Wyrd
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Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
The cognate term to wyrd in Old Norse is Script error: No such module "Lang"., with a similar meaning, but also personified as a deity: Urðr (anglicized as Script error: No such module "lang".), one of the Norns in Norse mythology. The word also appears in the name of the well where the Norns meet, Urðarbrunnr.
Etymology
The Old English term Script error: No such module "Lang". derives from a Proto-Germanic term Script error: No such module "Lang"..[1] Wyrd has cognates in Old Saxon Script error: No such module "Lang".,[2] Old High German Script error: No such module "Lang".,[2] Old Norse Script error: No such module "Lang".,[3] Dutch Script error: No such module "Lang". (to become),[4] and German Script error: No such module "Lang"..[2] The Proto-Indo-European root is Script error: No such module "Lang". meaning 'to twist', which is related to Latin vertere 'turning, rotating',[5] and in Proto-Germanic is Script error: No such module "Lang". with a meaning 'to come to pass, to become, to be due'.[4] The same root is also found in Script error: No such module "Lang"., with the notion of 'origin' or 'worth' both in the sense of 'connotation, price, value' and 'affiliation, identity, esteem, honour and dignity'.Script error: No such module "Unsubst".
Script error: No such module "Lang". is a noun formed from the Old English verb Template:Wikt-lang, meaning 'to come to pass, to become'.[2] Adjectival use of wyrd developed in the 15th century, in the sense 'having the power to control destiny', originally in the name of the Weird Sisters (i.e. the classical Fates), who in the Elizabethan period became detached from their classical background and given an English personification as fays.
The weird sisters notably appear as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth.[6] To elucidate this, many editors of the play include a footnote associating the "Weird Sisters" with the Old English word Script error: No such module "Lang". or 'fate'.[7]
The modern English usage actually developed from Scots, in which beginning in the 14th century, to weird was used as a verb with the sense of 'to preordain by decree of fate'.Script error: No such module "Unsubst". This use then gave rise to the early nineteenth century adjective meaning 'unearthly', which then developed into modern English weird.
The modern spelling weird first appeared in Scottish and Northern English dialects in the 16th century and was taken up in standard literary English starting in the 17th century. The regular form ought to have been wird, from Early Modern English werd. The replacement of werd by weird in the northern dialects is "difficult to account for".[8]
The most common modern meaning of weirdTemplate:Snd'odd, strange'Template:Sndis first attested in 1815, originally with a connotation of the supernatural or portentous (especially in the collocation weird and wonderful), but by the early 20th century increasingly applied to everyday situations.[9]
Fate in Germanic mythology
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According to J. Duncan Spaeth, "Wyrd (Norse Urd, one of the three Norns) is the Old English goddess of Fate, whom even Christianity could not entirely displace."[10]
Script error: No such module "Lang". is a feminine noun,[11] and its Norse cognate Script error: No such module "Lang"., besides meaning 'fate', is the name of one of the deities known as Norns. For this reason, Script error: No such module "Lang". has been interpreted by some scholars as a pre-Christian goddess of fate. Other scholars deny a pagan signification of Script error: No such module "Lang". in the Old English period, but allow that Script error: No such module "Lang". may have been a deity in the pre-Christian period.[12] In particular, some scholars argue that the three Norns are a late influence from the three Moirai in Greek and Roman mythology, who are goddesses of fate.[13]
The names of the Norns are Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld. Script error: No such module "Lang". means 'that which has come to pass', Script error: No such module "Lang". means "that which is in the process of happening" (it is the present participle of the verb cognate to Script error: No such module "Lang".), and Script error: No such module "Lang". means 'debt' or 'guilt' (from a Germanic root Script error: No such module "Lang". 'to owe', also found in English should and shall).
Between themselves, the Norns weave fate or Script error: No such module "Lang". (from Script error: No such module "Lang". 'out, from, beyond' and Script error: No such module "Lang". 'law', and may be interpreted literally as 'beyond law'). According to Voluspa 20, the three Norns "set up the laws", "decided on the lives of the children of time" and "promulgate their Script error: No such module "Lang".". Frigg, on the other hand, while she "knows all ørlǫg", "says it not herself" (Lokasenna 30). Lawless that is "Script error: No such module "Lang"." occurs in Voluspa 17 in reference to driftwood, that is given breath, warmth and spirit by three gods, to create the first humans, Ask and Embla ('Ash' and possibly 'Elm' or 'Vine').
Mentions of Script error: No such module "Lang". in Old English literature include The Wanderer, "Script error: No such module "Lang"." ('Fate remains wholly inexorable') and Beowulf, "Script error: No such module "Lang"." ('Fate goes ever as she shall!'). In The Wanderer, Script error: No such module "Lang". is irrepressible and relentless. She or it "snatches the earls away from the joys of life," and "the wearied mind of man cannot withstand her" for her decrees "change all the world beneath the heavens".[14]
Other uses
The Wyrd Mons, a mountain on Venus, is named after an "Anglo-Saxon weaving goddess".[15] Frank Herbert used the word "weird" in his science-fiction novel Dune to connote power, e.g. a martial art is referred to as "the Weirding Way", which takes place at the speed of thought. This was modified by director David Lynch, in his 1984 film version of the book, to become a system of sonic weapons called "weirding modules."[16]
See also
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References
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- ↑ Karsten, Gustaf E. Michelle Kindler Philology, University of Illinois Press, 1908, p. 12.
- ↑ a b c d Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ a b Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Karsten, Gustaf E. Germanic Philology, University of Illinois Press, 1908, p. 12.
- ↑ de Grazia, Margareta and Stallybrass, Peter. The Materiality of the Shakespearean Text, George Washington University, 1993, p. 263.
- ↑ OED. cf. phonological history of Scots.
- ↑ OED; cf. Barnhart, Robert K. The Barnhart Concise Dictionary of Etymology. HarperCollins Template:ISBN (1995:876).
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ "WYRD, Gender: Feminine", Bosworth-Toller Anglo-Saxon Dictionary
- ↑ Frakes, Jerold C. The Ancient Concept of casus and its Early Medieval Interpretations, Brill, 1984, p. 15.
- ↑ Nordisk familjebok (1907)
- ↑ Ferrell, C. C. Old Germanic Life in the Anglo-Saxon, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1894, pp. 402-403.
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
- ↑ Script error: No such module "citation/CS1".
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- Bertha S. Philpotts, 'Wyrd and Providence in Anglo-Saxon Thought', Essays and Studies 13 (1928), 7-27.
Template:Anglo-SaxonPaganism Template:Norse mythology Template:Time in religion and mythology