URD VERDANDI SKULD THE NORNS

The Norns’ Web: Fate and Memory in Kiefer’s Mythic Landscape

Few twentieth-century works confront the weight of history with the raw intensity of Anselm Kiefer’s URD VERDANDI SKULD THE NORNS. Painted in 1983, this canvas emerges from a period when Kiefer was dissecting Germanic mythology through the lens of post-war trauma, weaving Norse cosmology into his signature thickets of oil, emulsion, and shellac. The title invokes the three Norns—Urd (past), Verdandi (present), and Skuld (future)—the Norse fates who spin the threads of destiny beneath Yggdrasil, the World Tree. Kiefer’s rendering transforms their abstract power into a tactile, almost geological surface, where layers of paint and embedded materials evoke both the passage of time and the inescapability of memory.

The work belongs to a series where Kiefer engaged directly with Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle, itself a nineteenth-century reinterpretation of Norse sagas. As The Museum of Modern Art notes, Kiefer’s 1980s output often “used myth as a vehicle to critique the romanticization of German identity,” a project that took on urgent resonance in the Cold War era. Here, the Norns’ domain becomes a scarred landscape—part forest, part ruin—where the threads of fate are not delicate strands but heavy, encrusted ropes. The palette of charred blacks, leaden whites, and blood-red accents mirrors the artist’s broader preoccupation with alchemy and decay, themes that would dominate his work for decades.

Kiefer’s Alchemical Decade: Myth as Material

The early 1980s marked a turning point for Kiefer, as he shifted from overtly political works like the Occupations series to a more symbolic engagement with history. URD VERDANDI SKULD THE NORNS arrives at the midpoint of this transition, where private mythologies begin to overshadow public reckoning. The artist’s studio in Buchen, Germany—an abandoned schoolhouse filled with lead books, dried plants, and alchemical apparatus—became the crucible for these works. Kiefer’s process involved not just painting but building the canvas: straw, sand, and shellac were mixed into the oil to create surfaces that resembled archaeological strata.

This period also saw Kiefer’s first major international exhibitions, including a 1980 show at the Tate that introduced British audiences to his confrontational scale and material experimentation. Critics often note how Kiefer’s work from this era “demands physical as well as intellectual engagement,” a quality that translates even into print form. The framed 30×40 cm edition captures the textural complexity of the original, where the embedded straw casts shadows that shift with the viewer’s position, mimicking the unstable nature of memory itself.

Kiefer’s Norns are not passive weavers but active excavators, their threads buried beneath layers of time—each stroke a palimpsest of what came before and what might follow.

The Making of a Mythic Surface

Composition: A Landscape of Fractured Time

The canvas divides into three horizontal bands, each corresponding to one of the Norns’ domains. The lower third—Urd’s realm of the past—is a dense thicket of blackened straw and shellac, evoking charred remains or a petrified forest. Verdandi’s central section, the present, features a tangled web of red and white threads, their knots resembling both neural networks and celestial maps. Skuld’s upper domain, the future, dissolves into a bleached void, where faint horizontal lines suggest an unwritten horizon. Kiefer disrupts this tripartite structure with diagonal slashes of lead-white paint, forcing the eye to move against the grain of narrative time.

Materiality: Painting as Palimpsest

The work’s physicality stems from Kiefer’s use of mischtechnik, a layered approach inspired by medieval panel painting. Here, oil paint is mixed with emulsion and shellac, then applied over a base of straw and sand. The shellac, when dried, creates a brittle, amber-like surface that cracks under stress—mirroring the fragility of the myths Kiefer invokes. In the framed print edition, high-resolution scanning preserves these textures, allowing the matte finish to approximate the original’s tactile depth. The 12×16-inch format, while reduced from the monumental original, retains the work’s claustrophobic intensity, where every square centimeter demands scrutiny.

Displaying the Norns: A Guide to Placement

Kiefer’s work commands attention, making it ideal for spaces that invite contemplation. The 30×40 cm dimensions suit a study or library wall, where the print’s textural depth can be appreciated up close. For a dramatic effect, position it above a low console table in a room with dark wood tones—the charred blacks and lead whites will echo the patina of aged furniture. Alternatively, let it anchor a minimalist gallery wall: the red threads in Verdandi’s section provide a striking contrast against neutral backdrops like warm gray or off-white. Avoid overly bright rooms, as the shellac-like finishes lose their luminosity under harsh light. In a home office, pair it with a single directional lamp to cast shadows that enhance the embedded straw’s three-dimensionality.

More Works by Anselm Kiefer

Explore Kiefer’s evolving engagement with myth, history, and materiality through these key framed prints.

Anselm Kiefer

Black Flakes

View print

Anselm Kiefer

Seraphim

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Anselm Kiefer

Lilith

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Anselm Kiefer

The Secret Life Of Plants For Robert Fludd

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