wyrd
Sign in to saveAlso known as weird, Ørlǫg
thumb|Poster for the Norwegian magazine Urd (magazine)|Urd by [[Andreas Bloch and Olaf Krohn|upright]] Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
~6 min read
Article
5 sectionsContents
- Etymology
- Fate in Germanic mythology
- Other uses
- See also
- References
thumb|Poster for the Norwegian magazine Urd (magazine)|Urd by [[Andreas Bloch and Olaf Krohn|upright]] Wyrd is a concept in Anglo-Saxon culture roughly corresponding to fate or personal destiny. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, whose meaning has drifted towards an adjectival use with a more general sense of "supernatural" or "uncanny", or simply "unexpected".
The cognate term to wyrd in Old Norse is , with a similar meaning, but also personified as a deity: Urðr (anglicized as ), one of the Norns in Norse mythology. The word also appears in the name of the well where the Norns meet, Urðarbrunnr.