names were Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, were
personifications of the past, present, and future. Their principal
occupations were to weave the web of fate, to sprinkle daily the sacred
tree with water from the Urdar fountain, and to put fresh clay around
its roots, that it might remain fresh and ever green.

"Thence come the maids
Who much do know;
Three from the hall
Beneath the tree;
One they named Was,
And Being next,
The third Shall be."

The Voeluspa (Henderson's tr.).

Some authorities further state that the Norns kept watch over
the golden apples which hung on the branches of the tree of life,
experience, and knowledge, allowing none but Idun to pick the fruit,
which was that with which the gods renewed their youth.

The Norns also fed and tenderly cared for two swans which swam over
the mirror-like surface of the Urdar fountain, and from this pair of
birds all the swans on earth are supposed to be descended. At times,
it is said, the Norns clothed themselves with swan plumage to visit
the earth, or sported like mermaids along the coast and in various
lakes and rivers, appearing to mortals, from time to time, to foretell
the future or give them sage advice.

The Norns' Web

The Norns sometimes wove webs so large that while one of the weavers
stood on a high mountain in the extreme east, another waded far out
into the western sea. The threads of their woof resembled cords,
and varied greatly in hue, according to the nature of the events
about to occur, and a black thread, tending from north to south, was
invariably considered an omen of death. As these sisters flashed the
shuttle to and fro, they chanted a solemn song. They did not seem to
weave according to their own wishes, but blindly, as if reluctantly
executing the wishes of Orlog, the eternal law of the universe, an
older and superior power, who apparently had neither beginning nor end.

Two of the Norns, Urd and Verdandi, were considered to be very
beneficent indeed, while the third, it is said, relentlessly undid
their work, and often, when nearly finished, tore it angrily to shreds,
scattering the remnants to the winds of heaven. As personifications
of time, the Norns were represented as sisters of different ages
and characters, Urd (Wurd, weird) appearing very old and decrepit,
continually looking backward, as if absorbed in contemplating past
events and people; Verdandi, the second sister, young,