Poetry
Skai's Marriage
From the medieval Icelandic tales of Snorri Sturluson, (1178-1241), translated by Éamonn Morris, Waterford City, Ireland.
After the gods had killed Jaza the giant, his daughter Skai took
her helmet, mailcoat and weapons, and went to Asgar to avenge his death.
The gods wished to make settlement. They offered Skai the compensation
that she might choose for herself a husband from among them; but she
might only make her choice from seeing their feet, and no other part of
their bodies. At this moment she saw one man’s feet which were
exceedingly fair, and said: ‘I choose this one, for there can be little
ugly about Baldri’. But these were not Baldri’s feet: they belonged to
Njörer, the sea-god. His feet were always very clean from his living in
the ocean—the ‘shipkennel’.
In those mountains that are known as Thunderhome, Skai had a
dwelling that her father had owned. But Njörer wished to dwell in the
sea. They settled for this, that they should be nine nights on
Thunderhome, and the other nine nights in the shipkennel. When Njörer
came back to the sea from the mountains, he recited this:
Hateful are the mountains
Nine nights I was in them.
Evil is wolf’s howling
Compared with sea bird’s song.
And Skai recited this:
No rest on the sea bed
With screaming of seabirds.
Seagulls every morning
Woke me with sea crying.
Then Skai went up to the mountains along, and settled in
Thunderhome. She went skiing much with her bow and shot deer. She is
now called the Ski-Goddess.
Contributor
Snorri Sturluson
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