Origin and Religion of the Norn

The Charr are a special case. While they do not worship any gods, as proven by the Ecology of the Charr, they do believe in the gods' existance. And with that, they are forced to the rift when they die as proven with Scorch Emberspire and Garfaz Steelfur. Although they might go to a different "realm" than other races.

Although this is starting to get a bit off topic isn't it. Less about the Norn and more about all races. >.>

I know, I was being silly...

But for the sake of argument, Emberspire and Steelfur were special cases - they were caught up in the Cataclysm and sucked into the Realm of Torment. It's not even clear that they actually died, and weren't pulled bodily into Torment by a temporary rift.

That said, it probably is safe to assume they do have some form of afterlife.

Apologies for the double-post, but since I'm bringing up a new topic for the discussion and it's been a while since the last post, I thought it was better to make a new post for the bump.

While thinking on matters divine for a lore paper I'm working on regarding the gods, a thought struck me: While the Norn are most obviously connected to the Norse, the Norse religion was based around a 'conventional' pantheon of humanlike deities. While the rest of their culture does have similarities with the Norse, could the Norn religion have been based on or inspired by Native American totemic beliefs?

While my off-the-head knowledge of such is mostly from secondary sources, this may go some way towards explaining why Dwayna may be associated with a predatory animal, as the bear in Native American mythology is the totem with influence over healing and medicine.