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Fate was woven—this was not metaphor but description of actual process. Three entities called the Norns sat at the base of the World Tree (or, in Germanic rather than later Norse elaboration, at sacred wells or beneath significant trees), spinning the threads of individual and cosmic destiny. These were not goddesses in the sense of beings who could be bargained with or appeased. They were forces, impersonal as gravity, inexorable as winter.
The Norns—Urd (that which has become), Verdandi (that which is becoming), Skuld (that which shall become)—represented the complete temporal structure. Past fed into present, present wove into future, all three aspects forming continuous thread that was each individual life, each tribal history, each cosmic cycle. The threads, once spun, could not be unspun. The pattern, once established, could not be rewoven.
Each person had their wyrd—the particular shape their life would take, the events that must occur, the doom (in the old sense: judgment, fate, final outcome) that awaited them. This was determined at birth or perhaps before it, established through mechanisms humans could not perceive or influence. A person born to die young would die young. A warrior destined for fame would achieve it. One marked for betrayal would be betrayed. The specifics might vary, but the essential pattern was fixed.
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