Norns
;)
or Nornir, were the Germanic fates, the goddesses of destiny. The original Norn was undoubtedly Urd ('Fate'). The Well of Urd, which was situated under one of the roots of the great cosmic tree Yggdrasil, was the site where the gods held their daily assembly. The two other Norns known by name are Verdandi ('Present') and Skuld ('Future'). It was believed that the Norns decided the destinies of gods, giants and dwarfs, as well as of humankind. The Anglo-Saxons called Urd by the name of Wyrd, and in England there was maintained a belief in the tremendous powers of the three sisters long after the arrival of Christianity. For instance, in Shakespeare's tragic play Macbeth, the Three Sisters on 'the blasted heath' obviously owed something to the Norns.
A clear parallel of the Norns are the Moerae, or 'Fates', encountered in Greek mythology. As in the Germanic mythic tradition, they were seen as three sister goddesses: Klotho ('The Spinner'), Lachesis ('The Decider') and Atropos ('The Inevitable'). It would seem more than possible that the Norns were also originally thought of as spinners. However, in Germanic mythology the Greek and Roman concept of the Fates spinning an individual length of yarn for each mortal life does not appear.