Skadi’s Choice of a Husband

At a Glance

• Central figures: Skadi, giantess and goddess of winter and the hunt, daughter of Thjazi; Njord, Vanir god of the sea and calm waters; Loki, the trickster god of the Aesir.
• Setting: Asgard and Jotunheim; drawn from Norse mythology as recorded in the Prose Edda and Poetic Edda.
• The turn: Skadi comes to Asgard armed and demanding compensation for the killing of her father Thjazi, and the Aesir agree to her three demands - including a husband chosen by feet alone.
• The outcome: Skadi chooses Njord instead of Baldr, Loki makes her laugh with a goat and a rope, and the marriage between Skadi and Njord collapses under the weight of two irreconcilable worlds.
• The legacy: Skadi returns alone to her mountains, free of the marriage - and the gods place Thjazi’s eyes among the stars as she demanded.

Thjazi was dead. The Aesir had killed him - burned him at the gates of Asgard, after Loki had led him there like a beast to slaughter. He had stolen the goddess Idunn and her golden apples, the ones that kept the gods from aging, and so the gods had taken his life in return. A fair accounting by their measure. Not by Skadi’s.

She was Thjazi’s daughter. She armed herself, took up weapons and war-gear, and walked to Asgard alone. No escort. No herald. Just a giantess at the gates, ready for a reckoning.

Skadi at the Gates

The Aesir did not want a war with Jotunheim over this. They made an offer: compensation. Whatever form it might take.

Skadi named her price in three parts. First, a husband from among the gods. Second, laughter - the gods must make her laugh, which no one present believed they could do. Third, her father’s eyes returned to her, so she could place them in the sky where she could see them.

The gods agreed. But the husband came with a condition.

She could not see their faces when she chose. She would look only at their feet.

The Feet of Njord

Skadi knew what she wanted. Baldr - bright, unblemished, the most beautiful of the gods. She had heard enough. She was certain that beauty like his would show in the feet.

The gods lined up. She walked along the row, studying ankles and arches and the skin stretched over bone. Then she found them - clean feet, even-shaped, no calluses, no scars from iron or ice. The feet of someone who had never worked or suffered.

She chose.

The veil came down. The man standing before her was not Baldr.

It was Njord. God of ships, harbors, sea-wind, and the calm wealth that comes from water. Not a warrior. Not even close. A fisherman’s god, if one had to say it plainly.

The marriage was sealed all the same. A bargain made in front of witnesses holds in Asgard as surely as iron.

Loki’s Goat

One demand remained. The gods still had to make Skadi laugh. She stood among them cold-faced, and no one was under any illusion that it would be easy.

Loki stepped forward. He had a goat. He had a rope. He tied one end of the rope to the goat’s beard and the other end to a part of his own body he would rather not have involved in such an arrangement.

Then the contest began. Goat and Loki, each pulling back, each yelping, neither willing to give way. Back and forth across the floor of Asgard, stumbling, howling, Loki’s face cycling through expressions no face should have to make. The gods were watching. Some were already laughing.

Then Loki gave out. He toppled, landed in Skadi’s lap, and looked up at her with watering eyes and a ruined expression.

She laughed.

The three demands were met. The gods fixed Thjazi’s eyes in the sky. The bargain was closed.

Nine Nights at the Sea, Nine Nights at the Mountain

Neither Skadi nor Njord was foolish enough to pretend the marriage was more than it was. They tried to make it work by splitting their time - nine nights in Njord’s hall at Noatun by the sea, nine nights in Skadi’s hall at Thrymheim in the high mountains.

It failed immediately.

At Noatun, Skadi lay awake to the sound of gulls. The sea moved constantly, loud and salt-smelling, and she could not stand it. The waves did not stop. Nothing was still. At Thrymheim, Njord found the wolves howling through the dark hours and the cold settling into him before dawn. The mountains gave him nothing. He was a sea god. He needed the sound of water that went somewhere.

They had nine nights each way. That was enough to know.

Njord said it plainly when they returned: the mountains had defeated him. Skadi said just as plainly that the seabirds had defeated her. No anger in it. Just fact.

The Return to Thrymheim

Skadi left. She went back to her mountains, her skis, her bow, and the long cold silences of Thrymheim. The wolves that Njord had hated were company enough for her. She hunted. She moved across the snow. She was, by every account, better without the marriage than within it.

Njord returned to his ships and his harbor and his gulls, and the sea went on as it always had.

Thjazi’s eyes looked down from the sky.