The Norns

~Citrine~
The Norns in Norse mythology are female beings who rule the destiny of gods and men. They roughly correspond to other controllers of humans' destiny, the Fates, elsewhere in European mythology.

Urðr (Wyrd), Verðandi and Skuld, the three most important of the Norns, come out from a hall standing at the Well of Urðr or Well of Fate. They draw water from the well and take sand that lies around it, which they pour over Yggdrasill so that its branches will not rot.

Beside these three famous Norns, there are many others who appear at a person's birth in order to determine his or her future. In the pre-Christian Norse societies, Norns were thought to have visited newborn children. There were both malevolent and benevolent Norns: the former caused all the malevolent and tragic events in the world while the latter were kind and protective goddesses

The origin of the name norn is uncertain, it may derive from a word meaning "to twine" and which would refer to their twining the thread of fate.
Bek-Pedersen suggests that the word norn has relation to the Swedish dialect word norna (nyrna), a verb that means "secretly communicate".
This relates to the perception of norns as shadowy, background figures who only really ever reveal their fateful secrets to men as their fates come to pass.

The name Urðr (Old English Wyrd, Weird) means "fate".
 Both Urðr and Verðandi are derived from the Old Norse verb verða, "to be".
While Urðr derives from the past tense ("that which became or happened"), Verðandi derives from the present tense of verða ("that which is happening").
Skuld is derived from the Old Norse verb skulla, "need/ought to be/shall be"; its meaning is "that which should become, or that needs to occur"

There are a number of surviving Old Norse sources that relate to the norns. The most important sources are the Prose Edda and the Poetic Edda

Theories have been proposed that there is no foundation in Norse mythology for the notion that the three main norns should each be associated exclusively with the past, the present, and the future; rather, all three represent destiny as it is twined with the flow of time
Moreoever, theories have been proposed that the idea that there are three main norns may be due to a late influence from Greek and Roman mythology, where there are also spinning fate goddesses, Moirai and Parcae.

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