most enigmatic and powerful figures in Ásatrú.
Origin and history
The names are words for what happens. Urd, the eldest, comes from urðr, “fate”; Verdandi, the middle one, from verða, “to become”; and Skuld, the youngest, from skulu, “shall”, the verb for what is to come, Store norske leksikon says. Lex glosses urðr as misfortune and death as well as “what was; the past”. Bellows renders the three as “Past”, “Present” and “Future”, but The Troth calls that translation “not quite the most accurate way to think of them”: Skuld is related to English “should” and literally means “debt”, something incurred in the past that must be paid in the future. Urðr has an Old English cousin in wyrd. Besides the three, Snorri says, there are norns of the race of the gods, of the elves and of the dwarfs, and quotes the Eddic poem Fáfnismál: “Of many births the Norns must be”. Good norns of honourable race give a good life, he adds, and those who suffer misfortune are ruled by evil norns. One voice from outside the books, The Troth notes, is a runic carving from about 1180 in Borgund stave church in Norway: “The nornir did both good and evil; for me they have created much suffering.” The heroic poems make their word final. In the heroic poem Hamthesmol: “None outlives the night when the Norns have spoken.”
At the well under the tree
The Völuspá puts the Norns at the tree: “Green by Urth’s well does it ever grow. / Thence come the maidens mighty in wisdom, / Three from the dwelling down ’neath the tree”. They carve on wood, and “Laws they made there, and life allotted / To the sons of men, and set their fates.” Bellows notes that the signs governing men’s lives were runes cut on pieces of wood. Snorri gives the scene its detail: a fair hall stands under the ash by the well, and out of it come the three maids who “determine the period of men’s lives”; every day they take water and the clay lying round the well and sprinkle it over the ash so that its branches will not wither or rot. The gods hold their court at Urd’s well.
Carving, spinning or weaving?
The sources do not agree on how the Norns shape a life. In the Völuspá they carve. In the first poem of Helgi Hundingsbane, in Bellows’s translation, they come at night to the newborn hero and “Mightily wove they the web of fate”, making golden threads fast in the sky. Store norske leksikon says that in the Helgi poems they spin and cut the thread, and Lex that at a birth they measure out the threads of fate as on a loom. Nordiska Asa-samfundet calls them the weavers of fate and says they are often shown with spindles, threads and looms. The Troth, following Karen Bek-Pedersen, disagrees: passages in the lore liken fortune to thread or weaving, but “the Norns themselves are never depicted as doing the actual weaving or spinning”, and what they do to Helgi’s threads sounds more like braiding. The drawing here follows the Völuspá: three women at the well.
Norns, valkyries and the Greek Fates
Norns and valkyries overlap in one figure. Snorri names Skuld, “the youngest Norn”, among the valkyries who “ride ever to take the slain and decide fights”, and Store norske leksikon sees in this a close link between the two. The women weaving in the poem Darraðarljóð, in Njáls saga, are “specifically called valkyries, not norns”, The Troth points out. Others read the Norns through the Greek Moirai, who spin the thread of life; The Troth notes the comparison and the weaving reading that comes with it.
The Norns in Heathenry today
Nordiska Asa-samfundet writes that the Norns are close kin to the dísir, the female powers of a family and its line, or even the same beings. The Troth defines wyrd as “the web of causes and effects by which past actions shape every present moment”, and calls the Well of Wyrd, “a great spring at the roots of Yggdrasil”, the image that expresses it.
Read next
- Next in Norse gods and their symbolsOdinOdin was the chief of the Norse gods: god of kings, war and the dead, and of poetry and magic, who gave an eye for wisdom. His signs are the spear Gungnir, the ravens Huginn and Muninn, the eight-legged horse Sleipnir, the wolves Geri and Freki and the gold ring Draupnir.
- The Norns live by Urd’s well under the world tree and water itYggdrasilThe world tree of Norse myth: an evergreen ash that stands at the centre of the world, its branches spreading over everything and its three roots reaching into the realms of gods, giants and the dead.
See also
Frigg, Thor, Baldr, Tyr, Heimdall, Bragi.
Sources
- The Poetic Edda (Bellows translation), Henry Adams Bellows (trans.), 1923, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Project Gutenberg), Introduction; Voluspo, stanzas 19–20 and notes; Helgakvitha Hundingsbana I, stanzas 2–3; Fafnismol, stanza 13; Hamthesmol, stanza 30
- The Prose Edda (Brodeur translation), Arthur Gilchrist Brodeur (trans.), 1916, American-Scandinavian Foundation (Internet Archive), Gylfaginning, chapters XV, XVI and XXXVI
- The old religion, National Museum of Denmark, Written sources
- Norner (Store norske leksikon), Store norske leksikon
- Norner (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- Urd (Lex), Lex, Danmarks Nationalleksikon
- The Norns: The Ladies of Destiny, or Metaphor for Fate Itself?, The Troth
- Nornorna, Nordiska Asa-samfundet
- Norn (Dictionary.com), Dictionary.com
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols formed from circles or lines.
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 10, 2026. How we research
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