Norns
At the base of the world tree Yggdrasil, where time is a river and fate is a thread, dwell the Norns—three ancient weavers who shape the destiny of gods and mortals alike. Their names are Urd (What Was), Verdandi (What Is), and Skuld (What Shall Be), and together they spin, measure, and cut the lifelines of every being. They are not to be bargained with. Even Odin, who gave his eye for wisdom, cannot change the patterns they weave. The Norns are not cruel, but neither are they kind. They are necessity made flesh, the heartbeat beneath all things.
Unlike many deities in Norse mythology, the Norns do not demand worship. They do not answer prayers. They simply are. Every soul has its thread, every thread a length, every length an end. At the Well of Urd, the three sit with their spindle and loom, carving runes and whispering truths. They tend the tree Yggdrasil itself, watering its roots and healing its bark with sacred waters and white mud. Without them, even the cosmos would fray. The Norns do not speak of fate as punishment or reward. They speak it as fact. To live is to be woven. To die is to be cut.
Visual Description:
The Norns are often depicted together but distinct. Urd is the eldest, with silver hair wrapped in a crown of ice and eyes deep as forgotten memories. She wears robes of dark blue and black, her hands always busy spinning the beginning of the thread. Verdandi, younger and radiant, wears green and gold and carries the weight of the present with focused intensity. Skuld, the youngest and most shadowed, is draped in twilight-colored silks, her shears ever at the ready and her face half-hidden behind a veil.
Together they sit around an enormous loom beneath the roots of Yggdrasil, with strands of glowing thread winding through their fingers and across the bark of the tree. Their presence is ethereal, slightly removed from the world, as though they exist on the very edge of time itself. Around them swirl symbols of life—birth, joy, sorrow, war—and the silence of inevitability. They are the shapers of all stories. The quiet truth beneath the noise.