(no subject)

[darchildre]

frenchroast asked for the continuation of yesterday's story and let's be real, I am always up for telling Norse mythology stories. So here it is! This story can also be found in the Prose Edda, but yesterday's disclaimers still apply. (Loki is in this one too, though not as much as last time.)



So. Some days after the return of Idunna from Thrymheim and the burning of the jotun Thjazi, there came a great pounding on the gates of Asgard. Heimdall, watchman of the gods, peered out and saw a woman. She was tall and dark-haired, with a bow on her shoulder and a sword at her belt, armed and armored for battle. Her face under her helm was fierce and grim.

“Who are you, and what do you want?” Heimdall called to the woman.

“My name is Skadhi of Thrymheim,” she replied, “and I am Thjazi’s daughter. You Aesir killed my father, and I have come seeking vengeance. Open your gates and let the gods face my wrath! For I will not turn away from them until I am satisfied.” She raised her fist and pounded on the gates once more.

By this time, many of the gods had gathered at the gates to see the cause of the commotion. Odin Allfather looked down at Skadhi and saw that she was proud and high-hearted. Now, Odin wishes always to win the fiercest and best warriors to his side in preparation for the last great battle at the Ragnarok, so he had no wish to see this lady fight the gods of Asgard to her death, nor to keep her as an enemy. So he called to her, “Lady, there has been enough blood shed over this matter. Will you accept a payment for your father’s death? What weregild can we offer you?”

Skadhi thought long and hard. Her grief and wrath were hot within her and their burning made her unwilling to make peace with the gods. But she was as wise as she was fierce and she saw that yielding was the best course. “Three things I will have as payment for my father’s death,” she said at last.

“Name them,” Odin said, and he opened the gates to her. She came inside the walls of Asgard, and in that frithstead, for a time, she put away her weapons.

“First, you must make a lasting tribute to my father, Thjazi,” Skadhi told the gods. “He must be honored, and I must have a remembrance of him.”

So Odin took Thjazi’s eyes and cast them into the sky above Asgard. They stuck there and became two bright stars. And there they have remained ever after.

“That was well done,” Skadhi said, grudgingly impressed. “Now second, I must choose a husband from among you.”

“You may do so,” Odin told her, “but you must agree to choose him by his feet* alone.”

Skadhi agreed to this condition, and all the gods stood behind a curtain, so that only their bare feet could be seen. Skadhi considered for a while. She had hoped to be wed to Baldr the Bright, for he was the best of gods and so must surely be the best of husbands. So she picked the pair of feet that were cleanest and smoothest, for surely those feet must belong to Baldr.

But they were not Baldr’s feet. They were the feet of Njord of Noatun, the Harbormaster and Lord of Ships, and his feet were smooth and clean from the time he spent walking barefooted in the waters he loved. But Njord is a kindly god, rich and generous and glad-hearted, so Skadhi was not displeased by her choice. The two of them were then wed.

“You have had two parts of your weregild,” Odin said. “What is the third?”

“That will be hardest of all for you to give me,” Skadhi answered. “Indeed, it may be impossible. For I wish you to make me laugh again.” For her heart was still heavy with her grief at her father’s death and she thought that she might never feel joyful again.

“That is my task,” said Loki, stepping forward. He had not spoken to Skadhi before, since it was through his actions that Thjazi had met his death, and he feared she might hold him a special grudge.** But if any of the gods could coax a laugh from her, it would be tricksy Loki.

He had a goat. He began to tell a story about his adventures with that goat. And that story can’t be told her, for your storyteller doesn’t know it, but by all accounts it was very funny. The assembled gods roared with laughter, but all of them kept one eye on Skadhi to see if she laughed. Eventually, Loki ended up tied to the goat’s beard in an intimate and unpleasant fashion, playing tug-of-war. But the goat won that game, for when Loki gave a particularly hard tug, the rope snapped and he went careening backwards, arms flailing and tripping over his trousers, straight into Skadhi’s lap.

And as he looked at her, upside-down, he saw her face change. First her lip twitched. Then she smiled. Then she laughed - great bursts of laughter, until her shoulders shook and she sobbed with it. And when at last she stopped, the grief in her heart was soothed, a little. (For that is one of Loki’s gifts: the laughter that comes even in the midst of grief and pain, that cannot be kept out, and heals the heart by its passing.)

And so Skadhi was paid the weregild for her father’s death. She and her new husband, Njord, agreed that they would spend half their time in the mountains of Thrymheim and half by the shores at Noatun. But they could not be happy in each other’s homes. The howling of the wolves in the mountains kept Njord awake at night. Skadhi hated the cries of the gulls by the shore, and the sound of the waves. And so they decided to dwell apart from each other, but their parting was amicable and Skadhi is still counted among the goddess of the Aesir and is stepmother to Njord’s children, Freyr and Freyja. She lives still in Thrymheim, in her father’s home, and loves skiing in the snowy mountain woods and all the arts of hunting.






*I bet you're checking this note for some kind of explanation as to why she has to choose them by their feet. Sorry - I have no idea! Nor have I been able to find an explanation through a cursory internet search. Mythology, man - full of mysteries.

**Which she did, and one day she would remember it and be avenged. But that's another story, to be told another time.


Not gonna lie, if anyone want me to tell more stories, I will totally do that.