"The norns were supernatural female entities responsible for the fates of all living beings in Viking Age Scandinavia. Associated with Yggdrasil, the world tree and central element of the nine realms of Norse cosmology, the norns are not active agents in the stories of Odin, Thor, and Loki. Instead, they linger in the shadowy background of the Viking Age imagination as implacable manifestations of what was, what is, and what is inevitably yet to come."
"In the mindset of the Norse, the future was preordained and unchangeable. While Viking Age Scandinavians believed in free will, they understood individual choices as steps taken toward a pre-existing and inescapable result. Any individual's fate was not in the hands of the norns. In fact, the Old Norse phrase norna domr ("decision of the norns") was synonymous with misfortune, a common theme in Old Norse literature."
"Even the gods themselves were bound to predetermined destinies, yet still made a number of ultimately futile attempts to subvert or avoid them. Frigg tries to save her son Baldr from his fated death by securing promises from all things in the world not to harm him, only to be thwarted by the one thing in the cosmos she overlooked."
Norns are supernatural female entities that determine the fates of all living beings in Viking Age Scandinavia. They are associated with Yggdrasil, the world tree that connects the nine realms of Norse cosmology. Norns do not act as active agents in myths of Odin, Thor, and Loki and instead exist as implacable embodiments of past, present, and inevitable future. Norse belief held the future as preordained and unchangeable while viewing individual choices as steps toward predetermined outcomes. The Old Norse phrase norna domr ("decision of the norns") signified misfortune. Even gods attempted to subvert destiny but remained subject to fate.
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