belief, in circumstances where its presence is unlikely to be due to Classical
influence.
In Nordic mythology the relevant figures are the Norns (Nornir), a name of
unclear etymology. Like the Moirai, they give both good and ill.^20 They attend
the birth of children and shape their lives. When Helgi the slayer of Hunding
was born in Brálund,
Night fell on the homestead, the Norns came,
they who shaped his life for the lord;
they ruled the prince should be most famous,
and that he’d be held the best of warriors.
They twisted strongly the strands of fate
as castles crashed in Brálund;
they separated the golden threads
and fastened them in the moon’s mid hall [the sky].
East and west they concealed the ends ––
there the prince had the land in between;
Neri’s kinswoman cast to the north
one fastening, bade it hold for aye.^21The power of fate is especially manifest on the battlefield, where some fall
prey to death and others survive. In Homeric language the Moira of Death is
said to come and stand by the warrior as he falls. The poet of the pseudo-
Hesiodic Shield of Heracles (248–57) more graphically describes the ΚHρε,
personifications of fated death, as horrible female figures present on the field
and struggling to seize men as they fought, and then he or an interpolator has
thrown in the names that belong to the Moirai, Klotho, Lachesis, and Atropos.
In Norse mythology it is properly the Valkyries who have the task of choosing
which warriors are to die and go to Valhalla. But the distinction between
Norns and Valkyries becomes blurred, so that the Valkyries too can be por-
trayed as spinning men’s destinies.^22
The Norns also appear as three goddesses of fate who sit by the well of Urð
at the foot of the cosmic tree Yggdrasil (Vo ̨luspá 20, Gylf. 15 f.). Urð cor-
responds to a word for fate found also in other Germanic languages. Old
Saxon wurth is a gloss on fatum, and in the Hêliand is used for a person’s
(^20) Cf the runic inscription from Borgund (Sogn, Norway) quoted by de Vries (1956), i. 271,
‘die Nornen bestimmen das Gute und das Böse, mir haben sie großes Leid bestimmt’.
(^21) Helgakviða Hundingsbana A 2–4. On the Norns see Grimm (1883–8), 405–17; de Vries
(1956), i. 270–3. On Germanic words for fate see D. H. Green (1998), 382–9. Another is repre-
sented by Old English meotod, Old Saxon metud, Norse mio ̨tuðr, from the root *med‘measure,
allot’; cf. Chantraine (1968–80), 675b; Meid (1991), 14.
(^22) Vo ̨lundarkviða 1. On the Valkyries cf. de Vries (1956), i. 273 f.; Davidson (1988), 92–100.
382 10. Mortality and Fame