Skadi – Goddess of the Hunt, the Mountains and Winter

Gods & Goddesses Skadi, goddess of the hunt and of winter, on skis with a bow

She came to Asgard to take revenge – and stayed as a goddess. Skadi is the mistress of the mountains, of winter, of the hunt and of skiing: a giantess who fought for her place among the gods rather than being given it.

Skadi (Old Norse Skaði) is the daughter of the giant Thjazi. Her name may be connected with ‘harm’ – or, more intriguingly, with the old name for the land itself: some scholars see in Skaði a root of ‘Scandinavia’ (‘Skadi’s isle/land’). Whether that is right is disputed, but it fits: Skadi is the goddess of the wintry northern landscape par excellence.

The March on Asgard

Skadi’s story begins with a death. The gods had killed her father Thjazi (he had earlier carried off the goddess Idun and her apples). For revenge Skadi arms herself with helmet, mail and weapons and marches alone on Asgard. Instead of fighting her, the gods offer her atonement: three things in reconciliation – a marriage with a god, that Loki make her laugh, and that her dead father be honoured in the sky.

Choosing a husband by the feet. Skadi may choose a husband for herself – but only by the sight of the feet. She hopes for the fair Baldr and reaches for the cleanest feet. They belong to the sea god Njörd. The marriage turns out unhappy: she cannot bear it by the noisy sea (the gulls keep her awake), nor he in her silent, cold mountains (the wolves howl too loudly for him). So they part – an almost modern image of two people who cannot follow each other to where the other is at home.

And Loki’s part? To make Skadi laugh, Loki ties a rope to a billy goat and to his own genitals – a coarse tug-of-war that ends in shrieking until he tumbles into Skadi’s lap. Then she laughs. The grave giantess’s rise to goddess is thereby sealed.

“On skis she glides, and with the bow
she hunts through wintry heights.”
— image after Snorri’s Gylfaginning (sense following Simrock, public domain)

Sources. Skadi’s story is found in Snorri’s Skáldskaparmál and Gylfaginning (Prose Edda, c. 1220) as well as in Lokasenna and Grímnismál of the Poetic Edda. Her dwelling is called Þrymheimr, her father’s hall in the mountains. Standard reference: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology.

Skier, Huntress, ‘Ski-Goddess’

Skadi is called öndurgud and öndurdís – ‘ski-goddess’ and ‘snowshoe-lady’. Bow, skis and the wintry mountain hunt are her attributes. In her the northern peoples celebrate what their life in winter truly consisted of: survival in snow and cold, the hunt as an art, self-reliance. Skadi is no lovely goddess but a hard, free one – and precisely for that reason still beloved today.

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Sources & literature

Poetic Edda: Grímnismál (Þrymheimr), Lokasenna. Snorri Sturluson, Prose Edda (Skáldskaparmál: Thjazi, atonement, choosing the husband; Gylfaginning), c. 1220. German public-domain translation: Karl Simrock, Die Edda (1851). Scholarship: Rudolf Simek, Dictionary of Northern Mythology; John Lindow, Norse Mythology (2001).

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Skadi – Goddess of Winter

The March on Asgard

Skier, Huntress, ‘Ski-Goddess’

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Sources & literature