page_title: Skaði
section_title: Gylfaginning
hierarchical_section_title: Skaði / Attestations / Prose Edda / Gylfaginning
caption_attribution_description: An illustration to the Edda. The list of illustrations in the front matter of the book gives this one the title Skadi's longing for the Mountains.
context_page_description: In Norse mythology, Skaði is a jötunn and goddess associated with bowhunting, skiing, winter, and mountains. Skaði is attested in the Poetic Edda, compiled in the 13th century from earlier traditional sources; the Prose Edda and in Heimskringla, written in the 13th century by Snorri Sturluson, and in the works of skalds.
  Skaði is the daughter of the deceased Þjazi, and Skaði married the god Njörðr as part of the compensation provided by the gods for killing her father Þjazi. In Heimskringla, Skaði is described as having split up with Njörðr and as later having married the god Odin, and that the two produced many children together. In both the Poetic Edda and the Prose Edda, Skaði is responsible for placing the serpent that drips venom onto the bound Loki. Skaði is alternately referred to as Öndurguð and Öndurdís.
  The etymology of the name Skaði is uncertain, but may be connected with the original form of Scandinavia. Some place names in Scandinavia refer to Skaði.
context_section_description: In chapter 23 of the Prose Edda book Gylfaginning, the enthroned figure of High details that Njörðr's wife is Skaði, that she is the daughter of the jötunn Þjazi, and recounts a tale involving the two. High recalls that Skaði wanted to live in the home once owned by her father called Þrymheimr. However, Njörðr wanted to live nearer to the sea. Subsequently, the two made an agreement that they would spend nine nights in Þrymheimr and then the next three nights in Njörðr's sea-side home Nóatún (or nine winters in Þrymheimr and another nine in Nóatún according to the Codex Regius.). However, when Njörðr returned from the mountains to Nóatún, he said:
  "Hateful for me are the mountains,
  I was not long there,
  only nine nights.
  The howling of the wolves
  sounded ugly to me
  after the song of the swans."
  Skaði responded:
  "Sleep I could not
  on the sea beds
  for the screeching of the bird.
  That gull wakes me
  when from the wide sea
  he comes each morning."
  The sources for these stanzas are not provided in the Prose Edda or elsewhere. High says that afterward Skaði went back up to the mountains and lived in Þrymheimr, and there Skaði often travels on skis, wields a bow, and shoots wild animals. High notes that Skaði is also referred to as "ski god" (Old Norse Öndurgud) or Öndurdis and the "ski lady" (Öndurdís). In support, the above-mentioned stanza from the Poetic Edda poem Grímnismál is cited. In the next chapter (24), High says that "after this", Njörðr "had two children": Freyr and Freyja. The name of the mother of the two children is not provided here.
  At the end of chapter 51 of Gylfaginning, High describes how the gods caught and bound Loki. Skaði is described as having taken a venomous snake and fastening it above the bound Loki, so that the venom may drip on to Loki's face. Loki's wife Sigyn sat by his side and caught the venom in a bowl. But when the bowl becomes full, she must leave to empty it, and then Loki is burned by the acidic liquid and he writhes in extreme pain, causing the earth to shake and resulting in what we know as an earthquake.
caption: Skadi's longing for the Mountains (1908) by W. G. Collingwood
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