Fate and Destiny in Norse Paganism: Wyrd and Ørlǫg

We can build a deeper foundation for our ethics by looking at the various words in the older languages that are often translated as “fate” or “destiny.” 

There were many such words: Old Norse had urðr, ørlǫg, forlǫg, skǫp, mjǫtuðr, and auðna, while Old English had wyrd, gewyrd, metod, and orlæg (occasionally seen in the modernized form orlay). Some of these words have cognates in other languages: for example, Old High German and Old Saxon had the word wurt (Bek-Pedersen, The Norns in Old Norse Mythology, p. 80), while Pennsylvania Deitsch as used in Urglaawe has die Wurt and es Urleeg. 

Some Heathens use them synonymously. Others have found it useful to distinguish between them as having subtly different meanings. Whatever you call it, or them, understanding them is crucial for understanding a Heathen worldview.

Is there a Norse Pagan word for Karma?

Karma is a popular concept in Paganism. It’s a borrowed word from Sanskrit and comes interpreted popularly as “cosmic justice” or “getting what you deserve.” Doing good action leads to good Karma, doing bad action leads to bad Karma. 

But this is a misconception of Karma. Karma is simply “action” or “that which has been done.” It is past action that influences present and future conditions. As such, there is no “good” or “bad” karma, there is only action that leads to the context we someday have to face. 

In this sense, Karma is actually a lot closer to the old concepts of Orlog or Wyrd than it is to any idea of “cosmic justice.” 

Wyrd

The Old English wyrd was used to translate Latin fata and fortuna. In Christian texts, wyrd can simply mean “event; what has happened,” with no connotation that it is an active force or capable of opposing God’s will. 

Gewyrd was used in Christian writings to express the idea of a fixed fate or predestination, which was heretical: Ælfric condemned the belief that the Star of Bethlehem was Christ’s gewyrd, meaning that it predestined his fate in an astrological sense. 

Wyrd is often linked with death; in the poem Dream of the Rood, when the Cross tells how it was felled, it exclaims þæt wæs egeslic wyrd! “That was a fearful wyrd!” (Krapp, The Vercelli Book, p. 63). But wyrd can save life: Beowulf 572-573 includes the famous line Wyrd oft nereð unfǣgne eorl, þonne his ellen dēah, “Wyrd often saves a man who isn’t doomed to die, when his courage avails.” 

Thus wyrd can take on a range of meanings, and reconstructing exactly what it would have meant in pre-Christian times is not easy (Stanley, Imagining the Anglo-Saxon Past, pp. 85-88).

Ørlǫg 

The Norse word ørlǫg is usually interpreted as “ur-law,” with ur- meaning “ancient; primal.” The word “law” itself comes from the same root as “to lay;” ørlǫg is literally “what was laid down in primal time.” Alternately, the first syllable may be related to the preposition úr, “out of”; ørlǫg would literally mean “something is laid down from out of this.” 

The closely related word forlǫg means “fore-laws,” laws laid down previously; it is virtually synonymous with ørlǫg. Skǫp, literally “shapings,” implies something done with a purpose; it can also imply something happening in a natural way (Bek-Pedersen, The Norns in Old Norse Mythology, pp. 165-173). 

Mjǫtuðr seems to mean “evil fate; bane.” Its Old English cognate metod originally meant something similar (as in metod-wang, “field of doom,” i.e. “battlefield”), but in later texts it became a synonym for the Christian God, often translated as “the Measurer.”

To be ørlǫglauss, “without ørlǫg,” is to have neither a past nor a future of any significance, and thus not to exist in any meaningful way. In Vǫluspá 17, the logs on the beach are ørlǫglausa before Óðinn, Hoenir, and Lóðurr shape them into human beings. 

Wyrd and Fate in Medieval Germanic Heroic Literature

A few references in Old English literature point to what may have been a pre-Christian concept of wyrd as an active force that is not subject to any divine power. In the poem Solomon and Saturn, a dialogue that contrasts Christian and pagan wisdom (Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, p. 47), Solomon says:

Wyrd bið wended hearde, wealleð swiðe geneahhe;

heo wop weceð, heo wean hladeð,

heo gast scyð, heo ger byreð,

and hwæðre him mæg wissefa wyrda gehwylce

gemetigian. . .

Wyrd is hard-turned, it wells up very often;

it summons weeping, it loads woes,

it harms the spirit, it carries the years,

and yet a man wise in mind can moderate

every wyrd. . . 

According to the Old English Maxims II, þrymmas syndan Cristes myccle, wyrd byð swiðost—”Christ’s majesty is great, wyrd is strongest” (Dobbie, p. 55). This doesn’t sound like the sort of thing a devout monk would write, since it might imply that wyrd is stronger than the Christian god. We may have a survival of the pre-Christian concept of wyrd as a force that even the will of the gods could not oppose (Pedersen, “Wyrd ðe Warnung,” pp. 725-738).

Weaving and Wyrd

Wyrd and ørlǫg are often compared to spinning, weaving, and thread (though as we pointed out in our resource on The Norns: neither Urd, Verdandi, or Skuld are portrayed as spinners or weavers). At the beginning of Helgakviða Hundingsbana I, norns are said to twist threads and fasten them to the sky, spanning the lands that the newborn hero will hold:

Sneru þær af afli ørlǫgþáttu,

þá er borgir braut í Brálundi;

þær um greiddu gullin símu

ok und mána sal miðjan festu.

Þær austr ok vestr enda fálu,

þar átti lofðungr land á milli;

brá nipt Nera á norðrvega

einni festi, ey bað hon halda.

They strongly twisted the threads of ørlǫg,

As fortresses shattered in Bralund;

They arranged the golden cords

And fastened them under the moon’s hall, in the middle.

They concealed the ends east and west,

Where the prince held land in between;

Neri’s kinswoman threw a fetter

Northwards, and bade it hold forever.

The Eddic poem Reginsmál 15 refers to Sigurd’s ørlǫg as a rope or strand: sjá mun ræsir ríkstr und sólu, þrymr um ǫll lǫnd ørlǫgsímu—”he will be the mightiest ruler under the sun, his orlog-threads glorious though all lands.” 

The Old English poem Solomon and Saturn 334-335 (Dobbie, Anglo-Saxon Minor Poems, p. 43) compares wyrd to ropes or cords: Gewurdene wyrda, ðæt beoð ða feowere fæges rapas, “Wyrd that has come about, that is the four ropes of a doomed man.” 

The Old English Riming Poem 70-71 includes the lines Me þæt wyrd gewæf, ond gewyrht forgeaf, þæt ic grofe græf. . . “Wyrd wove this for me, and set me this task, that I should dig a grave. . .” (ed. Krapp and Dobbie, The Exeter Book, p. 168)

All these passages show that spinning and braiding thread and weaving cloth were metaphors that our forebears used to look at being and causality. Spinning and weaving are good analogies for fate, because it’s not until the string is spun and tapestry is woven that we see the full picture. While it’s happening, the string might still look like a bunch of messy wool, or the picture in the tapestry might look incomplete. 

There aren’t necessarily weaving women out there at a loom creating the tapestry of fate. It’s just another way of saying: just as it’s impossible to tell you fully what a tapestry will be before it’s finished or describe exactly the quality and length of string before it’s spun, it’s impossible to tell what your life is going to be–even if we can see all the material that contributes to it.

In a way, it’s a warning against worry, or against thinking too hard about your fate and destiny. We don’t know what it will be. That can be a liberating thought but it’s also a scary thought. Not knowing what’s going to happen to us, whether or not we will be successful or whether ourselves our our loved ones will come to harm has been a primary source of human anxiety since ancient times. Why do you think divination is so popular? The notion that someone could peep into your fate and tell you what’s going to happen or tell you exactly what to do has been a comforting one for millennia.

Sagas, Revenge and Wyrd

Many of the Old Norse Sagas that we look at today are full of just this idea of fate. Whole sagas are based around vicious family and community blood feuds which play out over generations. Some scholars (Groenbech, for example, in Culture of the Teutons) favor an interpretation which holds that the blood feud was central to Old Norse culture and life, and that fulfilling the obligations that a feud put upon you was essential to the maintenance of your family’s honor as the feud continues through eternity.

Certainly one way to look at it.

Another way to look at it is to consider this: if you knew today that the effects of the violent act you committed today would someday not only claim the lives of your children, but their children, and their children’s children… would you still commit that violent act? If you could know before you acted that the cycle of violence would claim all your loved ones once you had started it here, would you choose differently?

It would be far more consistent in this way of thinking for Heathens today to be pacifists rather than for them to be violent.

While the image of the blood-drenched Viking warrior or the blast beats of an Amon Amarth song might tempt you to think otherwise: violence is not something Heathens should pursue if we truly understand the implications of Wyrd and Ørlǫg. Violence is not always the answer, nor should it ever be the first answer.

Certain interpretations of the Lore might also tempt Heathens to think that somehow they will gain glory through violence, or that they can restore a feeling of lost honor by answering an insult with violence. Think again to the consequences of that violence, and not just the consequences for you but the consequences that happen to everyone else.

Legendary heroes in epic tales rarely have to face all the consequences of what they’ve done. We don’t always see that part of the story. But you will.

A Heathen would do well to consider whether or not the violence they might choose to do is in service to preventing greater harm, or if it proceeds from a place of selfishness and pride. Think before you act. Remember that the world that we pray for is a world of peace and plenty, not a world of violence and death.

Fate and Destiny in Ásatrú today

Even though wyrd and ørlǫg come from different languages, it is common for Heathens to use both for different aspects of what could be called “fate.” 

The usual interpretation today is that Wyrd is used to refer to all the actions that may shape and constrain the context of our lives. But ørlǫg is the particular shape of those actions which lead to a particular context we face. A metaphor for you is that Wyrd is the material out of which the road is built, but ørlǫg is the road that we see is built from that material.

To get back to spinning thread: wyrd is the wool, ørlǫg is the thread that is pulled from that wyrd.

You can’t do much about the ørlǫg that happened before you were born, but you shape your wyrd every day, and ultimately those shapings influence the ørlǫg of everyone who comes after you.

True “self-reliance” is neither right nor wrong: it’s impossible.

This leads to an understanding of Heathen life as fundamentally communal. 

Each of us stands at the overlap of several communities of different sizes: family, friends, coworkers, kindred members or other fellow Heathens, fellow citizens… The actions we take affect them all in various ways. Sometimes our actions make waves that go far beyond what we can ever perceive, shaping the fate of people whom we will never know. 

The best that we can do is to act in ways that promote harmony, increase abundance and expand generosity towards others, or to act in such a way that supports a community which embraces generosity, harmony and inclusivity.

Do Norse Pagans believe in free will?

You won’t find many Norse Pagan Free Will Absolutists; rather, most Heathens fall into either a hard Determinist (there is no free choice as everything is determined by causality) or a Compatibalist (our situation is determined by causality, but human agency represents an important element in that causality).

It’s not possible to escape Wyrd because trying to escape it, whatever action you took would contribute to it.

“And not even the Gods may change it”

It’s important to talk about how the Gods act and intervene with Wyrd and Ørlog. When we pray to the Gods for something, are we asking them to intervene and change our fate? Do they have the power to do that? The answer appears to be, if experience is any guide: sometimes yes and sometimes no.

It’s often said that “our Gods are neither omnipotent, omniscient or omnibenevolent” but specifics as to where their power, knowledge and goodness are fairly vague. The way some Heathens talk about the Gods, you might be forgiven for wondering if they have the power to do anything at all!

There are no iron laws when it comes to where or when the Gods can intervene and where they can’t. Sometimes no matter how hard we pray or how big our sacrifices (whether or not sacrifices even work that way is another debate entirely), things don’t always go our way.

The gravity of action

In the known universe there is nothing more dense than the center of a black hole. It is so dense, in fact, that it even pulls in all the light around it so that none can escape (hence the name). It might be the case that sometimes actions have a kind of gravity of their own in that well of Urd, and that this gravity makes some consequences unavoidable: a fate not even the Gods themselves can change.

That’s part of why doing the right thing for Heathens matters so much, as is acting consistently with basic principles of wisdom, kindness and compassion. Not because it gains the favor or notice of the Gods, but because we understand in fullness the gravity of our actions and that the consequences of tomorrow are formed in the deeds of today.