Dammit, Shakespeare, Look What You’ve Done to the Wyrd Sisters!

I had to do a facepalm today when I read an article called “Why The Weird Sisters In Chilling Adventures Of Sabrina Seem So Familiar.”  I was just minding my own business while Googling “norse myths” in the news. Yes, I admit that’s an eccentric habit I got into while writing The Tollkeeper. But I didn’t expect to come across such calumny against the Norns in an entertainment website targeting women. Here’s a portion of the article:

The Weird Sisters of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina stem from a long line of other witches in literature and pop culture who group themselves in threes, dating all the way back to ancient mythology. Both Greek and Norse mythology feature a trio of witches who determine the course of a person’s life using a cosmically important thread: One witch unspools the thread, one measures, and one snips. The Fates, as these witches are called in Greek mythology, appear in the Underworld in Hercules. In Norse myths, these arbiters of destiny are the Norns. [emphasis in red is mine]

Come on! It’s true that the notion of three powerful female characters goes back a long way, as do the stories of the Norns and Fates. But they were not witches until wily Willy Shakespeare made them so in his play Macbeth, probably to avoid any hassles from the religious authorities of his time. After all, the Fates were originally part of ancient religions that only became myths once they were (more or less) defunct with the spread of Christianity in Europe.

So, Shakespeare turned them into “witches” rather than gods or, in the case of Norse myth, giantesses. The original “wyrd sisters” (wyrd means fate) were nothing like Shakespeare’s creepy old biddies. Bullfinch’s Mythology states:

The Northern goddesses of fate, who were called Norns, were in nowise subject to the other gods, who could neither question nor influence their decrees. They were three sisters, probably descendants of the giant Norvi, from whom sprang Nott (night). As soon as the Golden Age was ended, and sin began to steal even into the heavenly homes of Asgard, the Norns made their appearance under the great ash Yggdrasil, and took up their abode near the Urdar fountain. According to some mythologists, their purpose in coming thus was to warn the gods of future evil, to bid them make good use of the present, and to teach them wholesome lessons from the past.

It’s hard to blame a lot of present-day writers for getting this wrong. After all, they’re just taking their cues from the greatest writer in English of all time. And I’m not going to sweat the fact that some script writers turn the Weird Sisters into a trio of mean girls in a show about teenage witches.

But, if we’re going to write about their historical roots, let’s not refer to all those mythological characters as witches. They are more than that — much more — and they deserve better.

Image from https://www.refinery29.com/en-us/2018...

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