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Sons and Daughters of Odin, the Sigurtharkvitha En Skamma has been posted!

Adventure into the Short Lay of Sigurth below:

http://goldisblood.tumblr.com/SigurtharkvithaEnSkamma

Or begin your saga into the Poetic Edda below:

http://goldisblood.tumblr.com/PoeticEdda

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The Concept of Fate in the Poetic Edda

Note on the text: I used Lee M Hollander’s translation of The Poetic Edda as published by the University of Texas Press in 1990.

Why are we here? Why am I here? These are questions which have been asked for generations. They are questions having to do with one of the most difficult and elusive subjects of all: fate. The word “fate” is, in a sense, the abbreviated version of those questions because the term “fate” is often linked with, if not synonymous to, the word “purpose”: Why am I here? What am I supposed to be doing? Every time someone asks such questions, or when someone talks about something having “meant to be” or about “having a soulmate” or being “made for one another” they are invoking this idea of fate. Of purpose. The concept of fate is very important in Viking mythology, as the poems The Prophecy of the Seeress and The Lay of Fafnir, both of which form a part of the Poetic Edda, show.

Anyone can tell you that a being who has purpose is different than one that is purposeless even if they are the same being. The difference between having a purpose and not having one is immense, and the transformation that occurs when gains or looses that purpose can be life-changing. In one scenario, the being is able to live in the fullest sense of the word, whereas in the other all the being can do is subsist- the creature may be alive but he does not really have a life. A life without purpose is no life at all.

The two beings who will become the first man and woman exist prior to the arrival of the gods, but they are not really human. It is not until after they have been, in effect, re-made that they are given the gift of being human:

From the Coast there came, kind and mighty from the gathered gods, three Asir, on the land they found, of little strength, [Ash] and [Vine], unfated yet. Sense they possessed not, soul they had not, [not] being nor bearing, nor blossoming hue; soul gave Odin, sense gave Holnir and being [gave] Lothur and blooming hue (Prophecy. 17-18).

Although Ash and Vine had existed before the arrival of the three gods, they had no awareness of either themselves or the world around them, which meant that they had no purpose.They are “unfated”. A soul gives them spiritual awareness, sense gives them physical awareness, and being gives them the ability to have and use both. It is only after humans attain awareness that the poet talks about the three Sisters of Fate who live with the Great World Tree, Yggdrasil, which connects Heaven, Earth and the Netherworld together. The three Sisters give purpose to the beings in the all the realms. But humans could not have that purpose, or fate, until they had achieved a level of awareness, which is why the Sisters appear when they do.

The theme of fate is further explored in the poem The Lay of Fafnir when Sigurth asks the dying Fafnir about how the Fates could be concerned with the fate, or purpose, of the Cosmos as a whole as well as the fate of the individual: “Say Fafnir, for sage thou art and much learned in lore, which [of the Fates] are [here] when need there is to help mothers give birth to their babes?” (Fafnir. 12). What he is asking is how can the Fates be interested in determining what happens between him and Fafnir, while also determining the fate of all the newborns? How can the purpose of a child be determined separately from the fate of society as a whole? How can the fate of the individual measure up against the fate of the whole society? Or, to go back to quote, how can the Fates determine both what happens on a more cosmic scale (what is happening between Fafnir and Sigurth and everything related to Fafnir’s gold) and what the fate of a small child is. Sigurth does not understand how everyone’s purpose, or fate, is different then, and yet related to, each other. Fafnir’s response, which is that the fate of individuals is determined by other types of Fates and that the big three only deal with more cosmic events, does not really answer Sigurth’s core question: why do I matter? Why, when compared to purpose of the universe as a whole, does my purpose as an individual matter? Fafnir cannot answer that question because he does not know the answer. All that he and Sigurth know for sure is that every being on the planet must have a purpose otherwise they are not beings at all. They are Ash and Vine before the arrival of the gods.

This concept of fate answers a lot of questions which Christians in particular have been asking for centuries. According to this definition of fate, fate is not a path that everyone must tread willingly or unwillingly. It is not something that is being imposed on people, something which must be obeyed and cannot not be obeyed. Fate as purpose is something different. It means that everyone has been made with special, innate gifts. That they were created in a specific kind of way, for the purpose of fulfilling some object. It is something that works within the being in question, in his or her own soul, they are internally pushed to act in certain ways. But they do not have to. Purpose is something that really exists within that individual, but can only be actualized through the individual himself. There is no real external force that is pushing the individual inevitably down a particular path. That is why awareness was so important to the Vikings. Because it is up to the individual to both realize their potential and actualize it. They knew that God will not do it for you. That is the difference between the idea of fate as a predetermined path that must be walked willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or unknowingly, and fate as purpose where it is up to the individual to decide how he or she actualizes, or does not actualize, their God-given potential.

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