Winifred Hodge Rose
Orlog as Death, and the Question of ‘Why?’
In my various articles about orlog, wyrd, and related subjects, I explore the deeper meanings of orlog and its workings during our lives in Midgard. Here, I’ll explore aspects of the workings of orlog at the time of death and our souls’ entry into the afterlife, and I pose a list of ‘unanswered questions’ on this topic here, for further thought. You may find it helpful to read some of my other orlog articles as background to this one.
Orlog is the cosmic patterning which imbues events with meaning and significance, and intervenes between random, meaningless chance on one hand, and the ‘end of events’, or death, on the other hand. Because of orlog, our lives and the events of our time in the world have meaning, even after we die. We do not die because ‘our time has run out.’ We die because our orlog has reached its fulfillment, however short or long that may take in terms of earthly time. As Tolkien writes in his epic poem The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun:
Whom Odin chooseth endeth not untimely,
Though ways of men he walk briefly.
In wide Valhöll he may wait feasting –
It is to ages after that Odin looks.
(vs. 14, pp. 70-71.)
It is this irrelevance of time, in contrast to the overwhelming relevance of orlog and wyrd, that leads to the old Heathen usage of the words ‘orlog’ and ‘wyrd’ as meaning ‘death’ itself: at the time of death, our orlog-while, our wyrd, has come upon us. When we die, our orlog is ‘fulfilled’ because it is complete, it has fully entered into ‘What-Is’ and is sustained there by the work of the Norns and the Well.
This interpretation, however philosophically satisfying it might be in general, leaves unanswered the very painful questions that so often arise concerning deaths that feel to us so undeserved, so meaningless, so cruel. The untimely deaths of children and young people. Cruel and terrible modes of death that happen to people who certainly didn’t ‘deserve’ such an ending, whatever age they were. Mass events like wars, disasters, genocides, that scoop up huge numbers of victims with no regard for their uniqueness, their individuality, for what each one might have ‘deserved’ from life and from death. And these questions come up not only in the context of death, but also in the context of physical and psychological injuries and disabilities that drastically affect people’s lives.
All religions struggle with this question of ‘why,’ and ours is certainly no exception. If we look to ancient Heathen beliefs for answers, there’s not any more clarity than there is in most other religions, other than straightforward fatalism: ‘this happened because the Norns / Wyrd said so.’ There’s also not much information that we can find about old Heathen thoughts on these matters that is not influenced by Christianity. What I’ve found is material, mostly from folklore, that blames illnesses, accidents, misfortune, and death on spirit-beings: the lesser norns and ‘fairy godmothers’ giving people an evil fate; the family Disir who have ‘taken against’ a person; dwarves, trolls, evil spirits of many varieties causing illnesses, accidents, and loss of life-force; and occult actions by ill-intentioned living humans as well, affecting people’s luck and well-being. I’ve written about some examples of these actions in various articles on my website and chapters in my books, as have other Heathens and academics.
All of these folklore explanations, however, focus more on the question of ‘how’ such ill-fortune happens and who causes it, but still do not really answer the question of ‘why,’ in a deeper philosophical sense. If we expand our search for ‘why’ to other philosophies, the most reasonable answer to this existential question that many people see, I believe, is the concept of ‘karma.’ Very simplistically stated: cruel and untimely ends happen because of ill deeds the person committed during previous lives. Once that karma is ‘paid off’ and they live further lives of good action, then death during those lives is kinder, as well as having better fortune during life.
The idea of karma would not be difficult to adapt to the context of orlog if one wanted to do so, though it is not a perfect fit—at least, as orlog was understood in the past. There are certain elements of belief that are needed for karma-type orlog to work, though, and those elements would need to be explored in more depth as they appear in Heathen belief in the past, and as they might develop in today’s Heathenry. The most obvious belief-element needed is reincarnation and / or something similar, such as the hamingja-legacy that I write about in my article Roles of Hamingja and Luck in Orlog. Indications of reincarnation beliefs do show up in old Heathen lore, and this belief is also held among some modern Heathens, as well as beliefs about hamingja and its ability to carry over luck and unluck into subsequent lives.
There is more work to be done in modern Heathenry along these lines, digging deeper into the ‘why’ of the connections between orlog, circumstances of life and death, and the Norns / Wyrd who influence or control them, as well as roles of the Deities. The direction of this work depends on what knowledge each of us feels we need, what we are drawn toward in terms of our beliefs about these matters. Does Heathen fatalism ‘feel right / true’ to us? Does reincarnation? Does a view of orlog modified by aspects of karma seem like the right philosophical approach? What about the roles of the Deities in these matters? What about beliefs about the soul(s) and their afterlife?
All of these beliefs and their potential relationships to orlog may play a role in our philosophical endeavors toward understanding the role of orlog in death and the afterlife. I’ve developed some thoughts along these lines in my Heathen soul lore studies, and there is much more that can be explored in that direction as well as others.
Once death has occurred—however and why-ever it comes about, what comes next? Does orlog play a role in the transition between life and afterlife? Do orlog and the Norns operate directly in the Worlds where human souls have their afterlives? I don’t—can’t—have definitive answers to these and related questions, of course, but they are worthy questions to ask and to explore here.
Heathen Afterlife Beliefs
There is no question that the Germanic peoples had beliefs about the survival of ‘somethings’ after death—and I say ‘somethings,’ plural, because these beliefs indicated quite a variety of different kinds of afterlife beings. Some of them were reanimated physical corpses that would arise from their burial places. Others stayed in their burial mounds but were spiritually available to provide luck and blessings to the surrounding land and to those who came with petitions to the mounds. Others were free-ranging spirits like the Disir, the female ancestral spirits of Norse lore, and the Alfar, a term for the male ancestral spirits. The Germanic (and Celtic) cult of the Matronae during the time of the Roman Empire included many ancestral female spirits as well as Land-Spirits, Goddesses, and demi-goddesses. Appearances of ghosts were relatively common, then as now.
There were beliefs about afterlife in Hel, Valhalla, Folkvang, and Frau Holle’s green underworld domain, sometimes called the Totenwiese, the meadow of the dead. Anglo-Saxon had a word, neorxna wang, that also meant the meadow or field of the dead. It was translated as ‘paradise,’ indicating that it was a pleasant place for afterlife souls. German Goddesses, including Frau Holle, Berchte, Frick (Frigg) and others were known to gather and care for the spirits of the dead, especially unbaptized children, and Walpurga was involved as well. Odin, and spaefolk, were known to speak with the dead—with their spirits, sometimes incorporated, sometimes not. Spirits sometimes showed up to their own funeral or to their kinfolk, to speak to them about the circumstances of their death, give instructions about the affairs they’d left behind, or accuse their murderers. One could go to the grave of a relative for help and advice: Svipdag received protective magical spells at the grave of his mother Groa in the Grogaldr of the Poetic Edda. Often the wights of the homestead, land, farm, etc, were considered to be the spirits of founders or past owners or workers of the land, embodied in different forms as nisse, tomte, heimchen, and many other folkloric beings. There are a great many published accounts and studies of these beliefs; Hilda Ellis’s (Davidson’s) Road to Hel is a classic summary.
So, let’s take it as given that there were widespread beliefs about the survival of ‘somethings’ after death among all the Germanic peoples, as there were among all their neighboring pagan cultures. My belief, and the underlying assumption in the following discussions, is that some of our souls do survive Midgard death and continue into various states of disembodied spiritual existence.
Does Orlog Influence the Afterlife State?
Obviously, we cannot know for sure any of the answers to questions about what happens in the afterlife. Here, I use reasoning, speculation, examples from old Heathen lore, and results of my own spiritual work, to explore (not definitively answer!) these interesting and meaningful questions about orlog and the afterlife.
The first question we’ll address here is: how does orlog laid during life influence our afterlife state? We go through a transition between life, the dying process, and the afterlife of our souls. What influence does orlog have on this process and its outcomes?
This question, it seems to me, links us more with a Christian worldview than a Heathen one. In the Christian view one’s behavior during life, and the Deity’s judgement on that behavior, totally controls the afterlife fate of the soul. If we translated this view into Heathen terms, we’d say that the orlog we laid during life is judged by the Norns / Wyrd and / or the Deities after we die, and our afterlife circumstances are set by their judgement.
Quite honestly, I don’t see much of that viewpoint in the more Heathen-oriented lore, except for the way our luck and hamingja are developed during our life and may be passed on, as I discuss in my article Roles of Hamingja and Luck in Orlog. In terms of ‘judgement’ in the afterlife: some souls go to Valhalla. They are chosen by the Valkyries on Odin’s instructions, because Odin wants them in Valhalla due to their warrior skills. He’s collecting his army for Ragnarök. This is not really ‘orlog’ and ‘judgement.’ It’s related to those, because the warriors during life laid orlog in the sense of developing their warrior skills and strength, and the Valkyries / Odin ‘judged’ them worthy of Valhalla. But this isn’t the same as the Christian situation; it is not a moral judgement on their souls, but a practical choice: Odin wants them for his own purposes.
In my humble opinion, a lot of the hype about Valhalla in the Old Norse poems was based on two purposes. One was the benefits that the poets gained by praising their patron and his warband, assuring them they’d go to Valhalla because of their courage and war skills. That’s how poets made their living, whether the people they sang about actually made it to Valhalla or not. The other purpose, I think, was to energize the warrior spirit, encouraging youngsters to want to be warriors, and warriors to fight bravely. Martial music, songs, poetry, and hero-tales have always been used, in cultures around the world, to inspire people to do what in normal circumstances seems like a bizarre way to behave: subject themselves and others to brutality, maiming, and bloody slaughter, and feel good about doing so.
I am certainly not mocking the warrior’s courage, skill, endurance, self-sacrifice, and the determination to defend one’s own, all of which I deeply respect. I’m thinking here more about the social / political role of the image of Valhalla. I think that under Christian influence, as well as this socio-political influence, we lose sight of what Valhalla really is: not so much a Christian-like heavenly reward for warriors, per se, but something Odin has set up for his own purposes. Those purposes include shaping the circumstances of what comes after Ragnarök: a world free of the beings and influences that war against the Gods during Ragnarök…at least, temporarily free. Odin is laying his own orlog, and his own long-laid plans, by his choices and actions preparing for Ragnarök, and the Einherjar are a part of that.
Orlog does appear to influence the afterlife of warriors: they are chosen for Valhalla or for Freya’s Folkvang because they were warriors during Midgard life—presumably as a result of their Midgard orlog. We must remember here that ‘orlog’ also means ‘war, battle, strife.’ (See my article The Fateful Roots of Orlog.) But it has that meaning because of what leads up to that war or strife, not necessarily what comes after. Orlog comes from the past: it consists of the circumstances that lead to war or strife, in a collective, societal sense as well as the orlogs of each individual who’s involved with it. As warriors, victims, others who are affected by war, their orlog leads them into that situation. But does their orlog follow them out of it—out of life and into death? I’m less sure about that. In the example I gave of warriors’ deaths in battle, orlog leads them into that situation, but after their death it is not the Norns or orlog that decide where they go; it is Odin or Freya, according to Norse myth.
Likewise with death under other circumstances. Many people’s souls go to Hel; even that feisty old Norse brawler, Egil Skallagrimson, expected to head for Hel when he died, not to Valhalla. Here are the last lines of his poetic masterpiece, Sonatorrek:
I shall, even so, gladly
With good will
And without looking back,
Await / abide Hel.
(my translation)
https://heimskringla.no/wiki/Sonatorrek_(B1)
skalk þó glaðr
góðum vilja
ok ó-hryggr
heljar bíða.
Hel was not considered a bad place to be, for most people. Take a look at the attitude of a famous Frisian war-leader here. (Ancient Frisia became today’s Netherlands.) He was a Frisian king or duke, a Heathen named Redbad or Radboud (d. 719 CE.) He fought against the Frankish efforts at Christianization, with wins and losses. At one point he considered baptism as a political expedient, but he famously backed out at the last minute. The story goes that as he was about to be baptized, he asked the bishop whether he would see his departed kin when he went to the Christian heaven. Upon being told that ‘no, his Heathen kin would not be in the Christian heaven,’ Radboud stated that he would rather be in Hel with his Heathen kin, than go to heaven by himself. A typically Heathen sentiment!
http://(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redbad,_King_of_the_Frisians
To me, this indicates that Radboud did not at all believe he would be facing punishment, misery and despair in Heathen Hel. Instead, he considered it a reasonable, and more homelike, alternative to Christian heaven as a place to spend his afterlife in company with his kin. His reaction also indicates a genuine and firm belief in the afterlife and in Heathen Hel. He would not have given up the clear political and strategic advantages of Christian baptism unless he truly believed in, and wanted, an afterlife existence with his Heathen kin in Hel. Not, you will note, in Valhalla!
The ancestral connection in the afterlife was of the greatest importance for many Heathens. Looking at other traditional beliefs around the world, we can see that most of them include faring to the ancestors after death and becoming ancestral spirits in turn. In general, the afterlife destinations of souls in these old traditional beliefs, including Heathen ones, depend less on any kind of divine judgement, and more on the nature of the soul itself. For example, I argue in my writings about the Hugr / Hyge / Hugi soul that it is an ancestral one, who naturally continues after death as an ancestral spirit. The saiwalo / sawol / sele –-the soul that gives us the word ‘soul’ in modern English—is naturally drawn to Hel and associated underworld domains like the green fields of Frau Holle. Other souls may go on to become guardians of the home or the land or dwell in landscape features: these are familiar spirits from folklore in many cultures including Germanic ones. The Ghost soul, our Spirit, I believe is drawn to the God-Homes: not only Valhalla or Folkvang, but to the home of whichever God(s) the person was closest to during Midgard life.
Does Orlog play a Role in Afterlife Destinations?
Does orlog play a role in these afterlife destinations and the details of their circumstances? One might argue in favor of that, in the sense that our actions and deeds during life prepare our various souls for their afterlife destinations and activities. I do not think, however, that the Norns have a strong hand in this process as it relates to the afterlife, though that is only my impression. I can’t think of any really Heathen lore to point to, that would prove or disprove the idea that while the Norns shape our Midgard life, our afterlife is not up to them. My belief is that it is the orlog we lay ourselves—our own choices of deeds and actions, our own choices of mental and spiritual focus during life, and our personal relationships with the Deities—and not the orlog the Norns lay for us, which ultimately conditions the destinations and the states of our souls in the afterlife.
To put this simply: I believe that while the Norns shape and condition our Midgard lives by laying orlog, it is our own contributions and responses to our orlog during life, and our relationships with the Deities and other Worlds during life, that shape and condition the afterlives of our souls.
Let’s look at an example of this, quoting the great Beowulf’s last words. The Beowulf poet was Christian, and that shows in some of the passages in the poem. But he knew perfectly well that Beowulf himself was not Christian, and I think the poet did well in imagining how Beowulf himself, as a Heathen, would have approached the moment of his death. As Beowulf lay dying after killing the dragon, he spoke to his brave thane Wiglaf, saying:
“ ‘Wyrd has swept all my kinsmen toward metod-sceaft, those undaunted eorls. I shall go after them.’ (He refers to the shaping of metod, similar to wyrd.) That was the old man’s last word from his breast-gehygd (the Hyge or Hugr in his breast) before he chose the high battle-flames as, outgoing from his breast, his Sawol (soul) sought its soothfast doom.” (Beowulf lines 2814-20, my translation, parentheses mine.)
Soothfast (soðfæst) means ‘true, trustworthy, honest, just.’ The last thing Beowulf speaks of is his brave, undaunted Heathen kinsmen gone before him; he intends his Sawol / soul to follow them to his soothfast doom, his honorable place in the afterlife. He is fully expecting this to happen naturally, for his Sawol to join his kin. He is not pleading with a Deity for a merciful judgment on his Sawol, but rather setting his own intention for his afterlife destination. Beowulf knows he has earned his honorable place in the afterlife by his worthy deeds, the orlog he himself has laid during his lifetime, and he makes a confident statement to that effect. For all the influence the Norns may have had over his life-events, it is Beowulf’s own responses to the conditions the Norns laid for him which earn him the right to join his ancestors in their soothfast doom.
As I believe: the Norns may have a large influence in shaping the circumstances of our Midgard life and death, but it is up to us and our Gods to shape the passages of our souls into their various afterlives. This is what we spend our lives doing—choosing how we respond to the conditions that the Norns, Wyrd, orlog have laid. I suggest that it is greatly to our benefit if we pursue this in full awareness, knowing that our own choices and deeds in this life shape the conditions of our souls in the afterlife, just as the Norns and the orlog they lay shape the conditions of our life in Midgard.
(Note: Background for understanding references to the Aldr, Time-Body, Werold, alda börnum and alda vé in the following sections can be found in my articles What do the Norns Shape?; Time and the Time-Body; and Aldr and Orlay: Weaving a World.)
Does Orlog Stop when Midgard Life Ends?
We’ve gone over some thoughts about the role of orlog and the Norns in the transition between life and death, and where our souls may head to in the afterlife. While it’s impossible to be sure of what ancient Heathens thought about the role of orlog after death, here is my reasoning about their view of this question, “Does orlog continue to influence us in the afterlife, or does orlog stop when Midgard life ends?”
To begin our chain of reasoning: what do the Norns do? They ‘choose life,’ choose the event and the circumstances of our entry into Midgard life. They shape our Aldr, our lifespan and Time-Body with its processes of growth, maturation, and decline. They influence and gather up the significant deeds and events of our lives and lay them as orlog in the Well. They may predestine the time and circumstances of our death. All of this has to do with our life in Midgard: its beginning, its end, and what happens in between. This doesn’t say anything about our afterlife situation.
I don’t see evidence, myself, that old Heathens considered that our personal orlog continues to operate on our souls after our life in Midgard ends, though certainly the orlog that we’ve laid during our life continues to affect events in Midgard after we’re gone. That’s an important distinction: orlog we’ve laid during life becomes part of the Well, of What-Is, and continues to be active in Midgard. But what about after that life is over?
The word ‘orlog’ referred to death,in the majority of instances where it was used in ancient times, and often, so did the word ‘wyrd.’ To me, that implies an end: an end to our orlog along with the end of our life in Midgard. Our orlog-while, predestined for us, has now taken place, has been fulfilled. Its role is done. Our soul, or souls, no longer exist in the physical plane of Midgard after we die; they now exist elsewhere. We have left Alda Vé behind: the sacred space of Midgard itself which supports and gives life to alda börnum, children of Aldr, human beings given orlog by the Norns. Let’s look at this phrase, Alda Vé, and what it implies about the Aldr soul and the circumstances under which it lives—and comes to an end.
Alda Vé
“The wise lack for little, for Oðrœrir has come up to the rim of Alda Vé.”
(Hávamál vs. 107 in Old Norse, 106 in translation, Poetic Edda.)
A Vé is a sanctuary, a temple or other sacred space; this Hávamál verse is a reference to a mysterious ‘sanctuary or sacred place of the Aldr.’ It refers to Odin’s theft of Oðrœrir, the mead of poetry and wisdom, when he drank it out of the Jotun Suttung’s vats, escaped, and flew back with it in eagle’s form to Asgard. We’re told in Gylfaginning that “Odin gave Suttung’s mead to the Æsir and to those people who are skilled at composing poetry” (prose Edda p. 64, Faulke’s translation). These skilled poets and wise folk are humans, alda börnum, ‘children of Aldr.’ Once Odin stole this mead from the underworld domain of the Giants and brought it up to Asgard, it also became available to humans living in Midgard, by Odin’s grace or heill.
Alda Vé or Vés is a mysterious reference. I’ve seen the phrase translated as “sanctuaries of men,” implying human temples to the Gods, but I don’t buy in to precisely that understanding. Vé, or in some texts Vés, is in the singular form, not plural ‘sanctuaries.’ This phrase refers to the sanctuary of humans who each bear the Aldr soul shaped for them by the Norns. What is this ‘sanctuary of humans?’ What is the sacred place of the Aldr soul, where alda börnum, eldi-barn—time-children, mortal beings—live?
As I understand it, the ‘sanctuary of humans’ is Midgard itself: the place that Vé, son of Borr and Bestla, and his brothers Odin and Vili shaped out of Ymir’s corpse as a sanctuary for human and earthly life in the midst of the cosmic chaos surrounding it. (Gylfaginning in the prose Edda, p. 11.) The God’s name itself, Vé, is a clue to this understanding: he represents the power of making holy, of sanctifying; he is an embodiment of holiness. The only place in extant Old Norse lore that I’m aware of where Vé’s name appears is in this context of shaping Midgard: the sanctuary of earthly life, protected from chaotic forces by encircling mountains and sea or rivers. His role in the shaping of Midgard was to give it the quality of holiness, of a sanctuary imbued with the power and blessing of the Gods: our earthly home of Alda Vé.
To me, this reference to Alda Vé is strong evidence that the Aldr soul’s domain of life and action is seated in Midgard, not in any of the Worlds where other human souls or spirits may reside in the afterlife—souls such as the Ghost, Hugr, Mod, Ferah or Fjör, and Saiwalo / Sawol / Soul. Alda börnum in Old Norse, eldi-barn in Old Saxon: these terms for ‘human being’ imply that we are children of Time, mortal beings. Our Aldr life-span is time-limited; our Aldr life-soul is limited in space to the Midgard domain.
As I write in my article What do the Norns Shape?, the Norns / Wyrd shape our Aldr-soul itself, along with the lifespan it governs, the timing of significant personal events, and the flows of spiritual nourishment and life-force the Aldr feeds us, which fuel our body, souls and lifespan. Old Norse aldr-lag and Anglo-Saxon ealdor-legu, the laying-down of Aldr, mean ‘death, destined death’: here we see that the Aldr soul ‘lays’ or ‘sets down’ its life functions at the fated time, the end of our lifespan. There is a clear parallel between ør-lög, or-læg, ur-lag, on the one hand, and aldr-lag, ealdor-legu, on the other hand. Both are shaped by the Norns and given to us as humans. Both refer to one’s death, the moment when orlog, ‘what has been laid down by fate,’ comes to pass, and the moment when one’s ealdor / aldr life-force or life-soul is itself laid down, given up to death, and one’s lifespan comes to an end.
I believe that the essence of the Aldr soul—the mortal Time-Body—which is shaped for us by the Norns is rooted in Midgard life, in the space that was shaped by the Gods for our human lifetimes to play out (and for the lives of other earthly beings as well). Aldr holds the vitality of our body and the Werold of our lifetime and life experience in Midgard. 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 as a soul, if it were no longer associated with a physical body that requires nourishment, growth, health, change through time, and with a Werold of life-experiences that require timing, shaping, and connection with Midgard orlog?
Aldr does have a function outside of Midgard: it feeds our deeds, as strands of orlog, 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 orlog and wyrd play out in human lives, interacting with all other life forms, physical and spiritual. Our Aldr souls are active agents of the Norns in Midgard, working with them to lay and fulfill orlog. Input, feedback, and throughput between the Norns and Midgard flow through the Aldr soul dwelling within each of us, together weaving the orlog of This-World: Alda Vé. Other beings besides humans, and natural processes, of course play major roles as well, but here we are primarily focused on the roles of human orlog.
Summary of Aldr’s Roles
Now let’s look at what happens with respect to orlog and Aldr as our body and our mortal lifespan reach their wyrded end. In summary, during Midgard life our Aldr:
– governs our lifespan and the timing of significant events during our life (including physical changes as we grow, mature, and decline),
– functions as a form of life-force nourishing us both spiritually and physically during our Midgard life,
– shapes the experiences of our lifetime into a meaningful whole, our Werold or personal world, and
– connects us with orlog and the Norns, forming the linkage between our mortal body and personhood, the Norns and their work, and life in Midgard.
What happens with Aldr when this work is done?
What happens to Aldr at Death?
Let’s take a look at the fate of Aldr itself after physical death, based on my personal understanding. When our physical body’s life, supported and shaped by our orlog and our Aldr soul, is ‘laid down’ here in Midgard, I believe that Aldr returns to the Norns and the Well. Recall that, according to Gylfaginning, Urð’s Well lies in the same place where the Æsir’s rökstola, their seats of judgement and truth-seeking, are placed (p. 17 in Faulkes’ Edda). Aldr comes in spirit-form to this sacred place, carrying its Werold and its orlog with it, its weaving of all the experiences and deeds of our life. I believe that at this time Aldr is still accompanied by our other souls who survive physical death.
At this time, Aldr and its companion souls face the judgement of the Deities and the Norns, as a formal acknowledgement of the worth of our life and deeds. We experience this, I believe, not so much as a moral judgement or verdict, but more as a recognition—hopefully one of honor and blessing—of the deeds and events of our life, given by the Great Beings of our troth. They acknowledge the true worth of the orlog we have laid by our deeds, the Werold we have woven and its cost to us—all the struggles and triumphs, losses and gains, giving and learning, that went into its weaving—and they acknowledge its value. They bear witness as the Norns speak our life’s orlog and lay it in the Well.
After this godly acknowledgement of the orlog we have shaped during our life in Midgard, our souls separate, each to its appropriate destination. The Aldr itself returns to the Well and is dissolved therein, along with its Werold, and becomes part of the Worlds’ orlog, of All-That-Is, that lies in the Well and influences all that comes into being.
This, now, is not the afterlife of a personal being, a soul. Rather, Aldr has dissolved itself as an individual being, along with its individual orlog; they have been laid as a layer in the Well and become part of the natural process that feeds into the World’s orlog as a whole.
When the Norns draw up a new Aldr-soul to give to a child in the womb, this new Aldr is shaped by orlog from the Well, including orlog laid by previous Aldr souls and their Werolds. But this is not the same thing as the rebirth of an individual personality—that fate of personal rebirth is left to others of our souls, in my view.
Synopsis and some Unanswered Questions
The question of whether, and how, orlog operates in the environments our souls inhabit in the afterlife is a complex and fascinating one, but it’s beyond the scope of this book. From my perspective it’s a question that is closely meshed with Heathen soul lore as I understand it and needs to be explored in that context, which would take us far afield from our present course.
Thus, I’ll close this article with a synopsis of my reasoning about orlog at the time of death, and some unanswered questions about orlog in the afterlife. I do this in the spirit of a quotation from the French political philosopher Baron de Montesquieu (1689-1755): “One should never so exhaust a subject that nothing is left for readers to do. The point is not to make them read, but to make them think.” This applies to myself, as well…there’s still a lot more for me to think about here!
I. How Orlog Functions in Midgard
When we are alive in Midgard orlog acts upon us in several ways, as I’ve covered in other articles about orlog on this website. To summarize:
1. Orlog is laid through the workings of choices and deeds, which result in causes and effects:
(a) on the individual level and
(b) on the collective level.
Our choices and deeds affect us individually and are likely to have effects on others as well. The deeds of other individuals, and the actions and orlog of various collectives and the society we’re embedded in, may influence our orlog as well as theirs.
2. Orlog is shaped and spoken by the Norns; this can involve:
(a) their actions resulting in causes and effects,
(b) fateful, wyrded interventions chosen by them, coming from outside the workings of cause and effect.
Again, these actions of the Norns can impact us both on the individual level and through their effects on the collectives that we are a part of.
3. Deities act in Midgard as well, and their actions also influence individual and group orlog—ours, and their own.
These conclusions leave many questions unanswered relating to orlog after death. Here are some of the ones I ponder.
II. Rebirth into Midgard
There is a fair amount of evidence for a belief in ‘rebirth’ in Norse lore—at least for some people, under certain circumstances. The fact that it is noteworthy to mention such rebirths in the sagas and poems seems to hint that it doesn’t necessarily happen to everyone—at least as it was understood in the past.
1. This is a complicated topic to pursue, because it involves a number of sub-questions:
(a) Who gets reborn, and why?
(b) What is it that gets reborn? Personality? Soul? Luck? Orlog? Hugr? Ghost?
(c) What is the mechanism or process whereby rebirth happens? That is, what triggers rebirth for some people? Does it have to do with their orlog in their previous life?
A good number of books about old Heathen beliefs offer overviews of their concepts of rebirth, including Hilda Ellis’s (Davidson’s) seminal Road to Hel. My own studies on Heathen soul lore indicate that the Hugr soul is likely to be reborn, while the Hamingja-spirit is not reborn, precisely, but rather it remains in disembodied form Midgard when the person dies, and is then passed on or inherited by another living person, as I discuss in my article Roles of Hamingja and Luck in Orlog.” Of course, it’s quite possible that the Hamingja rejoins the same person after that person is reborn into Midgard, giving something of a reincarnation effect. There are a great many questions that remain on this topic, including this one:
2. Assuming that rebirth into Midgard is a possibility, to what extent does the orlog we laid during our past Midgard life influence the conditions of our new, reborn life in Midgard? If the Hamingja rejoins its previous self when that self is reborn into Midgard, presumably it would bring whatever orlog it bears with it for the newly-born person. But that seems not always to be the case, and it isn’t clear how much of the orlog or the personhood is carried by Hamingja, which is not an actual soul, in my understanding, but rather a spirit-being that is attached to us during Midgard life.
III. The Operation of Orlog in the Afterlife
And finally, questions concerning the function of orlog, if any, as it relates to our souls in the afterlife domains:
1. Does orlog influence human souls while they reside in the afterlife domains, either permanently or temporarily while awaiting rebirth? Does causality itself operate in the same way in other Worlds as it does in Midgard and the physical universe as we know it?
2. If orlog and causality in some form do operate in the afterlife worlds, to what extent is the orlog we lay during our afterlife influential in the conditions of our reborn life in Midgard?
3. For souls who stay in the afterlife and are not reborn, how does orlog work, or does it not affect them? My sense is that the orlogs of whichever God or Goddess we reside with would have some influence over our souls too, but I don’t know how much. For example, Odin’s Einherjar share in his and the Worlds’ orlog of facing the Ragnarök battle. The Einherjars’ orlog during life in Midgard resulted in them being chosen for Valhalla. Odin’s and the Æsir’s orlog of Ragnarök influences their fates in the afterlife. But do they also accrue personal orlog while in Valhalla, the way we do during life in Midgard?
4. Do the Norns relate to us in the afterlife the same way they do in Midgard? My own vague sense is that they do not, at least not in the same ways as in Midgard. The more I think about this, the more it seems to me that human orlog—emphasis on ‘human’—as we know it, is really a Midgard phenomenon. Though orlog does affect the Deities, and affects our souls in a collective way through our association with those Deities in our afterlives, I have the feeling that the Norns have less direct influence over us in the afterlife, while the Gods and Goddesses and the workings and patterns of the afterlife Worlds have more weighty influence on our souls in the afterlife.
These are all deep and intriguing questions I like to ponder, but they’d require a full book (or books) to explore them in more depth!
Book-Hoard
Chickering, Howell D. Jr., transl. Beowulf. Doubleday, 1977. (Dual language edition)
Ellis, Hilda Roderick. The Road to Hel: A Study of the Conception of the Dead in Old Norse Literature. Cambridge University Press, 1943. (Note: some editions of this book are published under the author’s married name, Hilda Ellis Davidson.)
Jonsson, Finnur, ed. De Gamle Eddadigte. København: G.E.C. Gads Forlag, 1932.
Jonsson, Finnur, ed. Edda Snorra Sturlusonar. Udgivnet efter Handskrifterne af Kommissionen for det Arnamagnaeanske Legat. København: Gyldendalske Boghandel – Nordisk Forlag, 1931.
Larrington, Carolyne, transl. The Poetic Edda, revised edition. Oxford University Press, 2014.
Rose, Winifred Hodge. Heathen Soul Lore Foundations: Ancient and Modern Germanic Pagan Concepts of the Souls. Wordfruma Press, 2020.
Sturluson, Snorri, transl. Anthony Faulkes. Edda. Charles E. Tuttle Co., 1995.
Tolkien, J.R.R., ed. Christopher Tolkien. The Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2009.
Note: This article is included in my book Orlog Yesterday and Today: The Shapings of the Norns.