Winifred Hodge Rose
Here is my response to a question about whether the Norns’ influence over us is fully deterministic or not.
I certainly agree that the Norns and their work are beyond our full comprehension. By the same token, we can’t really either prove or disprove any theory about determinism as directed by them or any other Deities. We can’t prove or disprove their existence either, for that matter, and as philosophers across the ages have pondered, it’s hard to prove that anything outside ourselves exists, or that we ourselves exist…once one descends into that pit of philosophical nihilism, I have to say, I’m long gone! I find no profit in fruitlessly pursuing such questions!
We can only go by our own perceptions of What-Is, and the test or ‘proof’ of the validity of those perceptions is the value of our lived lives, to ourselves and to others whose lives we influence. I say the ‘validity’ rather than ‘philosophical truth’ of these perceptions because we cannot test or answer as to their absolute truth. And in fact we can speak of ‘wisdom’ in these terms, too: ‘wisdom’ in a sense being our perception of the value that specific knowledge and actions possess or lead us toward.
We can test the validity or the wisdom of our perceptions by measuring them against a set of values that we have–our ethics, our aspirations, our ideals–and see how well our responses to our perceptions of ‘wisdom’ lead to ‘wise’ deeds and to ‘wisdom’ from the outcomes of those deeds in our lives. To me, none of this pursuit of ‘wisdom’ and ‘truth’ is ‘absolute’; it is all proximate to a system of values, though I realize that many philosophers and theologians of various religions would argue with me about this!
So, following on with this reasoning, which I perceive as being compatible with a Heathen world-view, in my work I try to understand as well as I can where ancient Heathens were coming from–people who were Heathens for many generations, steeped in Heathen world-views. This is what I’m working on in the book I’m currently writing with respect to orlog and wyrd, which are the concepts closest to ‘fate’ in the Classical world-view, but are not identical with ‘fate.’ In my studies I’ve seen plenty of evidence of various kinds for a Heathen belief that Wyrd or the Norns shape the general course of people’s lives and predestine their deaths, but I’ve seen no evidence in ancient Heathen belief that this ‘shaping’ or influence applies to every tiny detail of their lives.
As Jacob Grimm insightfully pointed out, the fairy godmothers and similar figures in fairy tales of European cultures are the ‘descendants’ of the ancient Norns. We see these fairy godmothers ‘shaping’ the lives of newborns during their naming or christening ceremonies through the gifts or curses that they give the babies. And sure enough, these turn out to happen: the princess is beautiful and sweet and loved by everyone per the gifts, and pricks her finger on a spindle on her 16th birthday and falls asleep so no one can wake her for years, per the curse, etc etc. But the fairy godmothers certainly didn’t control how many times the child sneezed on the first day of February when they were 5 years old, or whether they got a pebble in their shoe when they took a walk on June fourteenth, or whatever.
In my perception, this kind of hard determinism tends to be more associated with monotheistic, authoritarian religion (Christian Calvinism is one example) or with the kinds of classical philosophy that later led to scientific determinism / absolutism and to the ‘Enlightenment’ that was indeed enlightening in some respects while being very misleading in its rejection of non-materialist / non-scientific knowledge and experience. I think that Heathenry, and Paganism / Polytheism / Animism generally, take a more open and flexible view of how the world works while still acknowledging the power and influence of the Deities and other Powers such as the Norns. And lesser Powers, too, such as the beings who bring luck and unluck.
I’m guessing that if you were taking a walk with an ancient Heathen and he stumbled and stubbed his toe, and you asked him ‘did the Norns make you stumble just now?’ he would look at you rather blankly. (Though he might easily say that his Fylgja or Hamingja, or someone else’s Fylgja or Hugr, or an ‘onflyer’ or a wight or a hag or other unluck-causing being made him stumble…but I don’t believe he would blame the Norns.) He might well agree that the Norns ‘shaped’ him to be a rather clumsy person who frequently stumbles, but that they reached out just now to make him stumble, or that they predestined him to stumble at that very minute in that exact place–I think this ancient Heathen would find that idea very unlikely. Unless, of course, that stumble led to some significant outcome: he dropped his weapon just at the moment that a lurker leaped out to attack and badly injure him, or the arrow that was shot at him out of hiding passed harmlessly over him as he was bent over his stubbed toe, or whatever. That, obviously, could show the Norns’ involvement.
But not every action or event of every minute of one’s life is so significant, and it’s the significance, not the event itself, that tells a Heathen that the Norns are involved. At least as I understand it. I would really emphasize this point: ‘significance’ is the cue, the significator, of the Norns’ involvement in our lives: not an ‘event’ per se, but a significant event. And that significance can be internal, personal, idiosyncratic, known only to ourselves, or it can be something externally obvious to others as well as to ourselves.
I would add that the more aware we are of the Norns and their influence in our lives, the more clearly we see significance in the events and actions of our lives. Eventually we might reach a sort of mystical state where we perceive almost everything as significant, and at that point, the deterministic conception of the Norns might make a lot of sense based on this experience.
But I’d add a caveat: in this scenario, it seems to me that the ‘significance’ we’re detecting is due to our perception of the Norns’ involvement in the details of our life: we feel that the Norns’ attention to us is the significant thing, not the minor and otherwise meaningless event itself.
In this ‘mystical’ scenario, is every meaningless event (such as dropping the toothbrush as we start to put toothpaste on it, or for that matter, not dropping the toothbrush) something that really was programmed by the Norns from the moment we were born? Or was the real programming by the Norns our own state of mind that pursues this sense of significance through the details of our lives and thus perceives our connection with the Norns?
In this state of mind, the nature of each little event doesn’t matter, to us or to the Norns; it only matters because of the interpretation and significance we place on it as evidence of the Norns’ attention to us and what that means for us. In a case like this, the Norns might have ‘shaped’ us generally as a person who perceives such significance in daily events and connects it with the Norns, rather than deliberately causing every tiny event and action of our lives. Of course, one could argue that they’ve done both together.
Well, clearly I incline toward the ‘shaping and conditioning’ theory of the Norns’ actions, as opposed to the ‘hard determinism’ theory, and none of this can be proven or disproven. But that matters less to Heathen pragmatism than what we do with our beliefs. One can form a satisfactory philosophy of life based on either belief—full determinism, or looser ‘influence,’ I would think.