Winifred Hodge Rose
Etymology of wyrd:
Proto-Indo-European: *wert = to twist / vertere = to rotate.
Proto-Germanic: *wurðiz, from *werðan = to come to pass, to be, to be due.
Old Saxon: wurð, wurd, ‘fate’
Old High German: wurt, ‘fate’
Anglo-Saxon: wyrd, ‘fate’
Old Norse: urð, ‘fate’
Etymology of Orlog:
Gothic (Go): Us-lagjan = ‘to lay, to lay upon, lay hands upon,’ from ligan = to lie (down). This oldest form of the word does not appear to be related directly to ‘fate.’
Anglo-Saxon (A-S): Orlæg, orleg means both ‘fate’ and ‘battle, war, strife.’
Old Saxon (OS): Orlag means ‘fate’ and ‘war,’ urlagi means ‘war, fighting.’
Old High German (OHG): Urlag, urlagi, urlac means ‘fate’ and ‘war.’
The prefix ur- / or- in all three of the above languages (A-S, OS, OHG) refers to ‘original / primal / ancient.’ The root læg / leg / lag in all three languages means ‘to lay, to lay upon.’ So orlæg becomes ‘ur-layers, ancient layers,’ or ‘that which arises or comes from (ur-) layers’.
Middle High German: urlouc meaning ‘fate’ and ‘war’.
Old Frisian: Orloch means ‘fate’ and ‘war’. Its descendant, modern Dutch, has the word oorlag meaning a naval battle.
Old Norse (ON): ørlǫg = ‘fate,’ a plural word, from or- meaning ‘out of, from’ and lǫg meaning both‘layers’ and ‘laws.’
A great deal of useful writing about wyrd exists: scholarly and academic writing that extends over several centuries and across multiple languages, as well as writings pertaining to the meaning of wyrd in the present-day practice of Heathenry and Paganism. As Aaron Hostetter writes, regarding wyrd: “few words in any language have so much ethical and ideological power impacted into four tiny letters.”
Here is a summary of some modern Heathen perspectives on the difference between orlog and wyrd, as discussed by Ben Waggoner in Our Troth vol. 3: Heathen Life.
“The usual interpretation today is that ørlǫg is the sum of all the deeds and choices of a person’s ancestors. Ørlǫg is the basal layer of wyrd, which determines the shape of life from beginning to end, and it determines how much main and luck a person will receive. … Wyrd, on the other hand, is used to refer to the way that individuals’ choices and deeds shape and constrain the outcomes of their lives. You can’t do much about your ørlǫg—but you shape your wyrd every day, and ultimately those shapings influence the ørlǫg of everyone who comes after you.” (pp 70-71).
In this perspective, orlog is the past, wyrd is the present which also shapes what is coming into being in the future. Wyrd shaped in the present ultimately lays or becomes the orlog of our pasts and shapes what is coming into being in the next generations.
The corpus of writing about wyrd is extensive, interpretations differ, insights abound, and so do confusions! Here I will touch on a few salient points comparing and contrasting wyrd and orlog, as part of my ongoing exploration of their meanings and implications in Heathen thought.
Personification and De-Personification of Wyrd
The question of wyrd versus orlog is an instance where languages and their similarities and differences come into play. In Old Norse, there’s little need for discussion about the differences between ørlög and wyrd: the chief Norn, Urð (the same word as ‘wyrd’) is a person, and ørlög is what she does / lays / speaks / shapes. Urðr is a being, ørlög is a phenomenon or a process. The noun urð exists in Old Norse but is rarely used; almost all instances of the word Urð / Urðr refer to the Norn herself, a personified being. ‘Norn’ describes the kind of being she is, a word that does not exist in the other Germanic languages.
In the other Germanic languages it’s more ambiguous: the words wyrd / wurð / wurd / wurt in Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, and Old High German can be used both for a being named Wyrd / Wurð / Wurt and for the phenomenon or process of wyrd; the latter would be called ørlög in this context in Old Norse. Jacob Grimm wrote, concerning the distinction between orlog and wyrd, that “it was only when the heathen goddesses had been cast off, that the meanings of the words (wyrd versus orlog) came to be confounded, and the old flesh-and-blood wurt, wurð, wyrd to pale into a mere impersonal urlac” (Vol. 1, p. 410, my parentheses).
It’s clear from reading old texts in the non-Norse Germanic languages that orlog and wyrd were often used as poetic synonyms for each other, indicating that there was not much conceptual difference between them at the time these texts were written. Part of the reason for this may be that textual writing only came in with Christianity, mainly done by monks or those who were taught by monks, and it was necessary for Christian writers not to imply that there was a being, Wyrd, who had equal or greater power than the Christian God, the one who implements divine providence, judgement, and predestination in Christian thought.
There were, indeed, occasional implications that Wyrd has power independent of ‘God’s will,’ even in early Christian times. One example is found in the Old English Maxims II, 4-5: “Christ’s majesty is great, Wyrd is strongest” (þrymmas syndan Cristes myccle, wyrd byð swiðost.) Another example is from the Anglo-Saxon poem The Seafarer: “Wyrd is stronger, Metod mightier, than anyone’s gehygd,” the workings of their Hyge or Hugr. (l. 150-1.) ‘Metod’ is ambiguous, often meaning the Christian God, but other times meaning something like fate. Comparing the power of Wyrd to the power of Deities does seem to show a less-Christian, more-Heathen perspective, but it is still not clear whether wyrd here is a personal being, or simply a fate-like phenomenon outside of even Christ’s control.
In general, early Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, and Old High German writers did not ignore the existence of wyrd, but often downgraded her / it from a great Power to an impersonal phenomenon—‘divine providence’ or ‘God’s will’—that is under the control of the Christian God, an expression of his will rather than an independent being. Even so, in the old poetry, using the word wyrd is both a poetic device and a signal that fateful action is taking place even when the Christian God is nowhere evident.
As Bauschatz describes, “The influence and control of the past over the present are expressed directly by the term wyrd in Old English, and its mention in any text brings the power of all past actions explicitly to bear on the material presented” (p. 87). This action of wyrd is so powerful that the distinction between wyrd-as-phenomenon and Wyrd-as-personal-being perhaps becomes moot: her or its effects shape and direct the action that is occurring, regardless.
So, the personification of Urðr in Old Norse is clear, the personification of Wyrd / Wurt / Wurð in other old Germanic languages is ambiguous. Some of the ambiguity for modern readers comes from the grammatical structure of these old languages, which use masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns as do modern German, French, and many other languages. We are unused to this in modern English where the pronouns ‘she’ and ‘he’ are normally only used for persons or personifications. So when we read a phrase such as gæð a wyrd swa hio scel, ‘wyrd goes ever as she must,’ it certainly sounds like the ‘she’ here refers to a personified being (Beowulf l. 455). Perhaps it was originally so intended, perhaps not; modern translators I’ve read render the word hio (she) as ‘it’ in this phrase, but for myself as a practicing Heathen, I prefer to regard this as a statement about a personified being, Wyrd herself, ‘going ever as she must.’
If Wyrd was subtly de-personified due to Christian influence, that would result in conflating wyrd with orlog, both of them apparently being only processes or phenomena, rather than orlog being a process while Wyrd is a personal being. But there are certainly some clues about ways that wyrd may indeed differ subtly from orlog in the non-Norse writings.
Anglo-Saxon Wyrd
Anglo-Saxon wyrd has additional meanings and connotations which are different from meanings of A-S orlæg or orlay. Wyrd comes from the root meaning ‘to become, to come to pass.’ Something is fulfilled, comes to fruition, which is rather different imagery than ‘layers laid down.’
Unlike orlæg which refers to strife and battle as well as to ‘fate,’ I find no wyrd-words directly associated with war in Anglo-Saxon. Instead, there are wyrd-based words that relate to speech, eloquence, conversation, and history. Gewyrdlic means ‘historical,’ and a gewyrd-writere is a chronicler or historian. In other words, we use words, speech, writing, chronicles, to record and examine the workings of Wyrd, asking questions like: what exactly is the situation? What is happening? Why is it happening this way? Who is involved, and why? What events led up to the situation? We try to discern and analyze the strands to get a full picture of what-has-been, how it relates to what-is, and what-is-becoming, in our efforts to understand the history of any event or situation.
With this concept of gewyrd as history, as the account of how wyrd played out in events of the past, we have a significant point of contact with the idea of ‘shaping’ in the sense of spoken decrees of Norns, Gods, kings, chieftains, religious leaders, and the ways that those fateful decrees and decisions play out in human history, including wars. These powers shape wyrd and orlog, as I discuss in my article The Shapings of the Norns. The historian uses words to describe and analyze how that wyrd played out—including words for ‘shaping.’ Then, that spoken / written / ‘shaped’ history, told through songs, tales, chronicles and books, influences the attitudes and actions of future generations. These activities imply a Being who speaks, utters decrees, consciously shapes or influences the events of history as Urð does in the Norse tradition. To my mind, this points toward Wyrd herself in personal form.
Take a look at the Anglo-Saxon word wyrd-gesceap, literally ‘a Wyrd-shaping, what Wyrd has shaped’, translated as ‘decrees of fate.’ Old Saxon has the same word, wurdi-giskapu / wurði-giskefti: what Wurð or Wyrd shapes. These are used as synonyms for urlag / orlag in the Old Saxon Heliand poem,and to me it seems clear that in this usage Wyrd-the-Being is consciously shaping orlog. Wyrd is a sentient being, speaking decrees that should be followed and shaping events of history, just as the personified Norns ‘speak ørlög’ in Old Norse writings.
Here’s another phrase where Wyrd could be interpreted as a person, found in Beowulf ll. 572-73: Wyrd oft nereþ unfægne eorl, þonne his ellen deah. In Chickering’s translation: “Wyrd often saves an undoomed eorl when his courage holds.” (‘Eorl’ is ‘earl,’ meaning a nobleman.) It’s hard to picture wyrd as a non-personified phenomenon here: how would it ‘know’ whether the eorl’s courage holds or not, and how would it then ‘save’ him, if it is not a sentient being? (I’ll return to an in-depth analysis of this sentence at the end of this article in the section “Wyrd: A Case Study.”) The online Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, under section “wyrd IIIa: wyrd as personification, fate, fortune,” lists many examples of personification usage from Anglo-Saxon texts.
The word wyrdæ, wyrde—wyrd in the plural form—also occurs in Anglo-Saxon. It was used in several Latin-to-Anglo-Saxon glossaries as a translation for the Parcae, the Fates as they were known in Roman culture (Bauschatz p. 8). The plural form obviously implies that these are actual beings, not simply an impersonal phenomenon, but did the plural form wyrdæ exist natively in Anglo-Saxon, or was it coined in order to translate the Latin word? The Fates in classical Latin (Parcae) and Greek (Moirai) mythology appeared in threes, as of course do the Norns, and all of this imagery was known in early Christian Anglo-Saxon culture.
There are a few instances in A-S texts where ‘wyrde’ might be considered a plural form, but they are rare and ambiguous. The Anglo-Saxons may not generally have pictured Wyrd in plural form themselves, but when they encountered the ‘Fates’ as plural persons in Classical mythology, they knew that in their terms these were wyrdæ or wyrde. Seeing wyrd in the plural form at all, even just when translating foreign words for ‘The Fates,’ indicates to me that Wyrd in Anglo-Saxon could be pictured as a sentient being, a being who in other cultures appears as a threesome. If they understood wyrd solely as an impersonal phenomenon, not as a person, then they would not have translated a Latin term for personified beings using that word.
We do see the plural concept turning up much later: the dramatist and poet William Shakespeare (1564-1616) includes the three Weird Sisters in his play Macbeth, stirring their cauldron of spells and bringing the decrees of fate onto Macbeth and those associated with him. It’s likely that Shakespeare’s portrayal of the three Weird Sisters was influenced by Norse mythology about the three Norns as well as Classical myths about the Fates, but the English word and concept of wyrd or weird was still in existence then, as it is now, and was used to name supernatural beings.
Synthesis
Here is the way that I presently understand the relationship of Wyrd and orlog, though it’s a deep and complex subject that I find is gradually evolving in my mind. I think of Wyrd as a being, a singularity who expresses what the Norns express in their triplicity. In some ways, I see Wyrd as being the same thing as the Norns collectively are; in other ways she seems to stand on her own, possessing her own mysterious nature.
I might note one real mythological difference: as far as I know, Wyrd / Wurð / Wurt is never mentioned in connection with a Well in the non-Norse literature, though the German Goddess Frau Holle with her Pond / Well is, I believe, a resonance of the Norns and their Well. This is especially clear because Frau Holle draws babies out of her Pond—this is well-known folklore about where babies come from in Germany—and fairy tales about children falling into Frau Holle’s Well and returning from her green meadows back to earth after a time with her are metaphors for death and rebirth. As the Norns ‘choose life’ and choose the time of death, Frau Holle’s Pond gives forth babies, carried by the stork to their parents, and welcomes kindly the worthy ones who die into her realm through her Well. But as regards Wyrd, specifically, I don’t know of her association with a well or water.
Certainly, in personal terms, I experience Wyrd and each of the Norns as individual beings. It’s as though these views, Three or One, are different facets of the full Being that is Wyrd, and I move around, viewing one facet or another at different times. To add to the ambiguity, Wyrd herself, in my perception, seems to have no issue with sometimes appearing as a person, other times as a phenomenon. To me, it seems as though she is presenting us with an existential riddle, challenging us to plunge more deeply in our efforts to understand who and what she / it is. As my colleague Svartheiðrinn (Daniela Simina) notes, Wyrd is rather like the quantum phenomenon of light being both a wave and a particle, depending on the method one uses to observe it: sometimes she appears as a personal being, other times as an impersonal phenomenon.
Orlog is clearly not a person, but it is a presence that is so all-pervading and influential in the world and in our lives that in some ways it seems to act as a being. If ‘Wyrd goes always as she must,’ if the Norns ‘lay layers and speak orlog,’ if those layers of orlog and actions of Wyrd form a substrate of necessity that shapes our lives, then their effects upon us and the world are in fact very similar, whether those effects are caused by personal beings or by an impersonal phenomenon.
Wyrd: A Case Study
Here’s an analysis of a line from Beowulf that provides context for many questions that we might have about Wyrd and the Norns as persons, and their roles in determining our fate. Though this example is based on a sentence about Wyrd, I think the implications apply as well to the Norns. Beowulf ll. 572-73 reads: Wyrd oft nereð unfægne eorl, ðonne his ellen deah. In a general sense, this says that “Wyrd often saves an undoomedeorl when his courage holds” (Chickering translation). It’s hard to picture wyrd as a non-personified phenomenon here: how would it ‘know’ whether the eorl’s courage holds or not, and how would it thus ‘save’ him, if it is not a sentient being?
In important phrases like this one that I use myself for Heathen meditation, I always like to look at the specific words that are used in more depth, which I offer here for your consideration. Nereð is translated as ‘saves’: “Wyrd often saves…” which has a rather Christian connotation of salvation. And yes, the Beowulf poet was Christian and chose his words accordingly, but let’s go a little deeper. Nereð from ge-nerian means ‘to save, rescue, liberate, preserve, defend, protect’ in Anglo-Saxon. It is cognate to Old Saxon nerian, meaning ‘to heal, rescue, or nourish.’ Old High German has the same word and meaning, which is related to modern German nähren, to nourish (Berr p. 296).
I like to read the word nereð in this context as Wyrd in a sense ‘feeding’ or ‘nourishing’ the man’s courage and strength, giving the meaning: “Wyrd often nourishes the unfey earl’s courage…”. Bauschatz writes much about the nourishing and sustaining nature of the Norns: “The Norns represent a powerful, continuing, regenerative force in the universe. …and they regularly influence the lives of men” (p. 7).
One of the ways the Norns use their power is to nourish and protect the World-Tree by patting layers of white mud onto its trunk, taken from the sacred Wellspring that lies at its foot, to heal and regenerate the Tree from all the harms that befall it (Gylfaginning in the Prose Edda, p. 19 in Sturluson). These layers represent layers of orlog, of continuing, ongoing life as reflected in the actions of all Beings.
The word ellen in our passage is usually translated as ‘courage’: “if his courage holds.” It has other meanings as well: strength, power, vigor, valor, fortitude. As I see it, in this Beowulf passage Wyrd is nourishing the strength, power, valor, courage of the man so that he can use it on his own behalf, to save himself, in fact.
The word deah implies the worthy use of something: here, the worthy use of his power, his courage, on his own behalf. Poetically, I might translate it as ‘avails’ here: ‘if his courage avails him.’ My interpretation of this passage is that for an unfey / undoomed person, Wyrd or the Norns will often nourish that person’s powers and courage so that they are capable of overcoming the peril or challenge of their circumstances themselves.
My (unpoetic!) translation of the full meaning would thus be: “Wyrd often nourishes / supports the unfey person if their courage and power are used for a worthy purpose / used to save their life.” I suggest that a Heathen view of this passage does not imply that the Norns ‘save’ people in some vague, undefined way, nor in any way that ‘saving’ would be understood in a Christian context. Instead, in true Heathen manner, Wyrd offers what we need so that we can save or help ourselves.
That aspect of the meaning seems clear to me, but the stipulation that this applies only to someone who is ‘unfæg, un-fey, undoomed’ is more perplexing. If Wyrd has already doomed someone, then clearly she can’t save him, which would go against her own spoken word or doom. But if she has not doomed him to death at that place and time, then he would not die in any case, so how exactly does she ‘save’ him, or help him save himself?
It’s almost as though she ‘pre-saved’ him at that place and time, by her spoken word in the past which presumably doomed him to death at a different time and place, thus sparing him at the time that is referred to in this sentence. And there’s clearly an implication that the eorl’s choice of action influences the outcome: ‘if his courage is used well.’ If his courage isn’t brought into play, might he then die in that battle? But in that case, was the rising of his courage also predetermined by Wyrd so that he would be able to save himself? Or was his death actually not predetermined at all, and depended fully on his choice of action in that battle? But the word unfæg, undoomed, does point to the likelihood of predestination playing a role.
So, is this situation an example of (a) predestination, (b) determinism, and / or (c) free will? One short sentence offers both enlightenment and confusion here! Though I’ve written extensively about orlog, Wyrd, the Norns and their influence on determinism, free will, and predestination, I do have to say that I find it a confusing subject, as full of questions as it may be of answers!
Note: This material is included in my book Orlog Yesterday and Today: The Shapings of the Norns.
Book-Hoard
Barber, Charles Clyde. An Old High German Reader. Basil Blackwell, 1964.
Bauschatz, Paul C. The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture. The University of Massachusetts Press, 1982.
Berr, Samuel. An Etymological Glossary to the Old Saxon Heliand. Herbert Lang & Co. Ltd., 1971.
Bosworth-Toller An Anglo-Saxon Dictionary online at the University of Texas: https://lrc.la.utexas.edu/books/asd/dict
Chickering, Howell D. Jr., transl. Beowulf. Doubleday, 1977. (Dual language edition)
deVries, Jan. Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. E.J. Brill, 1961.
Grimm, Jacob. Teutonic Mythology, Vol. 1. Transl. James Stephen Stalleybrass. London: George Bell and Sons, 1882.
Hall, J.R. Clark. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Fourth Edition. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1960.
Heliand: https://www.hieronymus.us.com/latinweb/Mediaevum/Heliand. htm#top
Hostetter, Aaron, accessed June 12, 2025: https://oldenglishpoetry.camden.rutgers.edu/2017/06/08/wyrd-bid-ful-araed-the-wanderer-line-5b/
Kroonen, Guus. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Brill, 2013.
Maxims II (in Anglo-Saxon): https://clasp.ell.ox.ac.uk/db-latest/poem/A.3.9#115
Sehrt, Edward H. Vollständiges Wörterbuch zum Heliand und zur Altsächsischen Genesis. Vandenhœk & Ruprecht in Göttingen, 1966.
Skeat, W.W. A Mœso-Gothic Glossary. London UK: Asher & Co., 1868.
Sturluson, Snorri, transl. Anthony Faulkes. Edda. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1995.
The Seafarer Old English poem: https://clasp.ell.ox.ac.uk/db-latest/poem/A.3.9#115
Waggoner, Ben, et al. Our Troth 3rd Edition. Vol. 3: Heathen Life, 2022. The Troth Publications.
Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Wright, Thomas. Anglo-Saxon and Old English Vocabularies. London: Trübner & Co., 1883.
Wulfila Gothic Bible: http://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browse/