Viking Gardening Advice

I have several tomato and jalapeno pepper plants mere steps from my front door.

I love the fresh pop of savory flavor that from-the-vine-to-the-table gives you.

Even here in the temperate rain forest climate of East Tennessee if I don’t stay on the watering schedule I lose these plants to the heat.

Skip a day of water and the wilt is extreme.

On to our Vikings.

The “Norns” or “Nornir” are the embodiments of Fate in the Viking/Nordic tradition.

The Norns are three lovely women named Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld, or Past, Present, and Future.

The job of these women is to sit by the fountain of Urd [or “Urdarbruner”.]

Well, the job is more than that. The fountain Urd sits just below one of the roots of the tree called Yggdrasil. It is the world-tree, or the tree of life.

The lovely Norns are to draw water from Urd and attentively nourish the roots of Yggdrasil.

The metaphor of the Norns is not mere mythology or a poetic bit of analogy, it is pragmatic advice on at least two counts.

The First, of the three Norns, Verdandi, the present, is the most important.

Even if I water my tomatoes voluminously yesterday, it does not mean that they will not wilt in the hot sun of today. Today is when the quenching matters. One does not feed an infant yesterday, skip today and call oneself a good parent.

Me, promising the wilted plant that I will attend to it tomorrow as today I am a bit too busy does not bode well for the future of the plant.

Today, Verdandi, and every Today thereafter is all that matters in my watering schedule. I simply cannot water today’s plant yesterday or today’s plant tomorrow. Today is all the time I have to be attentive.

The Second bit of Wisdom? The Norns quench the roots of the world-tree. They do not attempt to climb to the top and start with the sky-most leaves. They water where the foundation and stability are. The Norns know [as all good gardeners know] it is the invisible work beneath the ground that creates the flowering and inspiring growth above.

We must put in our quenching attentive work each and every day.

We must attend to the root things, the foundations to grow.

Any attempt to thwart the wisdom of the watering duties will result in wilted and dead plants.

How well do you attend your own Tree of Life?

“Gerðu það sem þarf að gera í dag og á hverjum degi eftir það. Vöxturinn mun fylgja, en aðeins ef þú gerir skyldu þína. "

“Do what must be done today and every day after that. The growth will follow, but only if you do your duty.”