NORNS, in Northern mythology, the female divinities of fate, like the Gr. MoZpac generally represented as three in number, and said to spin, or weave, the destiny of men. They dwell beside the "Spring of fate," beneath the "world-tree," Yggdrasil's ash, which they water from the spring. Sometimes the Norns are indistin guishable from the Valkyries (q.v.). They appear as prophet esses (volur) at the birth of children. The most famous story is contained in the Thdttr of Nornagesti. (See TEUTONIC PEO PLES.) NORRIS, FRANK (1870-19o2), American novelist, was born in Chicago (Ill.), March 5, 187o. Believing that America ignored her own national epic, he devoted himself to his uncom pleted trilogy of the wheat. The Octopus (Igor) shows with a striking use of symbolism the raising of the wheat in California and the hold of the railway upon the ranchmen; The Pit (1903) is a powerful portrayal of the lure of board of trade gambling; the author's early death prevented completion of the third volume, dealing with consumption in Europe. Reared in Chicago (Ill.),
educated at the San Francisco high school, the University of California, and Harvard, he studied art in Paris and served in South Africa as war correspondent for the San Francisco Chroni cle. In 1896-97 he was associate editor of the San Francisco Wave; and in 1898 he was war correspondent in Cuba for Mc Clure's Magazine. He died Oct. 25, 1902.
Besides the wheat trilogy, Norris's most important works are: A Deal in Wheat, and Other Stories of the New and Old West (1903) ; The Third Circle (1909), another collection of tales; The Responsi bilities of the Novelist, and Other Literary Essays (1903) ; Moran of the Lady Letty (1898), a tale of adventure off the California coast; Blix (1899), a love story ; McTeague (1899), a story of the San Fran cisco slums; and Vandover and the Brute (1914), a repulsive study of degeneration, issued with an introduction by Charles G. Norris. For a bibliography see F. T. Cooper's Some American Story Tellers (pgii).