As the three witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth await the arrival of Macbeth and Banquo (Act I, scene 3), they chant:
Posters of the sea and land,
The weird sisters, hand in hand,
Thus do go about, about:
Thrice to thine and thrice to mine
And thrice again, to make up nine.
And so are they referred to subsequently, both by Macbeth and by Banquo. Today ‘weird’ often simply means strange, but its etymology is richer, according to the OED: “Weird: Old English wyrd ‘destiny’ of Germanic origin. The adjective (late Middle English) originally meant ‘having the power to control destiny’, and was used especially in the Weird Sisters, originally referring to the Fates, later the witches in Shakespeare’s Macbeth; the latter use gave rise to the sense ‘unearthly’ (early 19th cent.).”
Dorothy Dunnett’s novel about the historical Macbeth, King Hereafter, is set in the eleventh century when Norse paganism vied with Celtic Christianity. Her protagonist’s Christian name is Macbeth, but he usually goes by his Nordic name Thorfinn. Near the end of the book (p. 693), he and his close friend Sulien, a Celtic priest, are riding past the ancient Ring of Brodgar when a swan flies up. ‘The swans of Urd?’ Thorfinn asks Sulien.
He replies, ‘The spring of Urd, which also nourished its swans, was the spring of Destiny, and to it each day came the Norns to draw water. Uror, Verandi, and Skuld. Past, Present, and Future.’
This is the closest we come to witches in King Hereafter, though Macbeth’s stepson has a prophetic gift of sorts, and reference is made to Icelandic wise women. The Norns do not figure significantly in the first three parts of the novel, but as things begin to turn against Thorfinn, we feel their presence. The Fate Sisters represent not malicious magic but forces beyond human plans and hopes.
Some three or four hundred years later, witch trials began in earnest in England, though in 1584, Reginald Scot’s The Discoverie of Witches depicts witchcraft as a superstition. After a study of legal prosecution of witches and of villages where the belief in witchcraft flourished, Scot concluded that both reason and religion reject witchcraft and magic and pointed out that those accused were often old women and the poor; their ‘evil’ coincidental or circumstantial and their communion with the devil a fantasy.
However in Scotland, King James VI actively involved himself in the persecution of accused witches, leading him to write Demonologie in 1597. Seven years later he succeeded Queen Elizabeth as James I of England. Demonologie was republished there and the subject of witchcraft again came to the fore. Shakespeare’s reason would put him in the camp of Reginald Scot, but knowing King James’ predilection, he depicts the witches in Macbeth with dramatic flair. Who has not heard their chant around the cauldron,
Double, double toil and trouble;
Fire burn, and cauldron bubble.
Fillet of a fenny snake,
In the cauldron boil and bake;
Eye of newt and toe of frog,
Wool of bat and tongue of dog,
Adder’s fork and blind-worm’s sting,
Lizard’s leg and owlet’s wing,
For a charm of powerful trouble,
Like a hell-broth boil and bubble.
Do the witches create Macbeth’s evil or does their prophecy, ‘All hail, Macbeth, thou shalt be king hereafter!’ simply rouse an ambition already within him? Banquo notes that Macbeth seems startled and fearful at words that ‘sound so fair.’ The weird sisters set Macbeth’s evil in motion, but would it have happened anyway? Character is destiny, as Heraclitus says. Macbeth is a heroic warrior—in other words, expert at killing—and is ambitious. He tries to talk himself out of murdering Duncan: ‘If chance will have me king, why, chance may crown me, Without my stir.’ Leave it in the hands of Fate.
But he’s broached the subject to Lady Macbeth; there’s no going back despite his arguments against the deed. She challenges him: ‘Art thou afeard/ To be the same in thine own act and valor/ As thou art in desire?’ So he proceeds to fulfill the witches’ greeting to him as king hereafter, dagger in hand.
Dunnett’s Thorfinn has a different sort of kingly ambition. He’s earl of a third of Orkney, grandson of King Malcolm of Alba, and gains the earldom of Moray through marriage. His ambition is to rule a united Alba, or Scotia. In a divided country, threatened by Norway, Denmark, and northern England, Thorfinn faces constant military crises. Deaths of powerful men help him along the way, but in Dunnett’s telling they rarely die by his hand. Although he seriously wounds Duncan, Thorfinn doesn’t murder him, and his foster-father Thorkel deals the death blow to other of his adversaries.
Thorfinn is more complex than Shakespeare’s Macbeth, as would be expected from an epic novel of an entire life compared to an intense theatrical tragedy. Thorfinn strategizes, seeks political allies and support from the Pope, and bases his diplomacy on pragmatic concerns—with something of the Viking thrown in. What matters is that your name outlives you, especially in skaldic verses.
Neither his stepson Lulach’s obscure prophecies nor the Norns drive Thorfinn on. Fate is on his side—from his lineage but also his bravery, concern for his men, regard for custom, and his marriage. (A comparison of his lady to Macbeth’s is a provocative subject!) Revenge prompts Thorfinn’s actions more than personal ambition, and for most of the novel he’s not concerned about his succession.
Only as fate goes against him does he think about those ‘three ladies,’ the Norns. Thorfinn and Sulien’s ride referred to above comes a few pages into Chapter Fourteen of Part Four of King Hereafter, ‘What is the Night,’ the chapter most concerned with the Norns and Fate. The two speak of how Thorfinn shared his grandfather King Malcolm’s ambition to unite Alba: ‘Skill against skill, skill against luck.’
‘Luck?’ Sulien asked.
‘Or chance. Or the three ladies at the spring of Urd, if you like,’ Thorfinn said. ‘If they choose to be unkind now, there are not so many moves I can make in return.’ (697)
Later, talking about his strategy, Thorfinn adds, ‘Only my opponents and the three ladies do not always let me take the course I should prefer. And in this case I am led to believe that all decisions are out of my hands, whatever I do.’
They talk about Lulach’s prophecies, re-embodiments of history and legend, and the threefold foretelling of death: wounding, drowning, and burning. Thorfinn has survived all three—as well as trees walking—but adds that what has been set in motion is not over.
He and Sulien discuss all that is likely to transpire in their part of the world and how things could have been different for all of them, a sad recital. One day nations may settle into peace; times of quiet rule and building. Till then, fate will not be so kind. Sulien concludes, ‘Be grateful . . . what there is of your kingship will pass on as in a lamp, where the flame is what matters, not the vessel.’ (701)
The third Norn, Skuld, will shear the thread of Thorfinn’s life. His relief troops fail to arrive, and he faces defeat by Malcolm, son of King Duncan. When Thorfinn proposes a duel to the death, Malcolm accepts. Injured and ill, Thorfinn/Macbeth knows he’ll not survive. As their battle area is roped off, he speaks to Lulach. ‘I was wondering what story the river will carry of me?’
‘So many stories, that, a thousand years from today, every name from this world will have faded save those of yourself and your lady. That is immortality.’ (719).
The irony, of course, is that his name, his Christian name, lives largely thanks to William Shakespeare, who bases his tale of Macbeth on Holinshed’s Chronicles rather than Orkneyinga sagas. His witches capture our imagination more than the Norns, that ancient archetype.
According to Norse religion, the Norns are named Urd (‘The Past,’), Verandi (‘What Is Presently Coming into Being’), and Skuld (‘What Shall Be’). How close they are to the Greek Moirai: Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos! Fate Spinners all.
Shakespeare’s witches are dramatic and the three apparitions that they show Macbeth in Act IV are terrifying and ironic, but the mythic Weird Sisters, Norns, Moirai come closer to representing our own relation to destiny.