What Is The Norse Pagan Web Of Wyrd?

April 2022 · 2 minute read

The Web of Wyrd, also called "Skuld's Web" (or "Skuld's Net"), was a critical component of Nordic society, which hailed from modern day Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden, and Denmark). Folks believed that the three sisters of fate, the Norns (Wyrd, Verdandi and Skuld), wove the path of life before birth, as Norse Mythology explains. Certain events were inescapable, and fate was as blind as it was apathetic. High or low, noble or peasant, the Norns — ancient entities distinct from the gods — wove as they wished. Even "Beowulf," the Anglo-Saxon oral tale written down about 1000 CE, contains references to Wyrd, translated as "fate" or "destiny." Beowulf speaks of how it's his "Wyrd" to fight the monster Grendel, saying, "Fate often spares an undoomed man when his courage avails" (as translated on Research Gate). This is similar to "Fortune favors the bold."

Belief in Wyrd wound up in England because of the Vikings, those boat-riding pillagers and traders most active during the "Viking Age" (roughly 800-1050 CE, per the National Museum of Denmark). They traveled out to Anglo-Saxon England, Scotland and France, Iceland and Greenland, eventually North America, and practically everywhere in between. Their impact was so pervasive that we even preserve the names of the Norse gods Tyr, Odin, Thor, and Freya in our days of the week: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. The Old Norse language got grafted onto Old English.

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