Skadi- Norse GodDeity"Ski-Deity"

Þjazi's Daughter

Skaði's father was Þjazi, a giant who lived in Þrymheimr, the "thunder-home" high in the mountains of Jötunheimr. He possessed a cloak of eagle feathers that let him take the form of a great eagle, and in this shape he engineered the kidnapping of the goddess Iðunn and her apples of immortality. Without the apples, the Æsir began to age. Their hair grayed. Their strength faded.

The gods discovered that Loki had been complicit in Iðunn's abduction, and under threat of death he agreed to rescue her. Borrowing Freyja's falcon cloak, Loki flew to Þrymheimr, transformed Iðunn into a nut, and fled with her in his talons. Þjazi pursued in eagle form, but the gods had prepared a fire on Ásgarðr's walls. When Þjazi swooped low, his wings caught flame, and he fell within the walls where the gods killed him. Iðunn was saved. Skaði lost her father.

Arrival in Ásgarðr

Skaði did not mourn quietly. She arrived at Ásgarðr clad in helm, mail-coat, and weapons, demanding vengeance or compensation. The gods, weary from their conflict with Þjazi and unwilling to face prolonged war with another frost giant, offered to negotiate.

Skaði's terms were threefold. She wanted a husband from among the gods. She demanded that the gods make her laugh, something she said they could never do given her grief. And she asked for her father's eyes to be placed in the sky as stars.

The Choosing of Feet

The gods agreed to let Skaði choose a husband, but she must make her choice by looking only at the candidates' feet. The Æsir lined up behind a curtain. Skaði examined each pair and chose the most beautiful she saw: clean, well-formed, perfect. She expected these to belong to Baldur.

The curtain was drawn back. The beautiful feet belonged to Njörðr, the Vanir god of the sea. His feet were fair because he spent his days wading in clean salt water, while the other gods trudged through mud and battlefield gore. Skaði was bound by her choice.

Loki's Obscene Performance

The second condition remained: the gods must make Skaði laugh. Her grief was genuine, her nature stern. The Æsir tried various jests without success. Then Loki stepped forward with a goat and a length of cord.

He tied one end to the goat's beard and the other to his own genitals. The goat pulled one way, Loki the other, both squealing and struggling in a grotesque tug-of-war. Loki fell into Skaði's lap. Despite herself, the giantess laughed.

The Mismatched Marriage

Skaði belonged to Þrymheimr, with its howling wolves and frozen silence. Njörðr belonged to Nóatún, his coastal hall where seabirds screamed and waves crashed against the shore. Neither could find peace in the other's home.

Verses attributed to the pair in the Skáldskaparmál capture their mutual dissatisfaction. Njörðr said: "Hateful are the mountains, I was not long there, only nine nights; the howling of wolves seemed ugly to me compared to the song of swans." Skaði replied: "I could not sleep by the sea-shore beds for the screaming of birds; the mew wakes me coming from the wide sea every morning."

They tried alternating nine nights in each realm. Neither could endure even that. They separated, each returning to their own domain.

Loki's Binding

Skaði and Loki's enmity runs through the mythology. In the Lokasenna, when Loki crashes Ægir's feast and insults every god present, Skaði confronts him directly, warning that his days of freedom are numbered. Loki retorts that he was among the foremost at the slaying of her father Þjazi. She replies coldly that only bitter counsel will ever come from her shrines and fields.

When Loki's schemes finally went too far, culminating in Baldur's death, the Æsir captured him and bound him to three stones with the entrails of his own son Nari, hardened into iron. A serpent was placed above him, dripping burning venom onto his face. His wife Sigyn holds a bowl to catch the poison, but when she must turn to empty it, the venom falls on Loki and his writhing shakes the earth.

It was Skaði who placed the serpent.

Þrymheimr

After her separation from Njörðr, Skaði returned to her father's halls. Grímnismál 11 records: "Þrymheimr is the sixth, where Þjazi lived, that mighty giant; but now Skaði, fair bride of the gods, dwells in her father's old courts." She hunted with her bow and crossed the snow on skis, called Öndurguð, "ski-deity," in the Eddas.

The Ynglinga saga claims she later became a consort of Odin and bore him many sons, placing her among the ancestresses of Scandinavian royal lines. Odin fulfilled the last of her terms when he took Þjazi's eyes and cast them into the sky, where they became two stars. Her father's gaze looks down on all the worlds.