Re: Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld Etymology

Heill Lazarus.

If it is possible for you to use the ISO-8859-1 character set instead
of UTF-8 it would be easier on me and, I think, a lot of us :-)

I've also seen some messages in html-format. Those of you who use
that should realize that they are limiting their readership somewhat
as some of us don't use mail-readers that resolve html-formatting.

So, as 'guidelines' for the list I would suggest:

Character set: ISO-8859-1 aka Latin-1 (or, I suppose, ASCII)
Formatting: Plain text

We will approve messages that don't follow those guidelines - but it
sometimes takes a wee bit longer ;-)

Anyway.

>The name-word "Urð" is related (maybe even a cognate of) "Ur" which means
>'before/origin of' and is often us as a prefix in the same instances where
>one may use the Greek prefix 'Proto'.

Heinleinian? Figures.

>I've found that complete grokking of the term requires the study of other
>'U-' prefixes like 'Un' and 'Um'. 'Un' is used to make the word 'Undir'
>which is the translated as 'Under' in English. 'Um' means
>'around/about/throughout' and has an osmotic quality of permeating a concept
>completely. 'Um' is used within the word 'Umbla' (i.e. Auðumbla) which means
>'blossoming into creation' or something like that (the prefix 'Auð-' like
>the English prefix 'Ad-' means 'to promote/to encourage/to nourish/to rear'
>so the Primal Cow Auðumbla is named 'Encourager/Nourishor of Creation').
>Therefore, to say that the word 'Urð' means 'past' is inadequate. I prefer
>to translate it as 'the origin' or simply 'before'.

I think you should be very careful in trying to read meaning into a whole
group of prefixes - like those starting with 'u'. And I don't think Urðr
has much to do with the 'ur' prefix.

>"Verdandi" is more literal and means 'happening right now'. It's more
>immediate than the word 'Present' has in our 'present' English speaking
>society. (interestingly, the word Verða means "happening/occuring" while
>Verð means "worth/price/value" - this is interesting because of the
>following...)

The name Verðandi is the present participle of the verb 'verða' meaning
'become'. Thus: Verðandi = Becoming.

>Zoega and Gordon translate "Skuld" to mean 'Debt'. Precisely how the Norn
>'Skuld' represents 'Debt' I can only conjecture. Probably related to how the
>future is an emptiness that requires filling. Hey - that sounds pretty good.

It does mean 'debt'. A related noun (via i-mutation) is 'skylda', meaning 'duty'.

Kveðja,
Haukur