![]() One of the phrases used to describe this difficult term is “that which happens”.Ī Concise Anglo-Saxon Dictionary, compiled by J.R. In other words, Wyrd is not an end-point, but something continually happening around us at all times. “A happening, event, or occurrence”, found deeper in the Oxford English Dictionary listing is closer to the way our Anglo-Saxon and Norse forbears considered this term. Wyrd is Fate or Destiny, but not the “inexorable fate” of the ancient Greeks. The original Wyrd Sisters were of course, the three Norns, the Norse Goddesses of destiny. Wyrd is the ancestor of the more modern weird, which before it meant odd or unusual in the pejorative sense carried connotations of the supernatural, as in Shakespeare’s weird sisters, the trio of witches in MacBeth. It is related to the Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt, Old Norse urür. Wyrd is an Old English noun, a feminine one, from the verb weorthan “to become”. If you can accept this, you have gone a long way in understanding the concept of active Fate known to the Anglo-Saxons as Wyrd.
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