Seiðr was associated with spinning and weaving as were the Norns themselves. This may have also been one of the reasons why it was considered unmanly for Norse men to practice, as fiber arts were the domain of women. As Thorsteinn noted when he happened upon Málfríðr, Sigga and Olga in the marsh near Kiev:
He observed the three, a little girl, a young woman and an old crone, and the spinning and the wool in various stages of work and his face creased into a half-frozen smile. “I do believe I have wandered down to the very roots of the Great Tree and found the three Norns at work, spinning the fates of the world.”
Freydis explains the concept to Theophana in The Serpentine Key:
Theophana frowned. “I do not understand these words that you use. Orlog and Urðr .” The witch placed her hand on the door. She stroked the sleek surface, letting her fingers linger as if on a lover, before she answered.
“Orlog and Urðr are fate of mortals and immortals alike. But they are not the same. Orlog is immovable. Urðr, you move and shape through your own actions, like a fly’s struggle on a web. You may influence your own path which is Urðr , but you may not change Orlog, which is primal, unchanging, never ceasing.”
Urðabrunnr (Urðr’s Well) is located at the root of the World Tree, Yggdrasil and Urðr, being one of the Norns, controls the destinies of all mankind. The Norns are three in number and in addition to Urðr (That Which Is) are her two sisters, Verðandi (That Which Is Becoming ) and Skuld (That Which Should Become) There was no concept of the future in Norse eschatology. The future is ever changeable, depending upon what Urðr deals you. The only thing you may not change is Ørlög or primeval law. It is Urðr or (Wyrd in the Anglo-Saxon) that the seiðkona seeks to influence. Ørlög and Urðr can be likened to weaving. Any Norse woman in charge of a farmstead or indeed any common farmwife with the borders of the Byzantine Empire would understand that you have warp threads, which remain unchangeable and that weft threads or Urðr are what we can change in our lives and what give the weaving its pattern and color. The Norns were thought to influence the destiny of a child at birth and this concept can be seen in such well-known stories as the story of Sleeping Beauty and the fairies who are invited to weave a positive destiny for the child. Here too, the fiber arts make their appearance in the form of a spindle, which certainly takes us back to the Indo-European concept of our destinies as a thread. The Valkyries too are depicted as “weird-sisters” in Njall’s Saga, weaving the fates of men, though they thread and weight their looms with gore:
“See! warp is stretched
For warriors’ fall,
Lo! weft in loom…
“This woof is woven
With entrails of men,
This warp is hardweighted
With heads of the slain,
Spears blood-besprinkled
For spindles we use,
Our loom ironbound,
And arrows our reels;
With swords for our shuttles
This war-woof we work;
So weave we, weird sisters,
Our warwinning woof.