The Norns in Old Norse Mythology by Karen Bek-Pedersen (review)

Three questions are posed in the Introduction to Karen Bek-Pedersen’s very useful book on the Norns in Norse literature and mythology. Why, she asks, is fate so often presented in feminine guise? Second, what is the connection between the nornir and textile-related work? And third, what does it mean to regard fate as a kind of law—or at least to express the concept of fate or destiny through legal terminology? To these questions, a de facto fourth is added: what is the relationship between the nornir and water? The answers to these inquiries, together with chapters on sources and terminology, broadly frame the chapter-by-chapter organization of the book.

Based on her thesis and two published articles, The Norns in Old Norse Mythology offers a thorough discussion of these elusive figures. At the end of the first chapter, the assertion is made that the research is “not intended to constitute the final academic word on the nornir” but rather “the findings presented below can serve as a base for future research” (p. 10). In fact, Bek-Pedersen’s study achieves much more than clearing the ground; while it does not indeed offer the final word, it explodes many preconceptions about the nornir that scholars have tended to promulgate in their summaries of the figures’ activities, and it treats a very wide range of sources, though, oddly, Hrafnagaldr Óðins, explicitly mentioned on page 3, does not appear again in the volume.

Bek-Pedersen answers two of the three crucial questions posed in the Introduction, namely the connections with textiles and the concept of fate as law, while, perhaps inevitably, she does not manage to account for (as opposed to demonstrate) the feminine gender of the nornir and associated figures such as Urðr or the dísir. The net is cast quite widely in this chapter, for fylgjur, vǫlur and valkyries are also considered; Bek-Pedersen sensibly notes (p. 64) that the classification of the different types of supernatural female must always have been shifting, both over time and in space, and shows how, for example, Ström’s assumption that the valkyries represent the “heroic-mythical aspect” of the dísir, and the norns their “fatal aspect,” misunderstands the complexities of the nomenclature. His contention that the dísir are the overarching category in which the other figures—some human, some in animal form—are subsumed is not supported by the patchwork of evidence about their functions.

The third chapter, “The Women in the Well,” charts the associations between the nornir and water, including the poorly understood relationship of the three nornir mentioned in Vǫluspá and the Urðar-brunnr (usually translated as “the Well of Fate”). As in the following chapter, Bek-Pedersen’s detailed analysis foregrounds the fact that the three named nornir, Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuldr, only appear together in series in Vǫluspá and Gylfaginning (the second instance dependent on the first as source). The lake or well is in the Codex Regius text of Vǫluspá, (sœ against Hauksbók’s sal) and renders less certainly ancient the association with standing water. Bek-Pedersen also calls into question the value of etymology for interpreting the three Norn names, and the assumed link between the Indo-European root *wert, evidenced in Latin vertere “to turn,” and Urðr’s name, an argument considered more thoroughly in the following chapter. Here she argues against the association of the three nornir with Past, Present and Future. Urðr and Skuldr are older names with a broad range of connotations beyond the chronological, while Verðandi seems to be an ad hoc invention, formulated precisely to complete the chronological sequence and, as Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson has suggested, thus not very old. This chapter continues with a discussion of fate and fate-type figures associated with dark, humid places, with a predictable but not particularly plausible appearance from Grendel’s Mother (p. 97...