Weaving wyrd : Heathen Gender Roles in Death

Abstract: To illustrate how the treatment of gender roles in literature and in post funeral veneration imply pre-christian heathens understood male and females to be different after death; examining parallels in social and biological function of each gender role with reference to death.

When I became a heathen, I learned what most of my generation accepted as truth; that our female ancestors were the Disir and our male ancestors the Alfar. This certainly matched the Romantic age and later 1960’s pagan and Wiccan understanding, and accorded well with the modern western understanding of equality of the sexes. The role of the Disir was easy to see in the lore, but the depictions of the Alfar did not seem to match that of our male ancestors, in fact the only barrow wights and draugr had any connection to our male dead, and each of these would be described as hauntings or restless spirits, as opposed to the honoured dead who receive the continued offerings of their living kinsmen.

The image is given us of the Norns sitting at the roots of the world tree Yggdrasil weaving the wryd or fates of humanity and the gods (Voluspa)
I know an ash tree, named Yggdrasil:
Sparkling showers are shed on its leaves
That drip dew, into the dales below,
By Urd's well it waves evergreen,
Stands over that still pool,
Near it a bower whence now there come
The Fate Maidens, first Urd,
Skuld second, scorer of runes,
Then Verdandi, third of the Norns:
The laws that determine the lives of men
They fixed forever and their fate sealed.
Norns are seen as the weavers of wyrd, determining the length of life of a man, and the shape of his destiny. His own actions shall determine his glory and worth; that being the brightness of his thread and how it affects others in the larger pattern of orlog, but its length and ending are as fixed as its start. From the Helgakviđa Hundingsbana in Fyrra ,Helgi Hundigsbane's birth:
Night covered the court;
Then came the Norns,
Who for the atheling [prince]
Numered his days:
Bade him become
Boldest of captains,
And among heroes
Hold the highest renown.

Mighty they were:
They laid life's threads,
While the towers
Broke in Bralund;
Forth they stretched
The golden cords,
Fixed them midmost
In the hall of the moon Helgakviđa Hundingsbana in Fyrra, quoted in Munch, 156

Frigg is depicted as the patron of weaving, as she is of the Disir and Norns. To some Germanic tribes these attributes belong to Frau Holla http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weaving_%28mythology%29
Frigg is seen as the patron of weavers, and the patron of those female agencies associated with eternity; the Norns, the Valkyrie, and the Disir. All three classes of female share Frigg’s foreknowledge, the Norns who weave the fates of gods and men, the Disir who watch over the family lines, who care for the orlog that ties together and affects all of their descendants, and the Valkyrie who ride to select the best and bravest from among the fallen warriors to share Odin or Freya’s fine halls to battle and feast until their chance to die once again at Ragnarok to save who may be saved of their descendants.

The practice of offering to the ancestors, both through family rites and through saga poetry serves to keep alive the memory of the honored ancestors. Through offerings at feast and sumbel, through carvings and grave monuments, and through the passing down of heirloom names and weapons, the male ancestors are shown continuous veneration. As expected from a people with a strong warrior tradition and a heroic mythos, the male ancestors are shown great respect with their deeds being kept alive to each generation in turn through the skaldic arts. What is interesting is the difference between how the male ancestors and female ancestors are remembered, and who is offered to for what.

Male ancestors are remembered, honoured, spoken to, and even offered strong oaths with the expectation that they will be aware of their descendants succeeding or failing in meeting these oaths. Male ancestors are not asked to intercede, they are not asked to make changes in the world that is, nor for favours in what is to be. The Hamaval promises men only this:
78. Cattle die, | and kinsmen die,
And so one dies one's self;
One thing now | that never dies,
The fame of a dead man's deeds.
The immortality promised men is only this; to be remembered by our descendants; to be remembered by the line that continues.

The Disir were quite different. Offerings given to the Disir or Matronae, the female ancestral spirits, often as a collective, were given with the understanding that they could offer real change in the present and future. The offerings were given with the understanding that the Disir retained an interest in the orlog of their family, the wyrd of its specific members, and had active agency to affect change in their support http://www.friggasweb.org/matrons.html. Records of Germanic soldiers erecting alters and shrines to the Disir on the battlefield to ask for victory show that they had great confidence that the Disir both cared to and could give them aid in return for their veneration and service.

Valkyries offer the best of men the chance for a very limited form of immorality, as a dedicated sacrifice through battle. What the Valkyries offer is not eternity, but alternating battle and feasting until Ragnarok where the gods will use these sacred shock troops to hopefully tilt the scales on that direst of days. Nowhere is it promised the einherjar have a chance to do aught but die a second time. Indeed both Aesir and Vanir’s leading lords are promised death, with the possibility of victory buying a future for their descendants and our own. The Voluspa, itself a seeress prophesy would offer thus:

A further woe falls upon Hlin
As Odhinn comes forth to fight the wolf;
The killer of Beli battles with Surt:
Now shall fall Frigga's beloved.
Now valiant comes Valfather's son,
Vidar, to vie with Valdyr in battle,
Plunges his sword into he son of Hvedrung,
Avenging his father with a fell thrust.
Now the son of Hlodyn and Odhinn comes
To fight with Fenris; fiercest of warriors
He mauls in his rage all Middle-Earth;
Men in fear all flee their homesteads;
Nine paces back steps Bur's son
Retreats from the worm of taunts unafraid
http://members.iquest.net/~chaviland/Voluspa.htm (W H Auden & P B Taylor Translation)




In this section we see both Aesir and Vanir lords falling. Odin, Frey and Thor fall along with their Loki spawned foes Fenris and Jormunger, but nowhere do we hear the goddesses leading their own hosts upon the field, nor are the Valkyries sung of as present at this, of all, battlefields.

Freya is spoken of as the Van-dis or Vanir Disir, and indeed she is proported to receive half of the honoured dead or einherjar for her own halls, yet there is no mention of her leading them to this battle for which alone they have been preserved. Both the living and the dying gods are mentioned, yet not one of the goddesses is listed as surviving, or falling. The absence of either mention begs the question of why it was that the male spirits of the dead, and the male gods face an end to immortality, but no such doom is spoken for goddess, Norn or Disir. Is death different for them? Perhaps it was once assumed naturally so.

Wyrd is spoken of as a weave. In most Indo-European cultures, from the Greek and Roman, through the Celt, Finn, and Norse/Germanic, we see the image of wyrd or fate being a skein of woven fabric made up of the lives of gods and mortals. What is compelling about this image is the nature of weaving. To weave a tapestry one requires two types of threads, warp and woof. Warp threads are long strong structural threads that form the enduring structure of the weave, often less brightly coloured as they are constant throughout the tapestry. Woof threads are shorter crossways threads that are often very bright and make the visible pattern. Where designs are wrought, the woof threads become overlain, raised, crossed and layered to great effect, while the warp remains closer to constant to retain the shape of the fabric. Since we speak of society also in terms of the fabric of society, how might we compare the two terms warp and woof with the forces that shape our own, and our ancestral society.

There are the family lines, the deep rooted connections to our heritage, our enduring values, and our need for continuance. Indeed the warp of our society is our families, for as we all know, children are our future, and we, in the present but stewards for those to come. The family in this sense is focused both backwards to its roots, and forward beyond sight towards its future. In this sense, family forms the warp of our society, acting across many generations. The woof of society is our social interaction, our political, economic, community, national and international structures that allow us to cooperate and compete as groups. It is through these interactions for short term (inside a single lifetime) that communities are built, fame is won, wealth and status competed for. It is through these actions that societies grow stronger and are able to compete with one another to the benefit of those families contained within a successful competing group, tribe, or nation.

In her paper Themes of Female Honour in the Icelandic Sagas
http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Rivenbark,%20Susan_2011_Thesis.pdf
Susan Rivenbark argues that male and female honour were different, in both focus and action. Male honour was based on society, where a man’s worth derived from his deeds in the outer world, from wealth won, oaths made and followed, recognized success in trade, craft, warfare, or legal and political debate brought with it social standing, and the ability to provide for and protect your family. To have great honour was to be able to act for your family, and to lose honour was to no longer be able to act in that society, threatening your ability to either provide or protect. Thus any dishonour to a man must be addressed or threaten everything that he held, status, wealth, and the security of allies, as well as his ability to enter trade agreements or speak at law. Man’s role then is that of woof, the bright threads that make history, the rise and fall of nations, clash of armies, exploration, trade, raid, innovation and ambition. While these threads are bright, they are also short. Kingdoms rise and fall over few generations, and even empires rise and fall inside the space of a few paltry centuries.

In her work, Susan Rivenbark argues that female honour is tied to the family line, rather than herself. Often a woman would swallow an insult to herself, frequently being married off to a foe to settle a feud or secure a peace, with little thought to her own happiness. In this, a woman was expected to suffer for the greater benefit of her line. Her honour is found in the success of her line, a thing that cannot even be perceived in her lifetime. Where a man may know the success of his greatest ambition in a few paltry years, a woman must often wait generations to know if her sacrifice brought benefit or not. While women often were peace makers throughout history, their understanding of honour was more long term than that of their husbands, and when the family honour was touched, they were far less likely to accept wealth or political favour, holding such transitory rewards of little interest compared to cleansing the family honour through justice, or outright blood vengeance.

In Volsungs saga we see how the daughter of King Volsung would rather die, or even murder her own children than suffer her husband’s betrayal of her family and name. Indeed, she is far from the only woman in the saga’s to take sword in hand not for political power or ambition, but to avenge a slight to their family honour. The women in these sagas are not interested in the short term gains for themselves, but rather the effect on the whole of their line, the hundreds of generations to come. Women then formed the warp of their society, less focused on the political and economic competitions of the day, and more on the future of their family.

Gender roles in society are often reflections of the role of each gender in biology. Biologically, male sexuality is an ephemeral thing. Men produce sperm by the millions. At most a sperm can live for a week (http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/pregnancy/AN00281), and men produce them in staggering numbers whether we need them or not. Men are always capable of fertilizing eggs from the time of puberty until age and damage shuts down the machinery; designed to take advantage of any opportunity. Male fertility does not come with a cost, for a single male can impregnate any number of women without bearing any biologic penalty, any metabolic cost, or innate health risk. There is a benefit to assisting your own progeny, and those lines that do so enjoy great competitive success, but there is no direct cost to the male that does not.

Female sexuality is a reflection of eternity. A woman’s eggs are born with her, and live as long as she does
(http://www.healthology.com/focus_article.asp?f=fertility&c=fert_drugs#Introduction) . Typically one egg a month is released, with a fertile period that is a brief window every month. To become pregnant for a woman is a commitment of great time, huge resources, and in the society of our ancestors, great personal risk. To become pregnant is to risk death. Given a classical rate of infant mortality of about 30%,(http://historymedren.about.com/od/medievalchildren/a/child_survival_2.htm)
it demanded a woman risk her own death for only the possibility of a new life. Initial modern assumptions would suggest women withdrawing from children they know they may well lose, but archeology shows us instead that ancient mothers bonded closely with their children (http://historymedren.about.com/od/medievalchildren/a/child_survival_2.htm ), embracing the risk of death inherent in the promise of life.

For a woman to marry in a society without birth control was to know you were risking death, and to know that you were likely to bring forth children who had great chances to die young. To take such great risks requires great strength, to make such sacrifices willingly requires great goals, goals that stretch beyond any one lifetime. This was where a woman’s honour was measured, in the success or failure of her whole line, not simply the children of her womb, but of her entire family.

There is much talk today about the anachronistic concept of “women and children first”. Our ancestors understood this. Men are ephemerals, we are given to death from our birth; it is only through our deeds and from our lines that immortality can come. Women are given to eternity. From them comes such immortality that humanity can know. When a man puts himself between danger and the women and children of his people he is risking a piece of flesh that will be dead within a few years anyway, against the possibility of the continuance of his line, either his direct line, or that of his near kindred. Rather than being evolutionarily foolish, it is the height of prudence. What is one death against possible immortality?

The ancestors lived in a world that was shaped by the hands of men, where the tapestry of history was woven by the bright threads of the brave and the bold, the foolish and the fortunate. Look at the realms of the gods of our folk: Odin who governs war, warrior chieftainship, skaldship, learning. Thor the storm bringer, the laughing warrior, patron of farmers and craftsmen. Tyr god of law, the thing, and of the political structure of society. Frey the peace-king, bringing fertility, wealth, and prosperity. These are realms of male power, of rapid change, raw force to shape the world in a single day, year, or lifetime; social forces to bring a folk together towards a common goal in peace or war. This tempestuous tapestry was woven on the underlying stability of the women, both living and dead, who guarded the lines of their families from the vagaries of wyrd. Mother Frigga who watches over the lines of of the folk, both as seeress and guardian. Sunna, the ever giving sun who brings life to us all. Nerthus and Sif, goddesses of the renewing earth and harvest who sustain us, and Hel, who keeps those who have passed. These are goddesses whose realm is not swift change, but slow change, the work of generations and centuries, not single battles or elections. The actions of Freya and Frigga often seem to run counter to the male gods in the mythic past, such as Longbeards Saga http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/19234/ where Odin had deemed victory to go to the Vandals, yet Frigg and Freya tricked him into granting it to the Longbeards (Lombards), binding him with oath and familial duty to provide naming or baptismal gift. When the needs of the day clashed with the needs of the future, the power of men often yielded to the vision of the women.


In a tapestry there is no question of warp or woof being superior or inferior to each other, for you cannot weave without both. Warp is the continuity, the foundation, the underlying form of the weave. The woof is the colour, the pattern, the shape. Our ancestors valued women more than most ancient cultures, yet their own society was one that reserved the shaping of the world for the hands of men. The woof, the pattern of history was a thing for the strength and fury of men, the might of the gods. The warp of wyrd, the orlog that binds families, the future of the folk was a thing for the wisdom, the patience, of women. Men were as a storm upon the land, a force potent and irresistible. Women were the earth itself. How could men and women be equal in death? Whatever its fury, when a storm passes, the earth remains. However bright the thread of woof, however it bends the threads around it, when it is cut, it is gone. The warp remains, through all generations, for all time.

Special thanks to Jennifer (Pixie)Thrasher, whose understanding of weaving, womanhood, and our gods made it possible to bring this topic into a such coherence as it now knows.

John T Mainer


http://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Rivenbark,%20Susan_2011_Thesis.pdf
Themes of Female Honour in the Icelandic Sagas
SUSAN ELIZABETH RIVENBARK
Submitted to the Graduate School
Appalachian State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
MASTER OF ARTS

http://members.iquest.net/~chaviland/Voluspa.htm
The Song of the Sybil (Voluspa)
(W H Auden & P B Taylor Translation)

http://www.readbookonline.net/readOnLine/19234/
Longbeards Saga
(Translated by Charles Kingsley)

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/vlsng/index.htm
The Story of the Volsungs
Translated by William Morris and Eirikr Magnusson
[1888]

Fascinating article, very interesting way off approaching gender roles.

I did have an inquiry though; dán (the mod irish word for "fate", or "ones personal fate", which is probably the closest cognate to the concept of wyrd) has become a more regular topic of conversation among GRP's, at the very least. I have not, however, come across the term (or other motifs regarding fate or destiny) being described as a tapestry or weaving.

There is certainly a tendency among the tales which (may) describe the adventures of the deithe, for goddesses to chant prophecy (particularly Babd). In later cycles, especially the Ulster and Fenian, prophecy is predominently a vocation of the Druids, though there are many semi-divine women who soothsay as well.

As to the fate of the dead, the situation is nearly inverse; the predominant god of the dead is Donn, followed by Manannan mac Lir. In Roman commentaries of the beliefs of the Gauls, Dis Pater, the lord of the underworld, is held to be the chief god and progenitor of the "race". There is, however, a very clear relationship between the goddesses who act as psychopomps for the war dead, an Morrigan, Babd and Nemain, the Valkyrie and the Greek Keres.

With Celtic and Germanic, the genders are almost always mirrored. Sunna is a woman (Sun) Manni is a man (Moon).