This is the first time I have heard of the gods weaving human fate on a loom; echoes of Penelope, but without the chance to unpick the weaving at the day’s end.

‘But the Lord was weaving a victory on his war-loom for the Weather-Geats.’

Source: Beowulf, Seamus Heaney (London: Faber & Faber, 2000 (1999)), p. 23