Njord and Skadi Read online

  Skade, the daughter of the giant Thjasse, donned her helmet, and byrnie, and all her war-gear, and betook herself to Asgard to avenge her father’s death. The asas offered her ransom and atonement; and it was agreed to, in the first place, that she should choose herself a husband among the asas, but she was to make her choice by the feet, which was all she was to see of their persons. She saw one man’s feet that were wonderfully beautiful, and exclaimed: This one I choose! On Balder there are few blemishes. But it was Njord, from Noatun. In the second place, it was stipulated that the asas were to do what she did not deem them capable of, and that was to make her laugh. Then Loke tied one end of a string fast to the beard of a goat and the other around his own body, and one pulled this way and the other that, and both of them shrieked out loud. Then Loke let himself fall on Skade’s knees, and this made her laugh. It is said that Odin did even more than was asked, in that he took Thjasse’s eyes and cast them up into heaven, and made two stars of them. Then said Æger: This Thjasse seems to me to have been considerable of a man; of what kin was he? Brage answered: His father’s name was Olvalde, and if I told you of him, you would deem it very remarkable. He was very rich in gold, and when he died and his sons were to divide their heritage, they had this way of measuring the gold, that each should take his mouthful of gold, and they should all take the same number of mouthfuls. One of them was Thjasse, another Ide, and the third Gang. But we now have it as a saw among us, that we call gold the mouth-number of these giants. In runes and songs we wrap the gold up by calling it the measure, or word, or tale, of these giants. Then said Æger: It seems to me that it will be well hidden in the runes.

  (Skáldskaparmál: ch. 2 & 3, Anderson's trans.)

  Both Skadi and Aegir come to Asgard and survive. They actually come away having established a relationship with the Aesir, and if that relation seems a little unequal, what did you expect?

  The other interesting thing that we learn here is that Thiazi was rich. Presumably, since Skadi inherited his domains, she inherited his money, too. That might just constitute the one thing she has in common with Njord, who was sometimes described as "the Wealthy".

  The story of their marriage, and Thiazi's wealth, is told in Gylfaginning, the Deluding of Gylfi. This was a king who went in disguise to Asgard, only to be met by Odin and his two brothers, also in disguise, who instruct Gylfi in the lore of Norse mythology. Gylf forms the first section of the Prose Edda, and as is usual with Snorri, it explains and expands on bits of skaldic verse and lore. Snorri relates the story of Njord and Skadi's unhappy marriage to explain verses supposedly spoken by the Van and the giantess.

  Njord took to wife Skade, a daughter of the giant Thjasse. She wished to live where her father had dwelt, that is, on the mountains in Thrymheim; Njord, on the other hand, preferred to be near the sea. They therefore agreed to pass nine nights in Thrymheim and three in Noatun. But when Njord came back from the mountains to Noatun he sang this:

  Weary am I of the mountains,

  Not long was I there,

  Only nine nights.

  The howl of the wolves

  Methought sounded ill

  To the song of the swans.

  Skade then sang this:

  Sleep I could not

  On my sea-strand couch,

  For the scream of the sea-fowl.

  There wakes me,

  As he comes from the sea,

  Every morning the mew.

  Then went Skade up on the mountain, and dwelt in Thrymheim. She often goes on skees (snow-shoes), with her bow, and shoots wild beasts. She is called skee-goddess or skee-dis.

  (Gylf 23)

  We know that the verses that Skadi and Njord spoke were from some earlier poet, but unfortunately Snorri doesn’t tell us who. (He may not have known.) As we shall see, they were well-known enough for Saxon Grammaticus to import them into the story of Hidings and Reginald.

  The last part of the passage, about Skadi returning to her mountains has been interpreted two ways: either the two move back and forth between the two places, while others read it as saying they went their separate ways. Skadi left Njord “fór upp á fjallið og byggði i Þrymheimi”, which seems to imply that she now stays at Thrymheim instead of rotating between two dwellings. Certainly the Norse seem to have read it that way.

  In the Ys, a more historical work that tells the story of the kings of Norway (although it starts with Odin, Njord, and Freyr), Snorri himself says that:

  Njorth married a woman who was called Skathi. She would not have intercourse with him, and later married Othin.

  Which seems pretty final. The skald Thórdr Sjáreksson also wrote a verse about it:

  Gudrun's self by ill Her sons did kill;

  The wise God-brideAt the Wane's side Grieved;

  men tellOdin tamed steeds well;

  'T was not the sayingHamdir spared sword-playing.

  (quoted in Skld XIII, Byock)

  which seems to suggest that Skadi's lack of love for Njord was proverbial, or at least widely known.

  After Skadi married Odin (if she did) they had a son, Saeming. Eyvind skaldaspillir wrote a poem, the Haleygjatal, tracing the earls of Lade back to Saeming:

  2. That scion

  his sire gat, of

  Aesir's kin

  with etin maid,

  the time that

  this fair maiden,

  Skathi hight,

  the skald's friend [Odin} had.

  3. ...

  Of sea-bones,

  and sons many

  the ski-goddess

  gat with Othin.

  Snorri explains this by saying:

  “Earl Hakon the Mighty reckoned his pedigree from Saeming." (Ys. 2)

  I can't help but wonder if the non-consummation has to do with the fact that Odin then fathered numerous sons - not just Saeming - with Skadi. It seems a very pointed contrast. Of course, the motive may once again have been political - Saeming would have been the oldest son, with no older brother to overshadow him. (And no Vanir brother to dispute the Aesir claim.)

  The Ys is concerned with genealogy and kingly dynasties, in this case the Ynglings, who traced their linage back to Yngvi-Frey, and before him Njord and ultimately Odin. Snorri wrote it to expand on the poem Yt, which does not mention any gods, but lists the human members of the dynasty, who seem to have had a talent for unusual deaths. Skadi's son Saeming mentioned above, however, is from another dynasty, the earls of Hladir in Norway, who traced their descent from Odin and Skadi. For more on the Hladir, see the section on the Sami, as well as the discussion of Skadi and Thorgerd Holgabrudr, and see under Njord for more on the Ynglings.

  Did Snorri invent the story of Skadi?

  Which brings us to an interesting point - was there a myth about Skadi prior to Snorri's Edda? Several people have suggested not, on the basis of either "fairy-tale motifs" or else because Snorri felt he had to justify Skadi's presence in Asgard, so he invented a story to get her there. De Vries, for example, is dismissive of both halves, saying that the Thiazi myth is full of folktale motifs and echoes of other Norse myths, so it can't be original.[16]

  Ulf Drobin, on the other hand, said that while the way Snorri knits the episodes together into a flowing whole is very literary, it doesn't mean the units themselves cannot come from earlier times. It just means Snorri was good at putting them together.[17] We know that certain elements existed prior to Snorri: Hst, the stanzas by Eyvind and others, various kennings for the main characters. It is frustrating to know that apart from Snorri there's no source for the Skadi-story, but it is good that we have that much, considering what has been lost.

  Also, as Preben Meulengracht Sørensen points out:

  A glance at the investigations of this question, however, reveals that it cannot be answered definitively, and this is perhaps because the question itself has been put in the wrong way. The reason why we cannot say how old an eddic poem is in that we do not know what the poem was like before it was written down in the for
m in which it is now extant. In other words, we do not know what it is we are trying to date.[18]

  So we don't know how much of the Skadi-myth existed before, and in what form. It may be that Snorri invented a revenge motif to get Skadi to Asgard so she could be unhappily married to Njord, or maybe someone else decided that the Hst tale cried out for a sequel. In a certain sense, we'll never know, and trying to eliminate a myth because it has "wonder-tale" characteristics will end by cutting out most of the myths, especially those of Thor. (And Loki.)

  Also, I think that there should be (if there isn't already) a Fallacy of the Older Form. There seems to be some idea that old is authentic, while anything new, any innovation on what came before, has to be ersatz. Perhaps I notice this because I was raised a Catholic, and two doctrines that everyone associates with the Church, papal infallibility[19] and the bodily assumption of the Virgin Mary[20], aren't actually very old. So if the Pope can be divinely inspired to invent new dogmas, why couldn't the ancient Norse poets?

  In our times we have UPGs, which tell us a great deal about the concerns that modern understanding of the old myths tries to meet. (It's no surprise that gender, class, and outsiderness are in the forefront of how we interpret myths these days, considering how much attention we pay them in the wider culture.) To my mind these are signs that the myths were still living and growing. When they stagnate and can't be changed or improved upon, that's when people lose interest in them. (In modern terms, think about Superman and Batman, who've died, come back, been irrevocably injured, come back, etc. They've evolved, especially Superman, and been retconned[21] more times than any of us have had hot dinners.)

  Thiazi's Eyes: The Final Atonement

  The last part of the gods' atonement is entirely gratuitous, and consists of one of them throwing Thiazi's eyes up into the sky as two stars. Both Thor and Odin claim the honours for this deed. As we've already seen, Snorri's version gives Odin the credit for doing this. (I wonder if he was already sizing her up for when she left Njord?) In Harb, however, Thor says that he did it, and Odin doesn't correct him.

  19. 'I killed Thiazi, the powerful-minded giant,

  I threw up the eyes of Allvaldi's son

  into the bright heaven;

  they are the greatest sign of my deeds,

  those which all men can see afterwards...."

  (Hard. 19, Larrington's trans.)

  You'll notice that Thor is equally quick to claim credit for killing Thiazi, although Loki typically claims credit in Lks, telling Skadi he was "foremost" in the fight against the giant. (He also tells Frigga that he's the reason Baldr isn't there among the deities; clearly rubbing salt in wounds was the order of the day.)

  Naturally, the story of the two stars has spawned various astral speculations as to exactly which stars. The obvious candidates are Castor and Pollux: Alpha and Beta Geminorum. These two stars form the heads of the twins in Gemini, and are easy to see in the night sky. (Another take on this whole story is a cartoon at Happle.tea that points out the inherent gruesomeness of this whole act, and the spookiness of having your dad's eyes up there in the sky.[22] The stars of Gemini reach their highest point in the sky in January, which associates nicely with Skadi's wintry nature.[23] (The section on Thiazi has more on this.)

  Chapter 3

  Three or Nine? How long in Thrymheim?

  Njord and Skadi spent nine nights at Thrymheim, then nine nights at Noatun. Right? Fair and square.

  What if I told you that out of the four manuscripts we have of the Prose Edda, three say that the couple spent nine nights at Thrymheim, and only three at Noatun? Also, that the manuscript that says nine and nine refers to them as "winters", not nights, unlike the other three.[24]

  Considering the near-universal agreement among translators that it is nine and nine, not nine and three, this is rather surprising. Even quite serious scholars such as Jan de Vries and Gabriel Turville-Petre keep up with the agreement that this is a settled matter.[25] This is strange considering that three out of the four sources for this information say something else.

  The four manuscripts for Gylf are known as the Codex Regius, the Codex Trajectinus, the Codex Wormianus, and the Codex Upsaliensis. Regius has nine and nine, but it says winters, not nights, which suggests a rather longer stay in each abode. It is very clear that the time spent in each place was the same, saying "nine winters at Thrymheim, then nine at Noatun" (my translation from Dillman's French).

  Dillman and Jesse Byock both think that nine and three are correct. Byock explains his reasoning in his notes to his translation of the Prose Edda:

  The Codex Regius says 'nine winters.... and another nine', but the other three main manuscripts, Codex Upsaliensis, Codex Wormianus and Codex Trajectinus, say 'nine nights... and another three'.

  Which seems pretty straightforward. So the Regius manuscript not only changes the number of nights but it also introduces another change: from nights (nætr) to winters (vetr).

  However, the manuscript still quotes the verse where Njord says "nine nights only" he spent in Thrymheim, without doing anything about the discrepancy. Regius (or his source) did tidy up the grammar, however, to match the grammatical gender of vetr, which is masculine where nætr is neuter, and then presumably tidied up again by equalizing the nights.[26]

  He also notes that this chapter of Regius has other oddities; while all the mss. list Njord as the third god, after Odin and Thor, Regius fails to mention that Njord isn't one of the Æsir. Dillman thinks that perhaps the scribe forgot or was unaware that áss has two meanings, 1) a god generally, and 2) a member of a particular group of gods, the Æsir. Trajectinus notes that Njord is not one of the Æsir, but doesn't go on to specify what he is.[27]

  Another discrepancy is less significant: the Codex Upsaliensis has Thrudheim ("Power-Home") for Skadi's home instead of Thrymheim ("Noisy-Home"). This was probably written in confusion for Thor's home, Thrudvangr[28] ("Power-field").

  Dillman comments that it is strange that all these translators and editors would fix the winters/nights problem and leave the problem of how many untouched. He grants that it is not earth-shaking, but it does tell us something about the relations between the Vanes and the giants' daughters, which he figures probably goes back to Indo-European myth. It also tells us something about the translators and editors, of course.

  This raises the question of what a medieval Icelandic audience would have expected Njord and Skadi to do, since the gods and giants do, for the most part, exhibit recognizable human behaviour. Lindow sums it up like this:

  A contrast between male and female is also drawn, and it is implied that the differences between the sexes can be reconciled through the institution of marriage. This resolution, however, only gives rise to another question: Where to live? And, as the narrative proceeds, the attempt to mediate between matrilocal and patrilocal patterns of postmarital residence fails. After nine days by the shore and nine in the mountains, all the oppositions are put back in place, Njord and Skadi having decided that they are as incompatible as ships and skis, summer and winter, seagulls and wolves.[29]

  The fact that Njord spends more time in Thyrmheim could suggest a pattern of male relocation, or that he was the less powerful partner. That would once again suggest the power of Thiazi's family, and his daughter, the "ring lady".[30] Anthropologists call this uxorilocal marriage, meaning the husband has to relocate. I'm sure Njord had some less polite words, especially after several nights awake listening to the wolves howl.

  Ian Miller has a more down-to-earth approach, looking at how real couples sets up house. The sagas frequently show new households being established at marriage, especially among wealthier families. However, he also mentions two proverbs about what was the best type of household. Naturally they cut in different directions: "a house shall have a married couple", and "It's best for the property of brothers to be seen together". The first could favour simple households, based on neolocality or moving away from mom and dad. The second proverb favours complex
households, with several families making up one unit, usually living in several buildings on one property.[31]