Chapters 44-95 - Germanic Mythology

thereafter the latter stumbles and falls pierced by his own sword. That the invisible
hamingja could cause one to stumble and fall is shown in Fornmannasögur, III. 25
The giptur seem to have carried out such of Urd's resolves, on account of which
the favorite received an unexpected, as it were accidental, good fortune.
Not only for separate individuals, but also for families and clans, there were
guardian spirits (kynfylgjur, ættarfylgjur). 26
Another division of this class of maid-servants under Urd are those who attend the
entrance of the child into the world, and who have to weave the threads of the new-born
babe into the web of the families and events. Like Urd and her sisters, they too are called
norns. If it is a child who is to be a great and famous man, Urd herself and her sisters may
be present for the above purpose (see No. 30 in regard to Halfdan's birth).
A few strophes incorporated in Fáfnissmál from a heathen didactic poem, now
lost (Fáfnismál 12-13), speak of norns whose task it is to determine and assist the arrival
of the child into this world - nornir, er nauðgönglar eru, og kjósa mæður frá mögum. The
expression kjósa mæður frá mögum, "to choose mothers from descendants," seems
obscure, and in any case cannot mean simply "to deliver mothers of children." The word
kjósa is never used in any other sense than to choose, elect, select. Here then it must
mean to choose, elect as mothers; and the expression "from descendants" is
incomprehensible, if we do not on the one hand conceive a crowd of eventual
descendants, who at the threshold of life are waiting for mothers in order to become born
into this world, and on the other hand women who are to be mothers, but in reference to
whom it has not yet been determined which descendant each one is to call hers among the
great waiting crowd, until those norns which we are here discussing resolve on that point,
and from the indefinite crowd of waiting megir (descendants) choose mothers for those
children which are especially destined for them.
These norns are, according to Fáfnismál 13, of different birth. Some are Asakinswomen,
others of elf-race, and again others are daughters of Dvalin. In regard to the
last-named it should be remembered that Dvalin, their father, through artists of his circle,
decorated the citadel, within which a future generation of men await the regeneration of
the world, and that the mythology has associated him intimately with the elf of the
morning dawn, Delling, who guards the citadel of the race of regeneration against all that
is evil and all that ought not to enter (see No. 53). There are reasons (see No. 95) for
assuming that these dises of birth were Hoenir's maid-servants at the same time as they
were Urd's, just as the valkyries are Urd's and Odin's maid-servants at the same time (see
below).
To the other class of Urd's maid-servants belong those lower-world beings which
execute her resolves of death, and conduct the souls of the dead to the lower world.
Foremost among the psychopomps, the conductors of the dead, we note that group
of shield-maids called valkyries. As Odin and Freyja got the right of choosing on the
battlefield, the valkyries have received Asgard as their abode. There they bring the meadhorns
to the Aesir and einherjes, when they do not ride on Valfather's errands (Völuspá
25 Without a page number this reference remains elusive. The Fornmanna Sagas is a 12 volume set
published in 1823, containing several of the Sagas of Norse and Danish Kings. It contained large parts of
Snorri's Heimskringla, as well as Knytlinga Saga, more commonly known as Ævi Danakonunga or Sögur
Danakonunga, a collection of histories of Danish Kings, ca. 900-1200. Volume 3 contains Ólafs konúngs
Tyggvasson, chs. 256-286, Saga skálda Haralds konúngs hárfagra and several short Þáttr.
26 kynfylgjur, Volsunga Saga, ch. 4 and elsewhere; ættarfylgjur, Þórðar Saga herðu, ch. 7