- published: 02 Apr 2015
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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, which retains its original meaning only dialectically.
The cognate term in Old Norse is urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personalized as one of the Norns, Urðr (anglicized as Urd) and appearing in the name of the holy well Urðarbrunnr in Norse mythology. The concept corresponding to "fate, doom, fortunes" in Old Norse is Ørlǫg.
The Old English term wyrd derives from a Common Germanic term *wurđíz. Wyrd has cognates in Old Saxon wurd, Old High German wurt, Old Norse urðr, Dutch worden (to become) and German werden. The Proto-Indo-European root is *wert- "to turn, rotate", in Common Germanic *wirþ- with a meaning "to come to pass, to become, to be due" (also in weorþ, the notion of "worth" both in the sense of "price, value, amount due" and "honour, dignity, due esteem").
Old English wyrd is a verbal noun formed from the verb weorþan, meaning "to come to pass, to become". The term developed into the modern English adjective weird. Adjectival use develops in the 15th century, in the sense "having the power to control fate", originally in the name of the Weird Sisters, i.e. the classical Fates, in the Elizabethan period detached from their classical background as fays, and most notably appearing as the Three Witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. From the 14th century, to weird was also used as a verb in Scots, in the sense of "to preordain by decree of fate".
The sun sets below the foam of the ocean
And the shore is fast asleep
I stood on the mountain and sang
When my verses hit the water they were already dead
I know where the sun sleeps at night
Down in the lonely sea
I know where the sun hides at night
Up a tall spruce-tree
The song vanished behind the pine-trees
And the dusk cried it away
Below the depths of the ever storming sea
My song of something that will never return
I know where the sun sleeps at night
Down in the lonely sea
I know where the sun hides at night
Up a tall spruce-tree
Struck by your words like stones
The grief comes like winters cold, cutting breath
I want to turn the sun and the moon from their paths
And press the countless stars in my fist
I shall curse this world
Turn back the sun
Turn back the moon
I shall curse this world
Turn back the day
Turn back the night
And when I have trampled it all underfoot
Smiling I'll turn my back on life
I know where I'll sleep tonight
Down in the lonely sea
And when the dawn has blown upon it's fire