Norns

High said: ‘The red you see in the rainbow is burning fire. The
frost-giants and mountain-giants would go up into heaven if
Bifrost was crossable by everyone that wanted to go. There are
many beautiful places in heaven and everywhere there has divine
protection round it. There stands there one beautiful hall under
the ash by the well, and out of this hall come three maidens whose
names are Weird, Verdandi, Skuld. These maidens shape men’s
lives. We call them norns. There are also other norns who visit
everyone when they are bom to shape their lives, and these are of
divine origin, though others are of the race of elves, and a third
group are of the race of dwarfs, as it says here:

Of very diverse parentage I think the norns are, they do not
have a common ancestry. Some are descended from Æsir,
some are descended from elves, some are daughters of
Dvalin.’

Then spoke Gangleri: if norns determine the fates of men, they
allot terribly unfairly, when some have a good and prosperous
life, and some have little success or glory, some a long life, some
short.’

High said: ‘Good norns, ones of noble parentage, shape good
lives, but as for those people that become the victims of
misfortune, it is evil norns that are responsible.’

Then spoke Gangleri: ‘What other particularly notable things
are there to tell about the ash?’


- Prose Edda, Gylfaginning


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19 An ash I know that stands, Yggdrasill it’s called,
a tall tree, drenched with shining loam;
from there come the dews which fall in the valley,
green, it stands always over Urd’s well.

20 From there come girls, knowing a great deal,
three from the lake standing under the tree;
Urd one is called, Verdandi another—
they carved on a wooden slip—Skuld the third;

21 they laid down laws, they chose lives
for the sons of men, the fates of men.


- Poetic Edda, Voluspa