The Norns

The Weavers of Fate

Domain: Fate, Time & Doom
Alignment: True Neutral
Element: Darkness
Relics of Power: Thread of Fate

Speak with The Norns

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4 sections of this entry are open to everyone: the summary, the people, the symbols, the lineage and the sources. The other 9 (Name and epithets, In the ancient sources, The myths, Worship and archaeology, How the god was depicted, What scholars debate, After antiquity, Did you know?, Codex relic) are part of the full Codex: PRO opens the whole study of all 500 deities, and without a subscription you can read one full entry a day, just like in the app.

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The People

People

Norse & Germanic peoples

Region

Scandinavia & northern Europe

Period

Viking Age, 8th–11th c.

The gods of Asgard were worshipped by the Norse peoples of Scandinavia and by the Germanic tribes, especially during the Viking Age. Warriors sought to die in battle to reach Odin's Valhalla, and the myths were preserved in the Icelandic Eddas. The cult declined with the region's Christianization around the year 1000.

The Norse celebrated blóts, seasonal sacrifices with feasts of meat and mead, such as the Yule of the winter solstice. The great temple at Uppsala, in Sweden, hosted every nine years one of the largest sacrificial festivals of the Viking world.

At a glance

The Norns (Old Norse nornir, singular norn) are the women who fix the length of life and the fortune of each person. Völuspá names three, Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld, who come from a dwelling under the world ash, Yggdrasill, and who 'laid down laws and chose lives' for the sons of men. Snorri Sturluson, in the Gylfaginning, adds that there are many other norns, one for every child that is born, of divine, elvish or dwarfish origin. Heroic poems show norns beside the cradle of Helgi, and blame them for the misfortunes of Andvari, Sigurd and the brothers Hamðir and Sörli. This study uses only the texts that were opened and read: the Poetic Edda (Bellows and Thorpe, in English), the Gylfaginning (Thorpe, in English, and the Old Norse original at heimskringla.no) and the original of Völuspá.

11 min read · Reviewed on October 14, 2026 · How we research

Sacred symbols

The thread, the well of Urd, the runes and the tree Yggdrasil

Sources and further reading

Primary sources

Anonymous (Poetic Edda), The Poetic Edda, translation by Henry Adams Bellows, 1923. read
Snorri Sturluson, The Elder Eddas of Saemund Sigfusson and the Younger Eddas of Snorre Sturleson, translation by Benjamin Thorpe. read
Snorri Sturluson, Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, Gylfaginning, original in Old Norse (ed. Guðni Jónsson). read
Anonymous (Poetic Edda), Völuspá, original in Old Norse. read

Studies

Henry Adams Bellows, The Poetic Edda: notes and introduction to the stanzas cited. 1923. open

Name and epithets

Norn (plural nornir), the Old Norse word for the women of fate. The three main names, Urðr, Verðandi and Skuld, appear in Völuspá 20 and in the Gylfaginning.

In the ancient sources

Poetic Edda, Völuspá, date uncertain; transmitted in medieval Icelandic manuscripts. Stanza 20 is the base text: three maidens 'mighty in wisdom' come from the hall under the tree, 'scored on the wood' and set laws and…

The myths

The hall under the tree (Völuspá 19-20). The seeress of Völuspá first describes the ash: 'An ash I know, Yggdrasil its name, with water white is the great tree wet; thence come the dews that fall in the dales, green by…

Worship and archaeology

In the sources read there is no mention of temples, sacrifices or rituals for the norns. They appear in narratives and in heroic poems: the visit to the newborn, the sprinkling of the ash, the blame for misfortunes.

How the god was depicted

The sources opened in this round are texts, and none of them describes ancient images of the norns. Nothing can be stated here about stones, tapestries or objects.

What scholars debate

Wise maidens or giantesses. Bellows notes that the 'giant-maids' who in Völuspá 8 come to Ithavoll, out of Jotunheim, may be the three norns, although the text does not name them, and that a passage may have been lost a…

After antiquity

All the material read belongs to the Old Norse world and to its English translations. No source opened here deals with the later reception of the norns or with their comparison to the Greek Moirai or the Roman Parcae, a…

Did you know?

In the Gylfaginning, Skuld is 'the youngest of the Norns' and also appears riding with Gudr and Rota to choose those who will die in battle, together with the valkyries.

Codex relic

Thread of Fate. The thread they spin by the sacred well, deciding the fate of gods and men from birth.

The rest of this scroll is sealed

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