Winifred Hodge Rose
“Belief in fate did not encourage resignation or passivity—indeed, almost the contrary is the case.” (Winterbourne p. 109).
“ ‘If there’s anything more powerful than fate, / then it’s courage, which bears fate unshaken.’ This human defiance—and dignity—in the face of the inevitable (was) one positive characteristic (of Heathens) that would give way after the conversion in favor of something with very different psychological contours, viz. Christian humilitas.” (Winterbourne p. 163, note 51.)
In my article What Do the Norns Shape? I wrote about the Aldr soul and our Werold—the tapestry of our life-experiences and life-span in Time that is woven by our Aldr. There, I introduced the Anglo-Saxon word gedal or gedæl, meaning ‘that which is dealt out, apportioned, separated into parts.’ This comes from the verb dælan, ‘to deal.’ Ealdor-gedal is an Anglo-Saxon synonym for death: it refers to both to the life-span we are dealt by the Norns, and to the end of that life-span and Werold, the separation from life in the world, that happens at death. How did people in the past deal with their sense of aldr-gedal / orlog impacting their lives? What attitude did they have toward this daunting knowledge?
There is an old word that is often used to describe the attitude that people took toward their orlog or wyrd, whether it involved fateful events during life, or the approach of fated death. This word is even carried over into a saying from today’s Scots and northern English dialects, derived from Old English: “to dree one’s weird,” meaning to endure / accept / submit to one’s fate. This verb ‘dree’ has cognates in the old Germanic languages as shown below, which expand our understanding of its meaning.
Table 1. Roots of Dreogan / Drygja / Dree
Proto-Germanic *dreuga = ‘enduring’; *dreugan = ‘to do a duty’ (Kroonen). *Driugijana from *dreugaz = long-lasting’ in the sense of ‘eking out’ (Wiktionary)
Gothic driugan =‘doing a duty, to serve in military draft.’ Ga-drauhts = soldier.
Anglo-Saxon dreogan = to work, suffer, endure. Middle English drien = ‘to perform, to experience, to put up with, to endure.’ Also: to do, to work, perform, to pass life, to fight; to bear, suffer, dree, endure.
Old Saxon driogan = to carry out, accomplish, suffer, undergo, endure.
Old Norse drýgja = ‘to commit, perpetrate, carry out, accomplish, to make go far, to suffer hardship.’ Drjugr = substantial, lasting, enough. ‘To commit’ is used in a negative sense, such as committing a crime or a sin.
West Frisian dreech = strong, enduring, long-lasting.
– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –
Let’s look at a few in-depth examples of how this word drýgja is used in Old Norse, to get a sense of its meaning in relation to orlog. Although most usage in the elder lore implies that orlog is synonymous with one’s time and mode of death, established by outside forces, there are instances and associated verbs that offer more complex and nuanced interpretations of orlog. Here are a couple of the strongest examples.
Odin and Loki ‘ørlög drýgðuð’
In Lokasenna of the Poetic Edda, verses 22 through 24 show Odin and Loki insulting each other, dragging up old history about incidents when they behaved in a so-called ‘perverted’ manner. In verse 25 Frigg scolds the two of them, saying that:
“The ørlögs of both of you should never be told in front of others, what you two Æsir drýgðuð (carried out / fulfilled / endured / aligned with) in days of yore…”
The word drýgðuð, used in the Old Norse text here, can be translated into any of the words I listed in parentheses. I usually assume when reading Old Norse poetry that the poet intends for more than one meaning to be carried by a word or kenning whenever possible. On this assumption, Odin and Loki:
(a) ‘carried out, fulfilled, accomplished’ (active sense) their orlog of ‘perverted’ deeds;
(b)‘endured’ (passive sense) the orlog that forced them into ‘perverted’ deeds, and
(c)‘aligned’ their actions with orlog, presumably done deliberately to accomplish something important in spite of having to undertake so-called ‘perverted’ deeds to do so.
This shows some of the complexity of orlog: it is not only a simple, unidimensional phenomenon of predestination. It is something that we can react to and work with in a nuanced way, based on our own motives, attitudes, understanding, our own philosophy of life.
Völund and the Swan Maidens
There is another passage that uses the same interesting word drýgja with reference to orlog. The first verse of Völundarkvida or the Lay of Völund (Poetic Edda) describes three Valkyries in swan-maiden form flying over Myrkwood and arriving at Wolfdales where Völund and his brothers live. The verse says that the Valkyries ørlög drýgja: they come to fulfill ørlög, or to align people and events with orlog. This is certainly the case in the poem: after some years of marriage with the swan-maidens / Valkyries and then their mysterious departure, Völund’s two brothers take off to seek their wives and continue on to many other adventures told in Germanic legends. Völund is captured by brutal king Nidud or Nidhad because he is alone, despondent and unwary, waiting for his swan-maiden wife to return.
As Nidud’s captive, Völund bears a heavy, doom-filled orlog, brings orlog-death to Nidud’s sons, and impregnates Nidud’s daughter with a son who goes on to play a role in later Germanic heroic legends as Widia, Wittich, Vidigoia. It is clear from the context that the orlog borne by the Valkyries to Wolfdales was not primarily their own orlog; it was the orlog of Völund and his brothers, as well as Nidud’s offspring and Völund’s son. The swan-maidens were the ones who set all these fateful events in motion: ørlög drýgja.
These two examples with Odin and Völund show that even in ancient writings there is some indication that orlog was more than simply the fated time and manner of death. There is still a strong implication that other beings—the Norns—are the source of the orlog, and that third parties like swan maidens or Valkyrja may play a role in bringing orlog to pass, but the ‘orlog’ that occurs in both these examples is neither ‘death’ nor ‘battle, war.’ It is a complex, cascading series of events, especially in the Völund example, which becomes more clear when we follow the long, twining Völund / Weland / Wayland saga—before, during and after Völund himself—throughout the Germanic hero-tales spanning many lands, languages and centuries. The same can be said of the Völsungasaga, involving a series of complex oaths, deceptions, and betrayals that lead inexorably from one disaster to another. The careful study of these sagas can show much about the concept of ørlög drýgja: enduring, fulfilling, aligning with orlog.
Dreeing our Wyrd
As I wrote earlier, there is a phrase used in Scots and northern English dialect, descending from Old English:to ‘dree one’s weird.’ It means to endure it, to tread the path of its fulfillment, however difficult. Here is a quotation that uses this term:
“Where she waits, there must I go, surrendering all else, forgetting all else, to dree my weird and hers.” (Scott, p. 81)
The verb ‘to dree’ descends from Anglo-Saxon dreógan. Here is a phrase in Anglo-Saxon quoted in the online Bosworth-Toller dictionary about the word dreógeþ: “Ðeós woruld gesceap dreógeþ: this world fulfills its destiny.” We can translate this phrase literally as“this world drees what has been shaped (gesceap) for it.” Depending on our own attitude, world-view, philosophy of life, we can understand this word dreógan and its cognates in other languagesto mean ‘endure, struggle with, work at, fight for, fight against, find fulfillment in, suffer through’ and more.
Gesceap / skǫp / orlog exists, whether laid out by the Norns, by our own deeds, or by natural processes of cause and effect. It is a ‘big deal,’ and it is our choice how we deal with it. In a nutshell, drýgja / dreógan / dree is what we choose to do with the gesceap / skǫp / orlog that has been dealt to us and to the world around us.
Or-deal
I’ve been using the word ‘deal’ when speaking of portioning out orlog, dealing out orlog, and also when referring to what we do with orlog: we deal with it, one way or another, successfully or unsuccessfully. This leads us to another relevant word: ordeal. As we’ve discussed here, orlog refers to the primal or originating layers of events and actions, out of which present causes and effects arise. Or-deal, in this context, is literally what is ‘originally dealt out to us,’ our portion of orlog, the ur-deal, like the hand each person is originally dealt in a card game, out of which each player tries to shape a win as the game proceeds. It’s an ancient word, stemming from Proto-Germanic *uzdailiją, meaning ‘that which is dealt out,’ (from Wikipedia on Ordeal) and *uzdailijam = apportioning out, judgement (Watkins p. 14). In my article A Heathen Meaning of Orldeal I present some ideas for how one might deal with / dree one’s orlog today.
Book-Hoard
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/index-introduction
deVries, Jan. Altnordisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch. E.J. Brill, 1961.
Hall, J.R. Clark. A Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, Fourth Edition. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1960.
Jonsson, Finnur, ed. De Gamle Eddadigte. København: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1932.
Kroonen, Guus. Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic. Brill, 2013.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Scott, G. Firth. The Last Lemurian. Ayer, 1898, republished 1978.
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.
Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Winterbourne, Anthony. When the Norns have Spoken: Time and Fate in Germanic Paganism. Associated University Presses, 2004.