Winifred Hodge Rose
These maids shape / make people’s aldrs (skapa monnum aldr); we call them Norns. (Gylfaginning in the Edda)
Then came three Gods, potent and loving Aesir from their homes. They found on land Askr and Embla, capable of little, orlog-less. (Voluspa vs. 17, Poetic Edda)
Urdh one is called, Verdandi another – scoring the tines – Skuld the third. There they lay laws, there they choose life for Aldar-children, speak orlog. (Voluspa vs. 20, Poetic Edda)
The wise lack for little: now Odhroerir has come up to the rim of Aldar Ve. (Havamal vs. 107 (106 in translation), Poetic Edda)
With the Aldr Full-Soul we are dealing with some very large themes. Aldr is our interface between Time and Eternity, between our Midgard lives and deeds, and the work of the Norns who weave the strands of orlay and wyrd into the fabric of the Worlds. Aldr defines our mortality and the parameters of our humanity, and ties us to the power and poignant beauty of the tides of time as they wash over our beloved Midgard, bringing everything with them, taking everything away, eternally changing, always renewed.
In previous articles I wrote of the Ferah Soul, born of trees and thunder, and the gifts given by Odin and his kin: the Souls called Ahma and Ghost, the capacity for divine inspiration and ecstasy called Wode or Odhr, and the La, Laeti, and Litr, which in my understanding comprise our human Hama, our shape-soul. Now we come to our Aldr Soul and the cocoon or hama that it weaves for itself: the personal Werold or World that defines the circumstances of each of our lives. This is the last of the Souls that are given by the Holy Ones at the mythical moment in time, as described in the Voluspa, when pre-humans were transformed into fully human beings, or the moment when the Gods transformed trees or non-human substance into humans, however one understands this event.
While Thor and the Goddesses and Gods of Earth and Sky are the patrons of the Ferah soul, and Odin and his brothers give us Ond / Ahma, Ghost and Hama Souls, it is the Norns who give the gift of our Aldr Soul. This is made clear in the passage quoted above from Gylfaginning: we are told that the Norns shape people’s Aldrs. The verb used here is “skapa,” cognate to Anglo-Saxon “gescyppan”; it means not only to shape but to make or create something. These are the root words that were used to translate the Judeo-Christian myths about the creation of the world and human beings into Old Norse and Old English. Interestingly, the same words also mean fate and destiny, linking us again with the Norns.
The verses quoted above from the Voluspa tell us first that Odin and his kinsmen encountered two trees, or beings with the names of trees, on land near the sea, and then list the things which they lacked. The passages go on to tell us that the three Gods gave Askr and Embla everything they were listed as lacking, except for one thing: orlog or orlay, roughly translated as ‘fate’. The verses immediately following in the Voluspa then go on to tell us about the Tree, the lake which stands under the Tree, and the three wise maidens who live there, who are understood to be the Norns. Then their gifts to humans are somewhat obscurely mentioned: the laws they lay, scoring on slips of wood (perhaps carving runes), the lives they choose, the orlog they speak for the children of Aldr.
Frey’s messenger Skirnir, in the Skirnismal poem of the Poetic Edda, was surely referring to these actions of the Norns in his dialog with the giantess Gerda’s watchman. When Skirnir arrives on Gerda’s land, the watchman is astounded at his presumption and wonders whether he is fey (doomed) or dead already, that he would risk his life there. Skirnir calmly tells him that “in one day was my aldr shaped, and all my life laid down” (vs. 13). He means that his wyrd is what it is; he does not fear threats because he cannot change his wyrd. He acts as his duty lays out, and his death will come when it comes.
There is a balance between verse 17 of the Voluspa, which tells us that the trees / Askr and Embla were “without orlog”, and verse 20 about the Norns which imply that these beings are involved in some way with the gifts of orlog, wyrd, fate, destiny to the children of Aldr: human beings. It is clear in the Voluspa verses that the original lack of orlog/orlay in Askr and Embla meant that they were not truly human, not in possession of human lives and the metaphysical power that such lives should command. I will return to the subject of orlay and its relation to human-ness later on in this article, but first want to explore the Aldr soul.
Nourisher and Life-Span
Aldr in Old Norse means age, both a person’s age and an age of time, and lifetime or life-span. Aldar in Old Saxon also means age and life-span, as does Anglo-Saxon ealdor. Ealdor also means an elder or noble person, but most significantly here it means ‘life, vital part.’ These words also are used to mean ‘forever, eternity.’ Both ON aldr-lag and AS ealdorlegu mean ‘destiny, death’: death is what the Alder ‘lays’ or ‘sets down’ for us at the fated time, the end of our life-span. Here we see again the words meaning ‘layers, lay down,’ referring back to the actions of the Norns who lay layers of fate in the Well, and plaster layers of mud upon the World-Tree to nourish it. (Gylfaginning in the prose Edda, p. 19.)
The word Aldr comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *al = to nourish, related to alan, with the same meaning, a word found in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic languages. *Al is also the root for words relating to age in the various Germanic languages, including English ‘old.’ The connection between nourishment and age is clear, especially when we think about the circumstances during the millennia of human development, when the availability of food, or lack of it, determined a person’s health and longevity. Aldr nourishes our souls and body so we are able to achieve a long life-span.
There is a lovely term for the World Tree Yggdrasil in verse 57 (Old Norse text) of the Voluspa: it is called Aldrnara, the nourisher of the Aldr, the soul which itself nourishes life. Some translators present this term as the Eldrnara, the nourisher of the fire, since this verse is describing the events of Ragnarok and the burning of the World Tree. But in Old Norse the word appears as Aldrnara, Aldr-nourisher, and is translated as such in Simrock’s translation. The World-Tree is the supporter of all life, rooted in the Well whence the Norns draw life-nourishing water and mud to sustain it, and shelters the Norns and the life-giving Gods. “Aldrnara” seems a most fitting name for it.
The idea of nourishment holds as much relevance to a person’s non-physical or metaphysical health as it does to one’s physical health and ability to reach old age. Among the most important functions of our souls, as many believe, is the ability to absorb, metabolize and transport subtle energy throughout our body-soul system. I believe that our various souls work with energy from various levels or frequencies, and that the Aldr and Ferah souls process energy very close to the physical spectrum. As I will show here, a primary function of the Aldr soul is to nourish and support our physical life and the achievements and experiences of this life.
To be designated as a full-blown soul, the Aldr must fit into one or more of the three criteria I’ve identified: 1) a life-soul which confers physical life by its presence and whose absence means immediate physical death; 2) a wander-soul or shape-soul which can temporarily leave the body during life and act as an independent entity without the body; and/or 3) an entity which has an independent, self-contained afterlife. According to my understanding, the Aldr is a soul based on the first criterion: its presence is necessary for physical life, and its absence means imminent death. Farther on I will also discuss my thoughts about whether the Aldr has an independent afterlife.
The Anglo-Saxon language offers some useful words for understanding Aldr / Ealdor: there is a word for the physical body, ealdorgeard, which means “yard or enclosure of the ealdor / aldr.” One of the words for “murderer” or “killer” in A-S: ealdorbana or Aldr-bane. These words give us a picture of the physical body as an enclosure which contains and protects the Aldr. Someone who breaks in and destroys this enclosure is the bane or murderer of this soul, allowing the Aldr to spill out of its protected boundary and be lost. Lines 55-6 of the poem Beowulf tell us, concerning Beowulf’s father: faeder ellor hwearf, aldor of earde; that is, his father had died and his Aldr was “elsewhere gone, Aldr (away) from the Earth.” At the end of the poem, Beowulf’s Aldr departed, that is, he died (l. 2624). The absence of the Aldr on earth indicates that death has occurred.
The function of the Aldr as a life-soul shows clearly in other expressions from Beowulf, for example in line 2599 Beowulf’s companions fled in terror from the dragon in order to protect their Aldrs (ealdre burgon). During his fight with Grendel, Beowulf sought to rob Grendel of his Aldr (aldre beneotan, l. 680). There is a parallel expression in the Reginsmal poem of the Poetic Edda,where the sons of Hunding are described as Eylimi’s “Aldr-snatchers” (aldrs synjudhu, l. 15), that is, his killers. The relatively physical nature of the Aldr shows up in a dramatic scene in Beowulf, where a Geatish spearman shot a sea-serpent and the spear actually “stood in the aldr” of the sea-serpent (him on aldre stod, ll. 1433-5).
A Greek Soul-Cognate: the Aion
Pre-Classical Homeric Greek ideas about multiple souls show some fascinating parallels with Germanic concepts, although by several centuries later, moving into the classical period of Greece and the philosophies of Plato and Aristotle, concepts about the soul had greatly changed. There are several archaic Greek (Homeric period) concepts of souls which have particularly close and clear cognates with Germanic souls; one of them is the Aion which parallels the Aldr.
One of the most striking parallels between Aion and Aldr is that they both began with meanings concerning both life-force and the related aspects of a person’s age and span of life; then, both eventually lost the sense of ‘life-force’ and became solely related to time: the age of a person, an age of time, everlasting, eternity. We can see the parallel usage in the final words of the Christian Lord’s Prayer (“for ever and ever”) in the different languages: in Greek it is “from aion to aion,” in Anglo-Saxon, “from ealdre to ealdre.”
The word and concept of “Aeon” is an important one in Gnostic philosophy, which reaches back into pre-Christian or early Christian times and continues today, and also in the writings of the great psychologist, C.G. Jung. To them, Aeon is 1) an age of time, 2) a finite, created world (both inner and outer), and 3) the godly spirit indwelling or embodying that time and world. As we shall see here, these meanings overlap very interestingly with Germanic Aldr and Werold.
The Greek word aion derives from Proto-Indo-European *ayu or *yu, meaning life force, vitality, vital force of animated beings. It is related to other Greek words: aiolos = ‘nimble, changeful of hue,’ and aiollein = to shift rapidly to and fro. (Claus p. 12.) These words suggest the fluttering, pulsating energy of the human aura, which constantly changes color, shape and size in response to thoughts, emotions, and other internal and external influences. Understanding a little more about the Aion soul reinforces some of the understandings about the Aldr.
The Greek Aion shows itself as a life-soul in many instances in the Homeric poems where it leaves a person at death, and its going equates to loss of life. In the Iliad, the Greek Achilles speaks of a dead warrior, fearing that flies, worms and rot will enter the corpse now that the Aion “is slain therefrom.” (Onians p. 200). Clearly, it was understood that the presence of the Aion preserves the living integrity of the body, while its loss leads to corruption. Its quasi-physical nature shows up in a hymn to the God Hermes, describing him slaughtering his sacred cattle whom he ‘pierced in their aiones’ (Onians p. 205): here he can fairly be called an Ealdorbana, an Aldr-bane! This usage is identical to the line in Beowulf I mentioned above, where the spear thrown by a warrior ‘stood in the Aldr’ of the sea-serpent.
The Footholds of the Aldr / Aion
Aion is also ‘shed’ as tears, sweat, semen, and cerebrospinal fluid (Claus p. 13, Onians p. 201ff). Hippocrates, the famous Greek physician known as ‘the father of medicine,’ and others referred to spinal marrow as aion (Onians p. 206). Some modern scholars think that Homeric Greeks believed Aion is actually marrow, or dwells in the marrow, or is otherwise related to marrow and to certain body fluids. All of these aspects of Aion are reminiscent of the Anglo-Saxon idea of the body as the ‘yard’ or enclosure of the Aldr, the ealdorgeard.
The Aion as marrow reminds me of an Old High German healing charm which commands “the Worm and nine grandchildren-worms” to crawl out from the marrow, through the veins, flesh, skin, and into an arrow, which I assume was held so as to prick the skin during the charm. (Barber p. 83 & note p. 158.) Presumably, once the worms had crawled into the arrow, the arrow would be shot far away where it could do no more harm. The ‘worms’ (in a shamanic sense these are energy intrusions, in a scientific sense they act as germs or viruses) are considered the cause of pain and illness, affecting the Aldr soul and through it the body. They are laired in the marrow where the Aldr / life-force is strongest and their effects most severe.
In my understanding, our souls have what I call footholds in our physical body and its life-processes: places where that soul interfaces most powerfully with our physical life. Aldr’s foothold lies in our bone marrow and in the many fluids of our body, which are held within the body by our Ealdoryard, the Aldr’s boundary that coincides with our physical exterior. Many of our body fluids are regulated by cycles of time: the rise and fall in levels of hormones, neurotransmitters, digestive, reproductive, immune-related fluids, the fluids that bathe and wash our brain, spinal column and bone marrow, and many others, influenced by diurnal, lunar and seasonal cycles and by our age and stage of life. These are among the means by which Aldr influences our physical body and our body-in-time; they are Aldr’s foothold in our body. The fluids ruled by Aldr symbolically mirror Aldr’s source in the waters of the Norns’ Well.
Aldr-Wita: Holistic Health Practice
India is still home to a form of health practice that is one of the oldest recorded medical practices in the world, called Ayurveda. The term itself is very telling: Ayu means “life-span, life force”. The word root is the same as that of aion: *ayu / *yu = ‘life-force, vitality, vital force’. “Veda” means ‘knowledge, science’ in Sanskrit. It is directly cognate with Anglo-Saxon wita = knowledge and Old Norse vit = consciousness, intelligence, knowledge, etc. Thus, Ayurveda means “science / knowledge of the life-span, life-force”. This connects directly with Aldr as ‘life-span, life force.” Whether or not our elder kin actually used the term “Aldr-wita”, it would be a perfect word for modern Heathens to use to indicate a Heathen perspective and practice of holistic health and healing. And there is, I believe, much we could learn from the ancient Indian practice, parts of which go back to prehistory and times when the Indo-European groups were still in contact with each other.
An Ayurvedic practitioner in India is known as a Vaidya, ‘one who knows.’ This is cognate to the Anglo-Saxon witega (m) and witegestre (f), terms for wise people, counselors, elders; and also the Old Norse vitki, a wizard. So a nice term for a practioner of Aldr-wita would be an Aldr-witega (WIT-eh-gah) or Aldr-vitki for a man, Aldr-witegestre or Aldr-witegess (WIT-eh-guess, being easier to pronounce), or Aldr-vitka for a woman. Or, for that matter, they could be called Aldr-wizards!
Another nice term for modern use is “Alveig” for a health-giving potion, whether herbal or rune-magical. The word al-veig means ‘nourishing drink.’ The practice of noble women giving nourishing and magical drinks is very widespread in the Old Norse lore, including especially the drink filled with magical power that Sigrdrifa gave to Sigurd in the Lay of Sigdrifa in the Poetic Edda. Our modern Aldr-wizards can prepare an ‘alveig’ to strengthen and heal the Aldrs of those they are helping.
In the Rigsthula of the Old Norse Poetic Edda, we have a fine example of a Heathen Aldr-wizard. It tells how Heimdal-Rig taught his grandson Konr about aevinrunar ok aldrrunar, runes of eternity and runes of the Aldr. The verses go on to say that Konr could, among other things, help in childbirth, deaden sword blades, quiet the ocean, quench fires, soothe and comfort men, allay sorrow. Konr himself had the strength and vigor of eight men, showing his powerful Aldr. (Rigsthula vs. 43-44)
One of the most interesting things about these verses, to me, is the pairing of aevinrunar, ‘everlasting-runes’ with aldrrunar. I mentioned earlier that I see parallels between the Greek aion and Germanic Aldr souls. My guess is that Greek aion, which evolved to mean ‘an age of time,’ and is used in the sense of ‘forever,’ is linguistically related to Gothic and primitive Germanic aiw and aiws, meaning ‘ever, age, eternity, an age, the age of the world.’ From these words evolved ON aevin, along with English ‘ever’ and German ewig, meaning eternal, forever. The Rigsthula verse links aevin and Aldr together, in the same way that the meaning of the Greek word evolved. It links the Aldr soul, the life-force that represents humanity and the human life-span, with the concept of eternity or everlastingness. The verse tells us that Heimdal-Rig has power over these mysterious runes, that he taught them to Konr, and that Konr developed further on his own, to the point where he outdid his divine grandfather in skill (v. 45). I am not aware of the aevinrunar showing up anywhere else in the lore, though I could have missed references to them.
To me, these are important verses for understanding the Aldr and the art of Aldr-wita. Konr was able to use Aldr-runes to protect people from Aldr-banes, things that would otherwise shorten the lifespan or make a person’s life unhealthy from a holistic, soul-deep perspective of health. By helping in childbirth, laying the dangers of sword blades, fire, and ocean, he extended people’s lives. By soothing anger, frustration, sorrow, grief, and distress he removed the kind of stress that brings on heart disease, depression, anxiety, and other states that afflict people’s health and life-span. With regard to the ancient Greek aion, the poet Homer often described a person’s tears of grief, yearning, and despair as the outflow of the life-soul aion itself: tears were the actual physical expression of aion. Grief and related emotions actually cause a slow, creeping loss of the Aldr-soul, showing the great importance and need for methods of emotional as well as physical healing in order to keep our Aldr hale.
Although I don’t know which runes Konr used for his Aldr-wita work, there are a few that especially stand out as related to the Aldr and Aldr-wita. One is Raidho, relating to rhythm and the movements of time, things coming about at the suitable or wyrded time, step by step, stage by stage in our lives. Another is Perthro, representing the Well of Wyrd and the ‘lots’ or portions of fate dealt out to us by the Norns. Jera governs the harvest, again related to time and the events in time which bring about other events, leading to harvest and to the growth of our Werold. One of the forms of the Jera rune, a diamond crossed by a vertical line, looks like thread spun onto a spool, resembling the image of the Aldr spinning our Werold around us. (See discussion of the Werold, below.) Finally, Uruz is considered an important rune for healers, with the mighty aurochs representing the life-force within us, fiercely defending its territory, its Ealdorgeard or Aldr-yard. A little meditation will show that there are other runes as well, with more subtle connections to Aldr and Aldr-wita.
Aldr and Orlay
Orlay (Anglo-Saxon) or orlog (Old Norse) is a large and complex subject which has been worthily discussed by many modern Heathen writers. Many, myself included, have been influenced by Paul Bauschatz’ brilliant book The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture, a doctoral dissertation that examines the early Germanic concepts of time and fate with special focus on the Beowulf poem. In his chapter “Action, Space, and Time” Bauschatz discusses the roots of the word orlog: or or ur meaning ‘primal, first, original,’ and lag meaning both ‘law’ and ‘layer.’ Law, both mundane and metaphysical, is that which was laid down by past actions; it accretes in layers like the geological strata of sedimentary rocks, and forms the foundation for the present and that which is becoming. Thus, in the Voluspa passage quoted at the beginning of this article, we see the Norns “laying laws,” bringing the present into being out of the layers of the past.
Bauschatz uses the imagery of the Well and the Tree to picture how life is lived within the space-fabric of the Tree. Humans, living in Midgard upon the Tree, enact deeds which form like dew and drip down toward the Well below, the fabric of time. Insignificant deeds and events fall outside the rim of the Well and are gone, while significant ones fall into the Well itself and form the basis of orlog. In turn, water / orlog from the Well is sucked into the roots of the Tree to nurture new layers of deeds in the life and worlds of the Tree. As the Norns nourish the Tree with water and mud from the Well, so our Aldr, the gift of the Norns, both nourishes and is nourished by our deeds and orlay. The Tree and all it carries builds up in rings through this nourishing action: thus orlog underlies the structure of space-time.
Bauschatz also uses the image of constriction and containment of a spring or well-structure, which encloses the water and forces it powerfully upward instead of letting it spread out weakly as a thin flood of water over the landscape. This illustrates the actions of constraint, necessity and orlog in powering the heroic life. His vision of orlog is much more profound than that which regards orlog simply as fate, or even as a Heathen equivalent of Karma, though the latter is also a useful view in some contexts. (I have a menu section on “Orlog, Wyrd, and Luck” on this website, with more articles about orlog.)
There isn’t space here to go into a lot of detail about orlog, but I need to note why it is important in the makeup of the human ‘soular system’ and why I think it is the link between the actions of the Gods and those of the Norns in the mythic deed of bringing humans, Aldr-bairns, into being. To me, it’s very significant that verse 17 of the Voluspa says that Askr and Embla, before the Gods’ gifts, were without orlog.
I see this on two levels. One is that they, as individuals, lacked the driving and shaping force of orlay. It would be lovely to think of ourselves as completely free to do and be as we wish during every minute of our lives, but this is not the Heathen heroic vision. Ancient Heathen philosophy / world-view saw people as being constrained by many things: their own past history, their kindred’s history, circumstances and deeds, their social position, gender, and duties, the decrees of the Norns, the death that awaited them and the name they wished to leave after them. In fact, the greater and more heroic a person, the more severe these constraints were. It was, indeed, the pressure of these constraints that drove people to heroic deeds, or to despicable ones, depending on their character. “Necessity is the mother of invention”; it is the goad of difficult circumstances that drives one to rise above them. When everything is easy, we often don’t accomplish all that much.
In all of this we see the action of the Nauthiz rune, a primal container for the active force of orlay, as the Perthro rune is a container for the wyrd set in motion by that force. The Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem tells us that Need / Nauthiz is a constriction or constraint on the breast (where most of the souls are housed), but becomes a help to us if we heed it at the right time.
Thus, when Askr and Embla had no orlog, we can understand that they were in a pre-human state of primal innocence, unshaped, unconstrained, not answerable for themselves.
Another level of orlay that I see is in the metaphysical definition of a species. Each species has its own orlay. As well as individual orlay, humans have the ‘orlay of being human’ as an important shaping factor. At the moment of conception, the fetus is already genetically determined as a human, or a cat or eagle or bull. This is the first layer of our orlay, and it shapes all the rest that come after. Before the Gods gifted Askr and Embla, or pre-humans, with human souls, there was no human species in the sense of modern homo sapiens. For those who don’t believe in the existence of souls, the previous sentence is nonsense. For those who do, it points to the essence, quite literally, of our human-ness.
With the gift of the Norns, Askr and Embla first became aldar-beornum, eldi-barn, children of Aldr, the term most often used in the lore to indicate a human being. In the Old Norse lore, the word “man (person)” can indicate not only a human man or woman, but also a giant, God, dwarf, or other sentient being, but “Aldar-beorn,” child of Aldr, always means specifically a human being. Although the Hama full-soul gives each being its characteristic shape, I see the Aldr soul as being the metagenetic link between an individual and the species it belongs to, each species having its own characteristic Aldr, its own unique expression of the life-force. Our human Aldr contains within it both the potential and the constraints of our species as well as of ourselves as individuals: for example, we humans cannot fly nor live underwater, but we have the inborn capacity for complex language and reasoning.
Werold: Our World as the Aldr’s Soul-Skin
Our word ‘world’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon wer-old, meaning ‘man-age’. The same word was used in Old Saxon, and Old Norse had an equivalent word, probably borrowed from Anglo-Saxon: ver-aldr. Werold was used in a very personal way in these old languages. To us, the world is ‘everything out there’, but to our elder kin, each person had a world, their own world. The Old Saxon Heliand, a retelling of the Gospels in a very Germanic format and language, offers many examples of this personal use of werold. The poet said that John the Baptist would never taste wine ‘in his weroldi’ (l. 252). Mary said that she had never ‘in my weroldi’ been with a man (l. 541-2). An old widow was ‘four and eighty winters in her weroldi’ (l. 1024).
A more modern example of this ancient usage appears in the writings of the Anglo-Saxon scholar J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote of King Aragorn telling his wife Arwen, when his death was approaching, that “my world is fading.” (The Return of the King, App. A(v), “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen”) Even though Aragorn’s health, strength, and kingly honors were still with him, he could tell it was time for him to go (the choice was his) because he perceived his Werold fading.
When the aged Beowulf set out to face the dragon, he did not know how his ‘worulde-gedael’ would come about (l. 3068). This phrase is strong poetry, because it holds a powerful double meaning. Gedael, on the one hand, means separation, cutting off. The audience, familiar with the tale, knows that Beowulf’s world will be cut off, come to an end, he will be killed by the dragon. In a second meaning, the word gedael or gedal is often used poetically as a synonym for death-orlay, the timing and nature of one’s death, the blow of fate that is dealt by Wyrd or the Norns. Gedael, in this sense, is like our modern English ‘to deal’; it refers to the fate or wyrd that is dealt out to a person and brings about the moment of death, the end of their world. In parallel phrasing, the poet speaks of the monster Grendel’s death as his ‘aldor-gedal’ (l. 805), showing the connection between werold and Aldr: both are subject to the fate dealt out by Wyrd.
It is clear, when reading how werold was used in context, that it referred to the space-time each person occupies and shapes during their lifetime. Their world was measured in years and characterized by the events, deeds and experiences that shaped their lives. Another way to understand this is to recognize Aldr as the soul which can see and grasp our life as a whole, our past, present, and and possible futures in this world of Midgard: the soul which gives meaning and power to this life-span, this Werold.
Aldr is our body-in-time, as our Lich-Hama, our living body ensouled with Hama, is our body-in-space. Orlay gives a person ‘shape’ within the dimensions of Time and Wyrd. ‘Shape’ is a concept relating to Space; its analog within Time is ‘continuity’. Orlay provides that continuity: the deeds which inevitably lead to other deeds, events leading to other events; the webs of fate co-woven by ourselves, the Norns, and others with whom we closely interact. Because of ørlög, the human experience is not random; it is patterned. Events happen because other events happened, deeds build on deeds, and life builds on lives gone by. Each lays down layers in the Well of Wyrd, which together with the World-Tree forms the fabric of Space-Time. Orlay anchors us in Time, as our body anchors us in Space, and the web that is woven to hold us there is our own Werold.
In other soul-lore articles, I have written about my idea that some of our souls have their own soul-skin, their hama or covering. I believe that our Aldr soul has its own soul-skin or spiritually-tangible shape, and that this is our Werold, our personal world that we create through the process of living our life. I envision the Aldr as being like a caterpillar and the Werold as the cocoon it slowly spins, using the years and events of our lives. In the end we shall each have a soul-garment to show as proof of how we lived our lives. We can think of it as a great tapestry that we weave and embroider throughout our lives, picturing all we have done and experienced. What does your tapestry look like? What do you want it to look like?
Godly Patrons of Aldr
There are several Holy Ones who are closely associated with the Aldr. I’ve discussed the Norns’ role at length here: they are the actual bestowers of our Aldr, as I believe. A beautifully-expressed example of their actions appears at the beginning of the first lay of Helgi Hundingsbane in the Poetic Edda. It speaks in dramatic tones of the circumstances surrounding Helgi’s birth, with eagles shrieking and sacred waters pouring down. The Norns arrive and “shape his aldr” (aldr of skopu) as a hero and chieftain, “twining with great power the orlog-strands” (snoru af afli orlogthottu). The Norns secured these strands in the east, west, and north, establishing the lands that Helgi would rule. (Verses 2-4)
Aldr, orlog, fate, destiny, life-span, circumstances of life and death: together they are all associated with the Norns throughout the lore and the experiences of Heathens, past and present. We see this also in folklore and fairy tales from all the Germanic countries, in the tales of fairy godmothers and the fateful gifts (and curses) they give to newborn children. Fairy godmothers are the latter-day guises of the Norns of old. See Grimm’s good discussion of the Norns for more (vol. 1, pp. 405 and following). Grimm even mentions a folk belief that babies come from “Frau Holle’s Teich,” the pond or well of Frau Holle, a German Goddess: another echo of the Norns, their Well, and their gifts of soul and fate. (Grimm vol. 4, p. 1368)
Another patron for the Aldr-soul is Heimdal-Rig. His role in this matter, as shown in Rigsthula, is to foster physical and cultural evolution of humans and human society, including the ability to live well and live long. I showed him and his grandson Konr as Aldr-wizards, above. We can add the Goddesses Eire and Idunna as matrons of Aldr, as well: Eire as the Healer-Goddess of Scandinavia, and Idunna as the one who, with her holy apples, keeps the Aldrs of the Gods and Goddesses themselves young and hale.
Frey was known as Veraldr-God (Ynglingasaga and Olafs Saga Tryggvasonar, both in the Heimskringla). This title is often translated as “God of This-World.” With a better understanding of the concept of Werold / Veraldr and the Aldr soul, we can see a lot of connection with Frey. First there is the connection between Aldr / alan, meaning ‘to nourish’, and Frey as the God of harvest and plenty, as well as a God of the great powers of nature that underlie fertility in all its forms.
Then, with the concept of Werold as the cocoon of life that is spun by our Aldr soul, we enter into the life that we each live and weave, every day. Frey is a God who has much to do with our everyday lives, a God who was and is prayed to for “ar ok fridhr”, harvest and peace, that we all desire. We each have our own Werold, and together they form collective Werolds of kin, groups, nations, species, the world as a whole. Frey is a great patron of frith, which means not only ‘peace’ but the whole fabric of relationship that is woven and maintained between people and forms the basis of peaceful interaction (see my article Heathen Frith, soon to be posted). It is frith that weaves individual Werolds into collective ones that have strength and durability in space and time. Without frith, everyone’s Werolds scatter in all directions, unconnected, or else form harmful, oppressive bonds that strangle people and groups.
Odin is called Aldafothr in Vafthrudnismal of the Poetic Edda, vs. 53, which is translated as “father of men / mankind.” As a patron of specific, individual souls, I see Odin as being more connected to our Ghost and Ahma. His role as Alda-father, as I see it, is more in the sense of his patronage of human beings, Aldr-bairns, as a whole. However, there is certainly a connection between Aldr-wita and Odin’s healing power over injuries and illnesses of humans and animals (see my article The Kindly Gods Go Wandering).
To me, the connections between these deities, in fact all our deities, and our Aldr and Werold are significant and profound, and offer excellent seeds for Heathen meditation exercises.
Afterlife of Aldr
Does the Aldr have an afterlife? I take three approaches to this question for each of the souls. 1) What can I find in the elder lore? 2) What makes sense based on the nature of the soul itself? 3) What can I discover about souls’ afterlives through my own meditations and experiences? Here are my findings about the Aldr based on each of these approaches.
I find very little that would hint at an afterlife for Aldr in the elder lore. The little I’ve found is in Beowulf, some of which I’ve quoted above, to the effect that Beowulf’s and his father’s Aldr “went elsewhere, was gone from the earth.” We must keep in mind that although the Beowulf poem is rooted in Heathen oral lore, it was composed in written form by a Christian and does show some Christian influence. If I had found any other hints along these lines in other lore, I’d consider a Heathen interpretation here, but so far I have not. This makes me think that we might be looking at Christian influence, or just the demands of poetic construction and imagery.
I was very intrigued when I came across a phrase in Old Norse, the verse from the Havamal that I quoted at the beginning: “The wise lack for little: now Odhroerir has come up to the rim of Aldar Ve.” A “Ve” is a sanctuary, a temple or other sacred space, and here was a reference to the sacred space of the Aldr. The verse refers to Odin’s theft of the mead of poetry and wisdom, when he drank it out of the giant’s vats, escaped, and flew back with it in eagle’s form to Asgard. I thought that somewhere in the Asgard plane must be a holy afterlife place, a heaven, for the Aldr soul. After more thought, however, I realized that Aldar Ve must mean Midgard itself, the sacred enclosure of humankind and the life-force in all its forms. Odin brought the mead to Asgard, but he also gives a taste of the mead to the wise and poetic living human from time to time, thus bringing Odhroerir to Aldar Ve.
So, much as I’d like to, I don’t think this is evidence for an Aldr afterlife. Nevertheless, this is an important and beautiful image of Midgard as Aldar Ve: the sacred enclosure of the life-force that fills all mortal beings. On the world-level, this is the same idea as the Ealdorgeard or Ealdor-yard, our physical body which encloses our life-force soul, our Aldr. The Earth itself is Aldar Ve: the sacred enclosure of all mortal life, and deserves to be honored as such.
The nature of the Aldr is really rooted in Midgard life, in the vitality of the body and the mundane Werold our Aldr makes for us. This makes it more likely, based on its nature, that it does not survive the end of physical Midgard life as an entity in itself. What would be its function, if it was no longer associated with a body and a Werold?
Aldr does have a function outside of Midgard: it feeds our deeds, as strands of orlay, back to the Norns for their action of weaving the ever-growing fabric of space and time. But Aldr performs this role specifically while living in Midgard. Midgard is Aldr’s realm of action, the place where orlay, fate, wyrd play out in human lives, interacting with all other life forms, physical and spiritual. One of the profoundest insights I feel I’ve gained in studying and meditating on the Aldr-soul is the realization that our Aldr souls can be seen as active agents of the Norns in Midgard. Input, feedback, and throughput between the Norns and Midgard flow through the Aldr soul dwelling within each of us, weaving the orlay of this world.
There remains the connection between Aldr and Eternity, as I discussed earlier. This would seem to point toward an eternally-existing soul who does not die with the body. This interpretation, however, depends on what one understands by “time and eternity.” Bauschatz and others have shown that Time, and hence Eternity, was understood quite differently by pagan Germanic peoples, versus Christians and the Hellenistic philosophy that influenced them, and that influences us today.
This is a far larger subject than I can cover here, in an article already filled with complexity. But very briefly, for an ancient Heathen “eternity” would have been more real in terms of the past, rather than the future. The past is real, it happened, and because significant deeds and events which have happened enter into the Well of Wyrd, they continue to influence the growth of the World Tree and the unfolding of space-time. They cannot be erased or undone: their influence is eternal in this sense, though their impact or outcome can sometimes be reshaped by new input. This understanding is embodied in the saying from the Havamal of the Poetic Edda:
“Cattle die, kinsmen die, just so Self will die. One thing I know that never dies: the doom of each dead person (domr of daudha hvern).” (my translation; vs. 76 in ON, vs. 77 in Larrington.)
The term “doom / domr” here is usually translated as ‘reputation,’ but ‘doom’ is really much more apt when we understand it properly. It means the judgement that is passed and spoken, and that cannot now be changed. It is the final word, spoken by the ultimate authority, on the life of a person. In the ancient lore, the Gods are often described sitting on their ‘doom-stools,’ their seats of judgement where they ‘speak doom’. These seats are placed at the Well of Wyrd, in the presence of the Norns, under a root of Yggdrasil (see Gylfaginning in Edda, pp 17-18). What the Holy Ones speak here enters into the Well and thus becomes everlasting reality.
When “doom” is translated as “reputation” then we get the impression that each person’s earthly reputation “never dies.” While we’d all like to believe this was true, I think we’re all clear that it is not! And I doubt that our ancient kin really believed this either, even though they too would have liked it to be true. But this is not really what the verse says: it does not speak of our human, earthly reputation, which sooner or later will fade for almost all of us. It speaks, rather, of the judgement that the Holy Ones pronounce about us, about the way we have lived our lives and woven our Werold. This is the doom that lives on after us, and our hope and desire is that it is a worthy one, words spoken that reflect the Holy Ones’ appreciation and even honoring of what we have done with our lives. (For an interesting discussion of one perspective on our souls and the doom-stead of the Gods, see Rydberg’s chapters 69-75.)
After death, when our Werold is finished, I envision our Aldr soul dressed in its completed Werold-hama coming to the Well and the Doom-stead of the Gods. The doom that is spoken here, I believe, is not so much a ‘judgement’ as we think of it today, influenced by Christian ideas of ‘judgement day’ resulting in eternal reward or punishment. What our Gods do at the Doom-stead is more an observation and acknowledgement of ‘what is’. Our life and Werold are now complete: the lifetime achievement of our Aldr and of all our souls working together. Aldr comes to this doomstead to display to the Holy Ones what it has achieved, for them to observe, acknowledge, and hopefully to bless.
In my understanding, what the Norns and the Deities are doing here does not involve the ‘damnation or salvation’ of any of our souls. Rather, they are attending to the right functioning of cosmological processes, in particular the processes of wyrd and ørlög, which are the foundations of continuity in Time, and of the way that Time influences all life in Midgard. Our Aldr-souls, the Holy Ones, and especially the Norns, all participate in the process of weaving Time and Space together, maintaining the cosmological environment where Midgard life can thrive. This, I believe, is what is going on at the Doom-stead of the Gods and Norns.
Once the Gods’ doom has been spoken, their acknowledgement of our Werold, Aldr says farewell to its soul-mothers, the Norns, and slips back into the Well from whence it came. There it dissolves and gives back all it created during life, as its Werold-hama gently spreads out to become another one of the endless layers of orlay within the Well. The words, the acknowledgement, the ‘doom’ or deeming of the Gods and Goddesses go with it, and fasten its load of orlay into the Well. Thus are the Well and the Tree enriched by each of us and our worthy lives.
So I think that Aldr has two connections to a Germanic conception of eternity. One is the doom that is spoken by the Holy Ones about one’s life / Werold at the Well of Wyrd, which encapsulates that life and carries it into the ever-growing fabric of time and reality in the Well and the Tree. The other is that our Aldr, as I see it, connects us with our human species and with the life-force inherent in all beings in Midgard, which continues on after our individual death. Our individual Aldr / life-force arises out of the collective life-force, and sinks back into it at our death. The life-force itself is considered to be everlasting.
Summary
Our Aldr governs our life-span, and nourishes and protects our health in order to maximize the life-span. It is seated especially in our bone-marrow and the fluids of the body, contained within our Ealdor-yard, the physical boundary of our body. The spiritual nourishment Aldr draws in flows through these areas especially powerfully. Aldr is given to us by the Norns, along with our ørlög and wyrd, and it serves as an agent of the Norns in Midgard by feeding strands of ørlög back and forth between us and Midgard, the Norns and their Well.
Aldr can be considered our ‘body in time’, as our Lich-Hama is our body in space. Instead of creating a physical shape or Lich-Hama in space, as Hama does, Aldr creates a ‘time-shape’, which is our Werold. Our Werold or ‘world’ is the totality of our deeds, experiences, thoughts, memories, years, that we weave thread by thread, day by day throughout our life. When our life is over, Aldr, dressed in its Werold-hama, proceeds to the Doom-stead of the Gods and Norns. There, our lifetime’s experience and deeds, our Werold-tapestry, is observed and acknowledged by the Holy Ones, and—if deserved, is blessed and fastened into the Well of Wyrd, to become one more layer of All-That-Is upon the Tree of Worlds.
In Closing
Aldr seems to be a soul with few personal traits. Though it shapes our life-time, our Werold, it does not play a significant role in our personality, nor does it provide capabilities such as thought, love or will, though it does communicate through intuition. Aldr sensitizes us to issues of timing in our lives: biological, social and spiritual aspects of Wyrd. It sets into motion physical changes such as puberty, menopause and aging. It gives us a sense of the right or wrong moment for our actions and words, sends us hunches or gut feelings about a wyrd-filled moment or opportunity.
Aldr gives us the capacity to sense Time itself, to understand and work with it, at least on a practical and everyday level. It enables us to view our own life-time as a whole: as a weaving that extends through time, where we can look backwards, and to some extent make projections forward in time, in our quest to understand and shape our Werold. Aldr is our ‘body in Time’, as our Lich is our body in space, and it governs our relationship with Time. In my understanding, Aldr does not survive as an entity after death, though some of the work it does during life returns to the Well and the Norns, and thus continues on past this life.
How do we connect with this soul, or shift into an awareness of it? Is there anything there to be consciously aware of, or is it simply an important but mechanical process: life force programmed to do its tasks by the Norns, by orlay and circumstance and biological imperative?
I can only answer these questions by reference to my own experience, which may be similar or different from the experiences of others. As with each of the Heathen souls I am writing about, once I learned about the Aldr soul I spent a lot of time looking within myself and back over my life, to see if I could identify traces and evidence of this soul in my own experience. Not surprisingly, with the Aldr and Werold this effort has brought many, many hours of life review and coming to terms with orlay and wyrd in my life. But aside from my Werold, my Veraldr, I have perceived the Aldr-soul as a vague but aware entity within my ‘soular system.’
Ever since early childhood I’ve had the eerie and beautiful experience, when the wind blows in a certain way, of perceiving the wind and the dust it carries as Time itself. I lived many years in Greece, during childhood and adulthood, and I would often think: “perhaps this dust blowing past was once a part of Socrates, or part of an ancient city or a temple.” And the same in all of the other places I’ve lived and traveled….traces of time and history blow past us on subtle winds, everywhere we go. Even if we are not aware of this, our Aldr knows, and feels itself linked to others, Time, and World.
Aldr shows itself most of all, I believe, in the sense of ephemeral beauty and meaning we find in this ever-changing world, our feelings of nostalgia and surprise when we suddenly realize that time passes, that each moment we experience will never come again, and our knowledge that one day our own dear and unique life, our Werold, will be over. Our Aldr is the one who knows, on the profoundest level, that everything including itself passes. The mature knowledge and acceptance of this lies at the root of an inner philosophy and sense of poetry, expressed or unexpressed, that shapes a life of wisdom and meaning. Sometimes these insights can be so painful that we avoid thinking about them or allowing ourselves to experience them fully, but by doing so we miss out on a profound dimension of life and of our Werold. We thus fail to fully acknowledge and honor our Aldr in this world of Midgard.
Many forms of philosophy and religion, East and West, regard Truth, Beauty and Reality as being perfect, eternal and unchanging ideals. They urge us to turn away from fleeting and imperfect worldly phenomena and ponder eternal verities. Heathen philosophy, expressed among other ways as ancient poetry, celebrates the opposite: the wyrd-filled moment in time, never to come again; the powerful, cathartic sadness and longing when we think of time and change, and the deeply meaningful imperfections of all our striving and living in this world. Without this sense of ephemeral beauty, of the ever-changing tides of time, what would the poet sing, and how would our hearts answer?
Bookhoard
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– Larrington, Carolyne, translator. The Poetic Edda. Oxford University Press, NY, 1996.
– Onians, Richard Broxton. The Origins of European Thought about the Body, the Mind, the Soul, the World, Time, and Fate. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England. 1954.
– Rydberg, Viktor, and Rasmus B. Anderson (transl). Teutonic Mythology. Swan Sonnenschein & Co, London, 1891. Reprinted by Kessinger Publishing, USA.
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– Sturlason, Snorri. Heimskringla, or the Lives of the Norse Kings. Ed. & transl. Erling Monsen. Dover Publications, New York, 1990..
– Sturluson, Snorri. Edda, transl. Anthony Faulkes. Everyman, Rutland VT. 1987.
First published in Idunna: A Journal of Northern Tradition, #85, Autumn 2010. Latest revision May 2021.