Winifred Hodge Rose
“These maids shape people’s aldrs (skapa mönnum aldr); we call them Norns.” (Gylfaginning in the prose Edda)
“In one day was my aldr shaped, and all my life laid down” (Skirnismal vs. 13, Poetic Edda).
“Helgi the Hugr-strong was born to Borghild in Bralund. Night fell on the settlement, then Norns came—those who shaped aldr for the young ætheling.” (Helgi Hundingsbani I, Poetic Edda, vs. 1-2.)
“Urð one is called, Verðandi another – scoring on slips of wood – Skuld the third. There they lay layers, there choose life for alda-children, speak orlog.” (Völuspá vs. 20, Poetic Edda)
(All are my translations.)
Aldr: Lifespan and Life-Soul
Orlog, wyrd, fate, destiny, life: these are shaped by the Norns according to the elder lore. But what is it, exactly, that they use as the primal material for these shapings? When one shapes, one shapes something into something else, one shapes some thing or some circumstance into a different form that is deliberately designed. We are told in Gylfaginning of the prose Edda that the Norns “shape men’s / humans’ aldrs” (skapa mönnum aldr) (15:32 ). In the lines about the creation of humans from trees or logs, the Norns “choose life for the children of aldr” (Völuspá vs. 20). What is aldr, and why do the Norns choose it for shaping mortal lives?
Aldr and its variants is a word in the old Germanic languages that pertains to one’s age, span of life, and to the life-force or life-soul that supports us during that lifespan. It also is used in descriptions of death, the end of the lifespan. The usage of this word in various Germanic languages is closely related to the usage of orlog and can offer further understanding toward the meaning and significance of orlog; in this article we’ll pursue that understanding.
Aldr in Old Norse (ON) means ‘age,’ both a person’s age and an age of time, and lifetime or lifespan. Aldar in Old Saxon (OS) also means age and lifespan, as does Anglo-Saxon (A-S) ealdor. Both ON aldr-lag and A-S ealdor-legu mean ‘destiny, death’: the Aldr life-span and life-force is what the Aldr ‘lays’ or ‘sets down’ 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, and the like, on the other hand. Both can 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 laid down, given up to death, and one’s lifespan comes to an end. In these words, aldrlag / ealdorlegu, we can see the meaning of ‘layers, laying down,’ referring back to the actions of the Norns who lay layers of orlog in the Well, and plaster layers of mud upon the World-Tree to nourish and sustain it.
The word aldr comes from the Proto-Indo-European root *al, ‘to nourish,’ related to alan, with the same meaning, a word found in Gothic, Anglo-Saxon and other Germanic languages. It also means ‘to grow.’ *Al is the root for words relating to ‘age’ in the various Germanic languages, including English ‘old’ and ‘elder.’ The connection between nourishment, growth, and the ability to reach old age is clear, especially when we think about the circumstances all through the millennia of human existence, when the availability of food, or lack of it, determined a person’s health and longevity.
Nourishment is very much a ‘layering’ activity: day by day the food we eat feeds our body, building its layers of bone, muscle, tissues, organs, and supporting all the activities of our lives—very much like the Norns nourishing the World-Tree by patting layers of white clay on it every day. Our bodies are literally formed from the food and drink we consume. If such nourishment is not forthcoming, the body wastes away and ‘meets its fate,’ the consequence of deprivation, at the time of ealdor-legu, of laying down and letting go of the ealdor life-soul and the body it supports. This time when death arrives, the ‘fateful hour’ is also known as orlag-hwile, orlog-while, in Old Saxon and Anglo-Saxon.
The Anglo-Saxon language offers some useful words for understanding more about the nature of Aldr / Ealdor: there is a word for the physical body, ealdorgeard, which means ‘yard or enclosure of the ealdor.’ One of the words for ‘murderer’ or ‘killer’ in A-S is ealdorbana or ealdor-bane. These words give us a picture of the physical body as an enclosure which contains and protects the ealdor, the life-force. Someone who breaks in and destroys this body-enclosure is the bane or murderer of the ealdor, allowing the life-force to spill out of its protected boundary and be lost, and thus bringing about ealdor-legu.
Beowulf’s companions fled in terror from the dragon in order to protect their ealdors (ealdre burgon, line 2599). During his fight with Grendel, Beowulf sought to rob Grendel of his aldr (alder beneotan, l. 680). There is a parallel expression in the Reginsmal poem of the Poetic Edda, where the sons of Hunding are described as Eylimi’s “aldr-snatchers” (aldrs synjuðu, l. 15), that is, his killers. The relatively physical nature of the aldr life-soul shows up in a dramatic scene in Beowulf, where a Geatish spearman threw his spear at a sea-serpent and the spear actually “stood in the aldr” of the sea-serpent (him on alder stod, ll. 1433-5). This physicality of aldr links it with the phenomena of nourishment, body, and death of the body that comes about at the fated time, orlag-hwile, the time of orlog and ealdor-legu / aldr-lag.
Examples of Anglo-Saxon Ealdor Words relating to orlog and the work of the Norns.
Ealdor-leg, aldor-leg, -læg: Life-law, fate, death; æfter ealdorlege: after death. Also Old Saxon aldar-lagu, used in the same context as orlag, orlegi.
Ealdor-gesceaft: ‘Condition of life, state of life.’ Ealdor-gesceaft literally means ‘ealdor-shaping, ealdor-creation.’ I interpret it as the lifespan and its events, shaped for us by the Norns as they skapa mönnum aldr, shape people’s lives.
Ealdor-ner, aldor-ner: ealdor-refuge, saving one’s life, granting asylum.
Ealdor-gedal, aldor-gedal: separation from life, the time of death. Gedal means ‘what is dealt out, apportioned, or separated from.’
Our Aldr life-force or life-soul nourishes us on both physical and spiritual levels. It is shaped and given to us by the Norns at our conception, and in turn it takes the orlog given to us by the Norns and uses it to shape and measure out the events of our lives and establish their timing. Our processes of growth, maturation, and decline, our life-experiences, the timing of life-events, and our ability to perceive our own lifetime as a whole, a meaningful phenomenon that is ours alone: all of these are gathered by our Aldr-soul and formed into our own personal world or ‘werold.’
World and Werold
Our word ‘world’ comes from the Anglo-Saxon wer-old, meaning ‘man-age’. The same word was used in Old Saxon, and Old Norse had an equivalent word, probably borrowed from Anglo-Saxon: ver-aldr. These words derive from aldr, ealdor, as discussed in the previous section. Werold was used in a very personal way in these old languages. To us, the world is ‘everything out there’, but to elder Heathens each person had a world, their own world. The Old Saxon Heliand, a retelling of the Gospels in a very Germanic format and language, offers many examples of this personal use of werold. The poet said that John the Baptist “would never taste wine ‘in his weroldi’”(l. 252). Mary said that she had “never in my weroldi’” been with a man (l. 541-2). An old widow was “four and eighty winters in her weroldi’”(l. 1024).
A more modern example of this ancient usage appears in the novels of the Anglo-Saxon scholar J.R.R. Tolkien. He wrote of King Aragorn telling his wife Arwen, when his death was approaching, that “my world is fading.” (The Return of the King, App. A(v), “The Tale of Aragorn and Arwen.”) Even though Aragorn’s health, strength, and kingly honors were still with him, he could tell it was time for him to go (the choice was his) because he perceived his Werold fading.
When the aged Beowulf set out to face the dragon, he was facing his worulde-gedæl, the end of his life in this world(l. 3068). Gedæl, on the one hand, means dealing out something, including dealing out one’s portion of life. On the other hand, it means separation, cutting off. The word gedæl or gedal was often used poetically as a synonym for death-orlog, the timing and nature of one’s death, the separation from life and the body and the blow of fate that is dealt by Wyrd or the Norns. Gedæl, in this sense, is like our modern English ‘to deal’; it refers to the wyrd that is dealt out to a person and brings about the moment of death, the end of their world. In parallel phrasing, the poet speaks of the monster Grendel’s death as his aldor-gedal (l. 805), showing the similarity between werold and Aldr: both are subject to the fate dealt out by Wyrd.
It is clear, when reading how werold / man-age was used in context, that it referred to the space-time each person occupies and shapes during their lifetime. Their world was measured in years and characterized by the events, deeds and experiences that shaped their lives. Another way to understand this is to recognize Aldr as a soul or aspect of ourselves which can see and grasp our life as a whole, our past, present, and possible futures in this world of Midgard: a soul which gives meaning and power to this lifespan, this Werold.
In my view, it is this Aldr—this metaphysical soul-being or power which controls our lifespan and weaves our personal Werold—that provides the substance for the Norns’ shaping. I believe, also, that it provides the locus for our sense of time and our subjective experience of it, a topic I explore further in my article on “Time and the Time-Body.”
In closing, I’d like to share a little of my personal experience and sense of my Aldr soul and its life-activity. Ever since early childhood I’ve had the eerie and beautiful experience, when the wind blows past me, of perceiving the wind and the dust it carries as Time itself—Time, and traces of history laid in that dust. I seem to ‘smell’ or inhale them in some indescribable way—traces of memory, of Being and meaning, the history of people, of landscapes, of soil and stone, of ecosystems and the beings that inhabit them. I’ve traveled in many beautiful places around the world, during childhood and adulthood, and in each place I walked I picked up traces of something deep—a sense of the character and the deep history of the land, which I now believe were subconscious connections with the various landwights and ancestral spirits, the spirits and energies inhabiting the lands. I could not explain or demonstrate these experiences in any way, but they are and always have been deeply meaningful to me.
I believe now, after many years of Heathen spiritual practice, that this awareness arises within me from my Aldr soul, shaped for me by the Norns / Wyrd as the soul who understands Time and my attunement to life-in-Time. Traces of time and history are always blowing past us on subtle winds, everywhere we go. Even when we are not consciously aware of this, our Aldr soul knows, and feels itself linked to other beings, Time, and World, within this sacred space of Midgard.
Note: This article is included in my book Orlog Yesterday and Today: The Shapings of the Norns. The article here is based, in part, on another of my articles: “Aldr and Orlay: Weaving a World,” which discusses the Aldr soul in more depth.
Book-Hoard
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