Country Views - Living in Clotho

By Tim King

I live in a place called Clotho. It’s one of those unincorporated villages that are sprinkled across rural Minnesota’s landscape. What’s called progress has drained most of the life out of these villages, but each of them has its own unique story. Clotho, for example, used to have its own creamery, two-room school house, general store, post office, community picnic grounds, and dance hall. It also had a Methodist church with a vibrant congregation.

Today, all that’s left  is the school, which has been converted into a house, and the creamery, which is now a shop for a truck driver. But it’s the church that holds the remnants of Clotho together with its bell, that calls everyone to service on Sunday mornings, a monthly music jam, and a highly popular ice cream social on the first Sunday of August.

My village wasn’t always called Clotho. I imagine that the native people who lived here before the European settlers came had a name for this place. The hunting, ricing, and cooking of maple syrup were likely very productive in the area and, likely, provided a name in their language. That’s what happened when the Europeans came, a couple decades after our Civil War. They named the place Maple Hill for its plentiful sugar maple trees. But, sometime around the dawn of the last century, the people of Maple Hill were told, by the U.S. Postal Service, that they couldn’t use the name Maple Hill for their post office. Somebody else had claimed that name first.

The community leaders at the time were educated people. They’d learned how to read, write, and do their numbers. They were also taught to read Latin and they learned about Greek and Roman mythology. That education provided them with the new name for their post office – Clotho.

Clotho, in Greek mythology, was a young woman. The stories about her mostly claim that she was the youngest of three sisters who were known as the Three Fates. Clotho’s work as a Fate was to spin the thread of life while her sister Lachesis drew out the newly spun thread and her sister Atropos cuts the thread. Being the spinner of life’s thread gave young Clotho lots of power. For example, she decided who was born and when.

Reflecting upon it, it would seem Clotho was a heavy name for a little village on the edge of the prairie. But those old people often times had big dreams.

As students of Latin, those founders of the village probably knew the Roman myths had a trio of sisters that did the same work as their Greek counterparts. The Roman woman with duties similar to Clotho was called Nona. Nona means nine in Latin and for Nona, and all mothers, the number nine has special significance. Roman mothers-to-be are said to have called upon Nona in their ninth month of pregnancy when the child was due.

What those students of Latin and Greek mythology probably didn’t know, unless there were some old Norwegians among them, is that these mythological women can also be found in old Norse and Germanic tales of spinners. The Norwegian spinners are called Norns. Tales of these three Norn sisters  are found in ancient Norwegian epic poetry. According to the poems the women are called Urðr, who represents the past, and Skuld, who represents the future. The third sister, Verðandi, represents the present. If you want to find the trio you would look for them at the water well Urðarbrunnr, which can be found beneath the world tree, Yggdrasil. It is there that they spin the threads of life. They also are in attendance at the birth of a child where the fabric of the child’s Fate is determined.

I don’t know how old the Greek and Roman mythologies are, but the Norse poems are at least 800 years old. It’s a mystery that such ancient tales are so similar. And it’s a mystery to me that my little village has become part of the fabric of those old stories.