Weird and Wacky People

What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet," said Juliet in Shakespeare's immortal play.

My writing group met on Tuesday afternoon as we usually do. We call ourselves the WACKOS. The name describes us, but it is also an acronym. Each letter stands for something. The first three stand for weird and crazy. And we do have some weird and crazy meetings. Yesterday was one of them. We all came away with tears in our eyes because of so much laughing. I would find it hard to explain that about which we had so much fun. You  would have to have been there. 


However, let me pick up on that word 'weird', because it is a word that applies to the background of my upcoming novel, Freya's Child. We all use the word to define things and events that are strange, bizarre, offbeat, unusual and different. The dictionaries remind us that the word suggests more than that. It refers to something supernatural and uncanny. It is a word of Germanic background. It's the Germanic thing that ties it in to my novel. 


Take a different spelling, Wyrd, and Google it. The Wikipedia article defines the word like this - 


"Wyrd is a concept in Old English and Old Norse culture roughly corresponding to sacred, fate, karma, or Synchronicity. The word is ancestral to Modern English weird, which has acquired a very different definition. The cognate term in old Norse is Urðr, with a similar meaning, but also personalized as one of the Norns, Urðr (anglicized asUrd) and appearing in the name of the holy well Urðarbrunnr in Norse mythology. The concept corresponding to "fate" in Old Norse is Ørlǫg."

Would you call this person weird? 

In the novel it is this that the Wiccan priestess tries to explain to my protagonist. Albert's daughter is fated to become Freya's child. This is her destiny. The gods planned it long ago. How can he not believe this?