Layers, Laws, Battle and Strife
Winifred Hodge Rose
with endpiece by Daniela Svartheiðrinn Simina
The History of ‘Orlog’
We’ll begin our explorations into this mysterious phenomenon, orlog, by taking a look at the history of the word ‘orlog’ as its meanings developed in the main Germanic languages. I am using the generic spelling ‘orlog’ as the general term for this phenomenon, except when discussing the specific term in a given language. By using ‘orlog’ as the neutral umbrella term, we can discuss various aspects of the word without choosing the spelling of one or the other Germanic language as the ‘only correct’ version of its spelling and its meaning. Not to mention that ‘orlog’ is easier for modern English speakers to say and to spell than the original words are! So, let’s turn now to the history of this word, beginning with Gothic as the oldest written form of the Germanic languages.
Though the Gothic word us-lagjan = ‘to lay, to lay upon,’ lay hands upon’ exists, which would be the form that the word ‘orlog’ would take in Gothic, it does not have the meaning of ‘fate,’ as far as one can tell from the available texts. The oldest written texts where ‘orlog’ words do have the meaning of something like ‘fate’ are in Anglo-Saxon (orlæg, orleg, pronounced ‘orlay’), Old High German (urlag, urlac), and Old Saxon (orlag). Anglo-Saxon, Old High German, and Old Saxon texts where this word appears are several centuries older than manuscripts written in Old Norse, such as the Poetic Edda which was written in the 13th century based on oral poetry composed during the period around 800 to 1100 CE.
Table 1. Time-periods of Old Germanic Literature (all CE / AD)
Gothic Bible: around 350
Anglo-Saxon / Old English literature: 650-1100; some is based on older oral poetry
Old Saxon literature: 700s-1100s
Old High German literature: 750-1050
Old Norse Eddas: Written during the late 13th century, based on oral poetry composed during 800-1150.
Note: By the time ON Eddas were written, OHG, OS and A-S / OE had already shifted to their Middle forms, no longer ‘Old.’
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Note that there is a period of about 900 years between the earliest substantial Germanic-language text that we have—parts of the Bible translated into Gothic—and the written forms of the Old Norse Eddas and early sagas. (I am not counting runic inscriptions here, many of which are much older, but rather written texts of more substantial content and length where forms of the word ‘orlog’ are used and can be understood in context.) In tracing the history of our word-concept ‘orlog,’ this 900-year time span is significant. Words may have shifted meanings, and new meanings for words developed during almost a millennium of time, as we shall explore here.
Non-Norse Germanic writings were composed earlier in time and are useful for tracing the development of the ‘orlog’ word and concept. On the other hand, much of the Old Norse writing offers more of a Heathen context and thinking than the earlier Germanic language writings, which are often focused on Christian topics and show more signs of Christian influence. The Old Norse oral literature period, from which most of the early written literature was drawn, covered centuries during which many were still Heathen, and others were struggling with conversion. In other words, some of the texts we examine here are older in time and language development (the non-Norse literature), while others may be ‘older’ in terms of more Heathen-oriented, less Christian perspectives (Old Norse literature). Thus, all of these resources have something to offer our explorations here.
We need to keep in mind that this information does not necessarilytell us anything about the age of the orlog-concept itself in the different cultures, since the words would have been in use for centuries before finally being written down when those cultures were introduced to textual writing. But it is worth asking whether we can see evidence of some kind of evolution of the concept, or its branching off into different directions, based on the ages of the texts in the different languages.
Here are the etymologies, the word-roots, of orlog words in the main Germanic languages, followed by a discussion of their implications for our analysis.
Table 2. Etymologies of Orlog
Proto-Germanic (PGmc) *ut– became uz– = a preposition meaning ‘out, out of,’ from Proto-Indo-Europoean *ud– = ‘up, out’. Then became Gothic us-; and ON or, ur, meaning ‘out of, from.’ In the other Germanic languages this prefix took the forms or, ur, yr, ar, er, or (deVries p. 419). I do not find any meaning of ‘ur = origin, beginning, primitive’ in Proto-Germanic. The Proto-Germanic form for orlog would likely be uz-lagjan, but I don’t find this word in the Proto-Germanic dictionary.
Gothic (Go): Us-lagjan = ‘to lay, to lay upon, lay hands upon,’ from ligan = to lie (down). This is the form that the word ‘orlog’ takes in Gothic.
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’.
Old Frisian (OFr): 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.’
Proto-Indo-European (PIE): I do not find a word resembling ‘orlog’ in PIE, but looking up the Latin roots of ‘origin,’ oriri, we find the meaning ‘to arise, appear, be born.’ This traces back to PIE *ori-yo, and to the prefix *er- ‘to be, to exist.’ In the Germanic languages this takes the form ar- and or- and appears in the modern English verb ‘are’: ‘you are, we are, we exist.’ It is also the root of ‘earth’ and its Germanic cognates. (Watkins p. 24.) In none of the etymological sources I’ve searched do I find the suggestion that the ‘or’ of ‘orlog’ relates to this PIE root *er-. All of them trace the or- of orlog to the PIE root *ud- ‘up, out of.’
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To me, the PIE meanings of ‘to arise, appear, be born, to be, to exist,’ and the concept of ‘origin, originate’ seem to be closely related to the concept of orlog and to the meanings of ‘up, out of.’ Whatever the true linguistic connections may be, in my personal understanding and my own spiritual practice, I find a meaningful linkage between the concepts of ‘orlog,’ ‘origin,’ ‘arising,’ ‘birth,’ ‘coming into being,’ ‘existence,’ and ‘earth’ itself. Earth is ‘that which is laid down in layers’ and is the foundation of earthly existence. I offer these thoughts for your consideration as well.
Evolution from uslagjan
Looking at these roots in the various Germanic languages, it seems that either Gothic was the only main Germanic language that did not have the meaning of ‘fate’ for orlog, while the others did, or else at some time and in many places during the three hundred-plus year span between Gothic writing and the earliest writings in Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, and Old High German (textual writing came later for Old Norse), the meanings of orlog that are familiar to us today developed within the latter cultures.
Here is my thought about how the meaning of orlog could have evolved from Gothic uslagjan ‘to lay upon, lay hands upon’ into the orlog meanings of ‘fate’ and ‘war’ in later Germanic languages. ‘Laying hands upon’ someone often indicates a fateful event in their life. Here are a few examples of how uslagjan was used in the Gothic Gospels to imply fateful outcomes.
Luke 9:62: Jesus said “No one who lays a hand (uslagjans handu) to the plow and looks back is fit for service in the kingdom of God.” Here, ‘laying a hand to the plow’ is used as a metaphor for a fateful, lifelong decision and commitment.
John 7:29-30: Jesus claimed a mission from his God, whereupon the temple authorities “tried to seize him, but no one laid a hand on him (uslagida ana ine handu), because his hour had not yet come.” Here, it is recognized that the fateful moment for laying hands upon him was still in the future.
Mark 14:46: The Roman soldiers ‘laid hands upon’ Jesus (uslagidedun handuns) as they arrested him prior to his crucifixion, certainly a fateful event not only for him but also for the broader sweep of history.
I think that the meaning of uslagjan as ‘laying upon, laying hands upon’ could have led to the idea of ‘fate’ as something that ‘grabs hold of one, lays a weight upon one, takes possession of the path of one’s life.’ Ancient Greek depictions of Nemesis, a fate-bearing divine being, show him tapping or grasping the shoulder of his ‘victim,’ a way of designating the target of fate, laying hands upon them. Inherent in this word and its meaning is the action of ‘laying upon,’ tying back to the literal meaning of orlog as ‘layers laid down.’
The second meaning of orlog in the non-Norse languages, namely ‘war, battle, strife,’ is also a situation that ‘grabs’ or lays hands or a heavy weight upon people as warriors required to participate in battle, whether they want to or not, as well as non-warriors who are ‘grabbed’ as victims of attack, rape, and slavery during wartime: all of these being extremely fateful events in their lives. Professional warriors in a warband were under oath to follow the commands of their leader, leading them toward their fate in battle. Oathing taps into fate and is a fateful action that shapes one’s life.
There seems to me to be a logical progression beginning with ‘laying hands upon’ and ‘laying (obligations, necessity) upon’ a person, and then progressing to the concepts of ‘fate’ and of the Norns or Wyrd / Wurd / Wurt whose hands shape our fates. Thus, the concept of ‘laying upon / laying hands upon,’ uslagjan, could lead to concepts of orlog and wyrd. However, my idea about the progression of meanings is speculative. Without written evidence of language usage, one can’t be sure when and how the concept of orlog arose within the various Germanic cultures. Nevertheless, I am pursuing this topic as well as I can here, aiming to offer meaningful ideas about the concept of orlog and its potential role in the modern practice of Heathen philosophy, religion and spirituality.
I am using this as my current working hypothesis: that the clear-cut meaning of orlog = fate developed sometime after the Gothic translation of the Bible, and before the earliest writings in the other Germanic languages. In other words, based on this reasoning the orlog-concept may not have been present during Proto-Germanic-speaking times, but began its development after the branches of the Germanic languages began separating from each other, sometime after 350 CE. By around 650 CE the orlog-concept was well-developed as we see in the earliest non-Gothic Germanic writings beginning at that time-period. In my article, “The Curious Case of the Missing Wyrd-Word,” I explore another perspective on the development of the fate-concept among the Goths.
Orlog, Layers, and Laws
So far, we’ve looked at meanings of orlog primarily in the non-Norse old Germanic languages, with the focus on ‘laying layers’ and on ‘war, battle, strife.’ Now we’ll turn to a meaning of orlog that is derived from study of Norse literature, namely that lög refers not only to ‘layers,’ but also to ‘laws’: laws spoken by, and laid by, the Norns.
Comparing Roots of Orlog in Multiple Languages
Old Norse orloghas been extensively studied and discussed; I’ll turn here to Karen Bek-Pedersen’s summary of its likely meanings from her book The Norns in Old Norse Mythology. She identifies two distinct but similar interpretations; both of them rest on the understanding that the Norse word lög refers to both ‘laws’ and ‘layers’. The interpretation most often used is that orlog refers to ur-laws: original laws, primal laws, laws laid down in ancient times at the beginning of things.
The other interpretation focuses on or- as a form of the preposition ur- meaning ‘out of, from,’ rather than ‘primal, ancient.’ Thus the meaning becomes “that out of which something is laid down.” (Bek-Pedersen, p. 170.) This interpretation still leaves the idea of ‘laws’ in the picture; in Bek-Pedersen’s words, it is “the stuff out of which laws can be derived” (p. 170). For this second interpretation Bek-Pedersen uses the analogy of woolen yarn being the material ‘given’ by orlog;while one is free to make various items of clothing out of this yarn, there are many things that cannot be made from it (p. 170). In this view,orlog ‘conditions’ or sets conditions upon what we can do with the circumstances dealt out to us by the Norns, exerting some control but leaving us some choice as well.
With respect to the Old Norse word orlog, the connection with laws seems clear, whichever interpretation one uses. This is reinforced by the phrase used to describe the Norns’ actions in Voluspa vs. 20 where they ‘lay laws / layers’ at Urd’s well: ‘there they lay laws, choose life for children of aldr, speak orlog (þær lög lögðu, þær líf kuru / alda börnum, ørlög seggja).
The connection between ‘layers’ and ‘laws’ is a logical one when we look at systems of common-law. Common-law is generally based upon precedent: on past judgements, experiences, observations of what works and what doesn’t in the particular society where it is practiced. Common-law depends on ‘layers’ of law and practice that preceded it, and is different from statutory law. Statutory law is ‘made,’ not ‘laid’: it is made by legislative bodies and by kingly decrees, rather than arising organically out of precedent and history. As a modern example the US Congress creates statutory laws, often called ‘acts of Congress,’ such as the Clean Air Act, whereas local municipalities develop their own interpretations of common-law matters such as those pertaining to nuisances, ordinances, permits, and property disputes.
Gothic has the word ur-redan, meaning ‘to make ordinances.’ It comes from redan (related to Anglo-Saxon rede) meaning ‘to counsel, to provide for, to think of,’ plus the prefix us-. (Us-, meaning ‘out, out of, from, forth from,’ changes to ur- before an initial letter R.) So ur-redan or ordinances and rules are what grow out of thinking about matters, using good counsel to provide rules that support an orderly community. Ga-raideins is the noun meaning ‘ordinance, rule, authority’.
In ur-redan we see a word similar to the literal meaning of Old Norse orlog: laws are ‘what grow out of good counsel / rede’ in Gothic, and ‘what grow out of primal layers’ in Old Norse. Yet in the Gothic word there is no implication of ‘fate,’ it is simply a practical word for ordinances and rules. In Old Norse, laws grow out of ‘layers laid down in the past,’ with an implication of otherworldly powers (the Norns) being involved, whereas in Gothic laws grow out of good counsel and good governance. (As an aside, this shows quite a difference in their perspectives on ‘what laws are’: Old Norse shows more of a common-law perspective, while Gothic shows more of a statutory-law perspective, perhaps influenced by Roman practices.)
The connection between ‘layers’ and laws’ does not seem to be present in the non-Norse Germanic languages, except for the late (Danelaw period) Anglo-Saxon borrowing of Old Norse lag = lawto form their word lagu meaning ‘law’. Anglo-Saxon has older, more widely used, and linguistically unrelated words for ‘law,’ as is the case with the other Germanic languages. One Anglo-Saxon word related to law is riht, the root of our word ‘right,’ having to do with justice, rule, custom, ‘the right / legal way to do things.’ The same word and meaning occur in Gothic raihts, Old Saxon rehts, Old High German rihti, girihti, and Proto-Germanic *raka, *rehta, *garihtija.
Unlike with Old Norse lagu, none of the law-related words in the non-Norse languages were used to form a word relating to ‘orlog’ and ‘fate.’ Although law-related considerations may well play a role in ‘fate’ as it works its way through our individual lives and our societies, none of the words and concepts of ‘law’ in the non-Norse languages, such as gesetnes, riht, folc-riht, æwe, ur-redan, domas, ælþeow, and others, bear any etymological relationship to their words orlæg, orlege, orlag, urlag. In all the Germanic languages examined here, except for Old Norse, ‘law’ and ‘fate’ were not linguistically connected.
What was the real meaning of ‘law’ for widely-dispersed, small groups of people who had no written records and no powerful centralized authority-structure? They certainly had customs, traditions, expectations of behavior, that were taught during childhood and were enforced by the community. They generally had some authority-figure(s), both secular leaders such as king or goði, and priestly ones such as the law-speaker or law-warder (see deVries 1935, p. 262). What this leader spoke would have been ‘law’ for that specific time, location, and circumstance, not necessarily a forever-afterwards law broadly applied to everyone, everywhere. Germanic and many other ancient peoples were well aware that if they traveled to a foreign land, the law that they were subject to there might be very different than their traditions of law at home.
In general for the ancient Germanic peoples, ‘laws’ were laid down by ancestral traditions, by precedent, by learning from experience. Bek-Pedersen notes that the meanings and usage of the Old Norse words (a) sköp = ‘shaping;’(b) siðr / forn siðr = ‘customs, practices, traditions, including religious practices;’ and (c) lagu = ‘law’ are very similar: they refer to ‘the way things should be, the customs and practices laid down by our ancestors’ (p. 174).
This combination of patterns—customs and traditions, decisions shaped by leaders to fit specific circumstances—would have gradually laid layers of precedent, upon which more sophisticated law codes could be built as tribes and villages consolidated into larger and more powerful societies. This is indeed what happened in the Germanic lands and tribes, where their customary system of law was of great importance. They relied on trained ‘law-speakers’ to remember and recite them at the assemblies or Things. Both the ‘law-speaker’ and the ‘law-warder’ were considered priestly positions of authority (deVries 1935 p. 262). Each kingdom, tribe, village, etc. had its own tradition of laws.
Inner Law and Outer Law
Bek-Pedersen has an interesting point to make about the difference between ‘law’ and ‘orlog’. Everyone must follow their community’s laws or be outlawed, she notes, whereas orlog operates on the individual level. She explains that:
Orlog “is a person’s individual ‘law’ which is given to them at birth and which they cannot go beyond. They may interpret this ‘law’ in a variety of ways, but they cannot ‘break’ it. Moreover, this ‘law’ is ruthless and adheres neither to social nor to human norms, although it does maintain order of a kind” (p. 172). The law is created by the community and made publicly known. “Fate is secret, unknown and internal, laid down for the individual by an unseen, uncontrolled and uncontrollable force” (p. 173). These are important points, and to Bek-Pedersen these functions of law and fate have the same purpose: to keep order at different levels of existence (p. 173).
I would offer some additional nuances to this explanation. In Germanic thought, law is essentially, fundamentally, a defining feature of their community, including both the living and the ancestors. Everyone participates in it to some degree; it forms the substrate of community life and hence of normal human behavior. It also helps to define the identity of the community as a whole. I think it’s fair to say that many ancient Heathens would consider their own law to be the defining feature of their community; people who transgressed it were out-lawed, cast out of the community.
Orlog, as Bek-Pedersen points out, is conversely a ‘law’ that is secret, inscrutable and individual, the exact opposite of an open system of laws created by generations of humans living in community. Consider this: in a great many instances seen in Norse and Germanic poems and sagas, the pressures of a grim orlog drive individuals against the patterns of laws and community customs. As I see it, while laws are made to keep order, orlog sometimes brings about disorder and lawless behavior, at least within the domain of Midgard. This is especially seen in the meaning of orlog as ‘war, strife, conflict, adversity,’ which are very common meanings in all the Germanic languages except Old Norse, where this meaning exists but is rarely used. Orlog, so often experienced as a ‘dread blow of fate,’ can be chaotic and disruptive.
Sigrun and Helgi II
One among many examples of this disruptive aspect of the Norns’ shaping can be found in the Eddic Second Poem of Helgi Hundingsbani. It’s a complicated tale, thought by some scholars to be mismatched fragments stuck together, but it’s clear that sköp Norna, the shapings of the Norns, play a role in it. The heroes of the poem, Helgi and the Valkyrie Sigrun, are said to have been lovers and spouses reborn from previous lives, and their efforts to reunite end up causing bloody slaughter (which was also caused by feuds and killing involving other characters—all layers from the past).
Both characters grieve the slaughter even though they were involved with causing it. Helgi calls Sigrun a ‘strange wight’—alvitr—in verse 26, a clue that as a Valkyrie (though born of humans) she stands outside of human law. He has just killed Sigrun’s father and kinfolk, partly due to past feuds, partly due to his and Sigrun’s wish to marry even though she had already been betrothed to her father’s ally Hodbrodd, who is now dying on the battlefield.
Helgi says to Sigrun that he realizes this death of her kinfolk is not all good fortune for her (it’s good that they can now wed, but her family line is decimated) and he believes that the Norns have something to do with this. He continues in verse 28, saying that she did nothing to stop the battle, that it was ‘shaped for her’ (var þer þat skapat) to be the cause of strife among powerful men. Sigrun weeps over this outcome. Helgi comforts her, saying she is their battle-goddess (Hildr) and that warriors cannot escape what is shaped for them. Sigrun expresses her regrets over the situation: “I’d choose now that those who are gone could live again, and that I could still hold you in my arms” (v. 29).
All of these events involve past battles and deaths, vengeance for past deaths, betrothal, battle and slaughter to unmake the betrothal and bring about marriage to someone else. Orlog has been busy shaping events here, laying layers on top of complex layers, not paying much attention to ‘law’ and the aims of law to create social order and stability. The laws or shaping of the Norns came about, but bear little resemblance to human law as a method of ordering social life. If orlog has any cosmic-level ordering function—a question we will consider later—apparently that function is not always reflected in everyday community life, unlike laws.
A Common Denominator
Let’s return now to this point: though all of the Germanic peoples had a great respect for and reliance upon their concepts of law, none of the non-Norse Germanic languages had a meaning associated with ‘law’ for their ‘orlog’ words. They used the meaning of ‘layers,’ not ‘laws,’ and unlike Old Norse, their words for ‘layers’ and ‘laws’ are not linguistically related. Some concept other than ‘laws’ lies at the root of the orlog-phenomenon, at least as conceived in the non-Norse branches of people and languages, writing centuries earlier than the Norse texts. I suggest that the meaning of ‘layers = laws’ and its connection with orlog may have been a later evolution of the concept that occurred specifically in the Nordic lands. What was the earlier concept as it developed in other Germanic-speaking regions?
We’re looking here for a common denominator in the meaning of orlog-words in the different Germanic language branches, one that we can use as a basis for further understanding in our modern world and world-view. The second interpretation summarized earlier by Bek-Pedersen comes close for our purposes: not ‘ur-laws’ exactly, but in Bek-Pedersen’s words, “the stuff out of which laws can be derived” (p. 170). I see no reason why the two meanings of or- / ur- should not be combined in this context, so that we have not just “the stuff out of which laws can be derived,” but the ancient stuff, the primal stuff, the original stuff, the stuff of greatest importance: ur-stuff.
I would take these ideas further and suggest that it is not only ‘laws’ which arise from this ur-material or ‘stuff.’ I would call this stuff ‘the layers which form a substrate out of which fateful patterns, events, and circumstances arise,’ including but not limited to laws and other patterns of human behavior and social life.
Paul Bauschatz’ brilliant book The Well and the Tree: World and Time in Early Germanic Culture is a doctoral dissertation that examines the early Germanic concepts of time and fate with special focus on the Beowulf poem. This book has had considerable influence on modern Heathen thought, including my own. In his chapter “Action, Space, and Time” Bauschatz uses the imagery of the Well and the Tree to picture how life is lived within Space, symbolized by the World-Tree, and Time, symbolized by the Well. Humans, living in Midgard upon the Tree, the fabric of Space, 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. The Tree of Life, of existence in Space, 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 of the well 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, a topic we will return to in discussing the relationship between orlog and ordeal. Heroes are powered by the pressure of orlog constraining their actions, creating the necessity that leads to heroic deeds. Without that force of necessity arising from orlog, there is little incentive for heroic action.
Defining Orlog
The definition of orlog that I’m using is thus: layers of significant deeds and events laid in the past which form a substrate out of which fateful patterns, events, and circumstances arise. This meaning is entirely consistent with the etymologies of orlog-words in all the Germanic languages, not only the Norse meaning of ‘ur-laws.’ This definition certainly implies layers of laws: human-made laws, laws laid by the Great Powers, and natural laws such as those of cause and effect, but it is not limited to the formal concept of laws. Deeds, actions, decisions, words, choices, events, circumstances, natural processes: all can be laid as layers within the Well and in the growth-rings accreting around the Tree, as life continues through the ages.
Two modern German words can help our grasp of this idea. Ursache (OOR-sah-heh) means literally ur-matter, ur-thing. Ursache is the ‘place, person, circumstance, thing, situation from which anything begins or comes; a cause, a source, something or someone that produces an effect or result.’ Ursprung literally means the ur-spring, the ur-source. It is the ‘source or origin, the originating time, place, point, or cause of an event or circumstance,’ and its adjective ursprünglich includes the meaning of ‘primal’. Both of these words work very nicely as descriptors for orlog, for Urd’s Well, and for the work of Norns.
The influences within this primal, layered substrate of orlog ‘condition’ the circumstances of our lives, without necessarily being immutable laws. The interactions between ourselves and this substrate, in each generation, give rise to patterns including—but not limited to—the customs, laws, traditions, and practices that we create, individually and collectively, in order to deal with the results of these influential layers of orlog in our lives and our world.
Orlog as Fateful Inner Struggle
By Daniela Svartheidrinn Simina, Heathen author and clergy. She adds the following cogent thoughts about the meaningfulness of the connection between orlog as fate, and orlog as war, battle, strife.
As Winifred noted, Anglo-Saxon, Old Saxon, and Old High German forms of the word orlog mean both ‘fate’ and ‘battle, war, strife’. This is an interesting overlap, not only linguistically but also semantically. Fate is usually shaped through some form of battle, war, or strife, whether these take place on an actual battlefield or internally, within one’s own psyche. As humans, we find ourselves torn between the desire to spring into action and fear, or other considerations, that hold us back from acting. As long as the inner struggle is ongoing, one side of our psyche fighting another without any of the sides prevailing, what lies ahead is still a blank page awaiting to be written. Then, the resolution of the inner conflict determines the content about to be laid on that page of our lives: will it be a heroic poem or scornful lines?
As an example, in the epic poem Beowulf, the young warrior Wiglaf, despite his youth and lack of experience, comes to Beowulf’s aid while he fights the dragon. (Wiglaf’s tale begins at l. 2602). All the other warriors are terrified: in their hearts, fear has won over loyalty, dignity, and the desire for fame. But young Wiglaf stills his fears in the face of danger. In his heart, love and loyalty for his king and kinsman Beowulf prevail. By contrast to the veteran troops and their commanders, Wiglaf resists the voices of fear and doubt. He summons up the courage to stab the dragon thus allowing Beowulf to deal it the final blow. By first winning his inner battle, Wiglaf then sets forth to write the next page in his life’s book. His feelings steer his orlæg. Wiglaf becomes Beowulf’s successor, and, as the new king, Wiglaf’s orlaeg is now intertwined with that of his own people.
Inner battles are orlog in seed-form: what happens on the actual battleground hinges on what will grow out of that seed. Then, confrontations on the battlefield further weave new strands of orlog. Outcomes of battles, internal and external ones, taken individually and cumulatively, become the foundation for new decisions to be made and new actions to be taken. The word orlog captures perfectly the blurriness between fate and battle, as a profound linguistic and semantic subtlety.
Note: This article is included in my book, Orlog Yesterday and Today: The Shapings of the Norns.
Book-Hoard
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Sehrt, Edward H. Vollständiges Wörterbuch zum Heliand und zur Altsächsischen Genesis. Vandenhok & Ruprecht in Gottingen, 1966.
Skeat, W.W. A Moeso-Gothic Glossary. London UK: Asher & Co., 1868.
Watkins, Calvert. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011.
Wulfila Gothic Bible: https://www.wulfila.be/gothic/browse/