Wyrd

File:Urd magazine.jpg

Poster for the Norwegian magazine Urd by Andreas Bloch and Olaf Krohn

Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".

The cognate term to wyrd in Old Norse is Template:Lang, with a similar meaning, but also personified as a deity: Urðr (anglicized as Template:Transliteration), one of the Norns in Norse mythology. The word also appears in the name of the well where the Norns meet, Urðarbrunnr.

Etymology

The Old English term Template:Lang derives from a Proto-Germanic term Template:Lang.<ref>Karsten, Gustaf E. Michelle Kindler Philology, University of Illinois Press, 1908, p. 12.</ref> Wyrd has cognates in Old Saxon Template:Lang,<ref name=":0"/> Old High German Template:Lang,<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref> Old Norse Template:Lang,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> Dutch Template:Lang (to become),<ref name=":1">Template:Cite book</ref> and German Template:Lang.<ref name=":0" /> The Proto-Indo-European root is Template:Lang meaning 'to twist', which is related to Latin vertere 'turning, rotating',<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and in Proto-Germanic is Template:Lang with a meaning 'to come to pass, to become, to be due'.<ref name=":1" /> The same root is also found in Template:Lang, with the notion of 'origin' or 'worth' both in the sense of 'connotation, price, value' and 'affiliation, identity, esteem, honour and dignity'.Template:Citation needed

Template:Lang is a noun formed from the Old English verb Template:Wikt-lang, meaning 'to come to pass, to become'.<ref name=":0"/> Adjectival use of wyrd developed in the 15th century, in the sense 'having the power to control destiny', originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, who in the Elizabethan period were detached from their classical background and given an English personification as fays.

Painting showing three faces with hooked noses in profile, eyes looking up. Each has an arm outstretched with crooked fingers.

The Three Witches by Henry Fuseli (1783)

The weird sisters notably appear as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth.<ref>Karsten, Gustaf E. Germanic Philology, University of Illinois Press, 1908, p. 12.</ref> To elucidate this, many editors of the play include a footnote associating the "Weird Sisters" with the Old English word Template:Lang or 'fate'.<ref>de Grazia, Margareta and Stallybrass, Peter. The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text, George Washington University, 1993, p. 263.</ref>

The modern English usage actually developed from Scots, in which beginning in the 14th century, to weird was used as a verb with the sense of 'to preordain by decree of fate'.Template:Citation needed This use then gave rise to the early nineteenth century adjective meaning 'unearthly', which then developed into modern English weird.

The modern spelling weird first appeared in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and was taken up in standard literary English starting in the 17th century. The regular form ought to have been wird, from Early Modern English werd. The replacement of werd by weird in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".<ref>OED. cf. phonological history of Scots.</ref>

The most common modern meaning of weirdTemplate:Snd'odd, strange'Template:Sndis first attested in 1815, originally with a connotation of the supernatural or portentous (especially in the collocation weird and wonderful), but by the early 20th century increasingly applied to everyday situations.<ref>OED; cf. Barnhart, Robert K. The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. HarperCollins Template:ISBN (1995:876).</ref>

Fate in Germanic mythology

File:Die Nornen (1889) by Johannes Gehrts.jpg

The Norns by Johannes Gehrts (1889)

According to J. Duncan Spaeth, "Wyrd (Norse Urd, one of the three Norns) is the Old English goddess of Fate, whom even Christianity could not entirely displace."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

Template:Lang is a feminine noun,<ref>"WYRD, Gender: Feminine", Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary</ref> and its Norse cognate Template:Lang, besides meaning 'fate', is the name of one of the deities known as Norns. For this reason, Template:Lang has been interpreted by some scholars as a pre-Christian goddess of fate. Other scholars deny a pagan signification of Template:Lang in the Old English period, but allow that Template:Lang may have been a deity in the pre-Christian period.<ref>Frakes, Jerold C. The Ancient Concept of casus and its Early Medieval Interpretations, Brill, 1984, p. 15.</ref> In particular, some scholars argue that the three Norns are a late influence from the three Moirai in Greek and Roman mythology, who are goddesses of fate.<ref name="nordiskdis">Nordisk familjebok (1907)</ref>

The names of the Norns are Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. Template:Lang means 'that which has come to pass', Template:Lang means "that which is in the process of happening" (it is the present participle of the verb cognate to Template:Lang), and Template:Lang means 'debt' or 'guilt' (from a Germanic root Template:Lang 'to owe', also found in English should and shall).

Between themselves, the Norns weave fate or Template:Lang (from Template:Lang 'out, from, beyond' and Template:Lang 'law', and may be interpreted literally as 'beyond law'). According to Voluspa 20, the three Norns "set up the laws", "decided on the lives of the children of time" and "promulgate their Template:Lang". Frigg, on the other hand, while she "knows all ørlǫg", "says it not herself" (Lokasenna 30). Lawless that is "Template:Lang" occurs in Voluspa 17 in reference to driftwood, that is given breath, warmth and spirit by three gods, to create the first humans, Ask and Embla ('Ash' and possibly 'Elm' or 'Vine').

Mentions of Template:Lang in Old English literature include The Wanderer, "Template:Lang" ('Fate remains wholly inexorable') and Beowulf, "Template:Lang" ('Fate goes ever as she shall!'). In The Wanderer, Template:Lang is irrepressible and relentless. She or it "snatches the earls away from the joys of life," and "the wearied mind of man cannot withstand her" for her decrees "change all the world beneath the heavens".<ref>Ferrell, C. C. Old Germanic Life in the Anglo-Saxon, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1894, pp. 402-403.</ref>

Other uses

The Wyrd Mons, a mountain on Venus, is named after an "Anglo-Saxon weaving goddess".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Frank Herbert used the word "weird" in his science-fiction novel Dune to connote power, e.g. a martial art is referred to as "the Weirding Way", which takes place at the speed of thought. This was modified by director David Lynch, in his 1984 film version of the book, to become a system of sonic weapons called "weirding modules."<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>

See also

• Amor fati
• Beot
• Destiny
• Karma
• Predestination
• Predestination in Islam
• Moirai
• Ṛta
• Teotl
• Weaving (mythology)

References

• Bertha S. Philpotts, 'Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought', Essays and Studies 13 (1928), 7-27.