Skadi in the Prose Edda

Skadi in the Prose Edda

From the version of the Prose Edda translated by Jean I. Young are two passages that refer to Skadi.

'Njord has a wife called Skadi, daughter of the giant Thjazi. Skadi wanted to have the homestead her father had had, on some mountains in the place called Thrymheim, but Njord wanted to be near the sea. They came to an agreement that they should be nine nights in Thrymheim and then another nine at Noatun. When Njord came back to Noatun from the mountain, however, he said this:

Mountains I loathed,
no longer than nine
nights did I stay there,
the howling of wolves
seemed ugly to me
compared with the hooping of swans.

Then Skadi said this:

I could not sleep
by the shore of the sea
for the noise of the mew
that awakened me,
the bird that flew
each dawn from the deep.

Then Skadi went up the mountain and lived in Thrymheim, and she goes about a great deal on skis and with her bow and arrow shoots wild animals. She is called Snow-shoe goddess, or Snow-shoe divinity. As it is said:

Thrymheim's the name
of Thjazi's place
that giant of monstrous frame;
his daughter wed with one of the gods
Skadi, now, the fair of face,
lives there in her sire's old home.'

'After that Loki was taken unconditionally and put into a cave. Taking three flat stones, the gods set them up on end and bored a hole through each. Then Loki's sons were captured, Vali and Nari or Narfi. The Aesir changed Vali into a wolf and he tore asunder his brother Narfi. The Aesir took his entrails and with them bound Loki over the edges of the three stones - one under his shoulder, the second under his loins, the third under his knee-joints - and these bonds became iron. Then Skadi too a poisonous snake and fastened it up over him so that the venom from it should drop onto his face. His wife Sigyn, however, sits by him holding a basin under the poison drops. When the basin becomes full she goes away to empty it, but in the meantime the venom drips on to his face and then he shudders so violently that the whole earth shakes - you call that an earthquake. There he will lie in bonds until Ragnarok.'

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