Skadi Demands Revenge
Wilhelm Wägner/Wikimedia CommonsSkadi and Njord.
When the Norse Gods killed her father, Thjazi, the giantess Skadi stormed into Asgard on a mission of vengeance. She was ready to kill them all — unless they met her demands.
First, they must let her choose one of the Norse gods to be her husband, she demanded. Secondly, he must make her laugh. For Skadi, like most people affected by grief, was overcome with an insatiable need to marry her father’s murderers and watch them perform improvisational comedy.
The gods immediately agreed. To further sweeten the deal, Odin threw Thjazi’s eyes into the sky, where they became stars. Therefore, according to Norse legend, our home planet isn’t the only dismembered body part floating in space.
The gods managed to slide one odd stipulation into the contract. They would give Skadi the honor of marrying any one of the men who’d killed her father, but she had to choose a husband by looking only at their legs.
Skadi picked the god with the sexiest legs — believing they belonged to Baldur. However, she’d actually picked the sea god Njord, who was apparently the Norse god of firm swimmer’s legs. It was a miserable marriage that unsurprisingly ended in divorce 18 days later.
W. G. Collingwood/Wikimedia CommonsSkadi wakes up in bed next to Njord, realizing she’s made a huge mistake.
Loki’s Weirdness Saves The Norse Gods
The first demand was a bust, so all that was left was to make her laugh – a demand the grieving Skadi thought they would never fulfill. But Loki, willing to do anything for a giggle, pulled it off:
“Loki 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 Loki let himself fall on Skadi’s knees, and this made her laugh”.
Once again, Loki’s willingness to do anything involving a wild animal and his genitals saves the Norse gods from total annihilation.
