The Norns

Hans Thoma's 'The Norns' (1889) represents the mythological dimension of his practice alongside his better-known landscapes and portraits. The Norns — Urd, Verdandi, and Skuld — are the Norse fates who weave the destiny of gods and men, the Germanic equivalents of the Greek Moirai. Thoma's engagement with Germanic mythology connects him to the broader Romantic nationalist project of rehabilitating Norse and German mythological heritage that ran through Wagner's operas and the Symbolist movement's interest in pre-Christian Germanic culture. The subject allowed him to combine the figurative ambition of history painting with the mythological subject matter that his generation found so compelling.

Thoma renders the Norns with the solid, German naturalist figure style that characterized his entire practice — the mythological figures given physical presence rather than the ethereal treatment they might receive in a more purely Symbolist approach. His handling maintains his characteristic combination of careful observation and warm tonal palette, the mythological subject elevated without losing contact with the material world he always painted so directly.