3) Now we come to a part of the story that definitely echoes the Njord - Skadi myth. Hadingus defeated the giant, but in doing so was injured himself, and lay unconscious, nursed by Regnilda. She wanted to be sure she would know him again, and sewed a ring into a wound in his leg. (These days he'd sue her.) As the text has it:
Later on, when her father had granted her the freedom to choose her own husband, she reviewed the young men who had assembled at the banquet and handled their limbs in an attentive fashion, searching for the token she had once laid away. Detecting the clue of the concealed ring, she scorned the rest and embraced Hading, consequently marrying the man who had not allowed a giant to possess her as his wife.[161]
One wonders what thoughts went through their minds as she was feeling their legs. The parallel is clear, however, although Skadi stopped at viewing them.
4) One unusual feature of both the Skadi and Regnilda stories is that both are able to make free choice of their own husband, although Skadi's is somewhat constrained, due to the feet-only rule. I will be discussing elsewhere just how unusual this was, and what an Old Norse audience would have made of it, but it is important to both stories.
In Skadi's case, it is a core part of the story that she is frustrated in her desire for Baldr, and winds up with Njord, in what seems like a free choice of her own. In Regnilda's case, it would be little use her sewing the ring in Hadingus' leg if she couldn't freely choose him afterwards.
5) Both Hadingus's and Regnilda's complaint obviously echo Njord and Skadi's, although they aren't really motivated in the same way. Regnilda's complaint makes no sense; she's nowhere near the sea, although you could argue that she getting in her complaining first.
Hadingus' complaint is a bit odd, too, since he doesn't want to go and live by the sea-shore, he wants to go a-Viking; he misses the adventures he used to have. Presumably Saxo (or whoever told the story he heard or read) knew the verses from Snorri and felt that they fitted Hadingus' discontent with life in the interior.
In conclusion, then, the story of Hadingus and Regnilda was inspired, or at least assisted, by the Njord - Skadi myth. It's hard to know if this is a case of literary borrowing, i.e. Saxo knew the myth, and used it to shape his own story, or if the two had become intertwined at a much earlier stage. (I should note here that in the introduction to Book One of The History of the Danes, Davidson and Fischer take apart Dumézil's arguments, although they do note the similarities of the verses. They just aren't convinced that Hadingus and Njord are similar in any other way, including the leg inspection, which they say is a very common folktale motif.[162]) The only dissimilarity is that we know of no breach between the heroic couple, whereas the god and goddess became the most famous exemplars of incompatibility.
Kormak's Saga
That evening Steingerd came out of her bower, and a maid with her. Said the maid, "Steingerd mine, let us look at the guests."
"Nay," she said, "no need": and yet went to the door, and stepped on the threshold, and spied across the gate. Now there was a space between the wicker and the threshold, and her feet showed through. Cormac saw that, and made this song:
(1) "At the door of my soul she is standing,
So sweet in the gleam of her garment:
Her footfall awakens a fury,
A fierceness of love that I knew not,
Those feet of a wench in her wimple,
Their weird is my sorrow and troubling,
- Or naught may my knowledge avail me -
Both now and for aye to endure."
Then Steingerd knew she was seen. She turned aside into a corner where the likeness of Hagbard was carved on the wall, and peeped under Hagbard's beard. Then the firelight shone upon her face.[163]
(W.G. Collingwood & J. Stefansson)
You don't have to strain too hard to see the parallels between Kormak's Saga and the Njord - Skadi myth. I might add that in the second verse that Kormak makes, he mentions Steingerd's feet again: “once more I looked at the ankles of the nobly-grown woman"[164]. We have to assume that at this point in the narrative he hasn't seen anything else of her, so the parallel with the line-up of the various gods is strengthened.
As the saga unfolds, we learn that although Kormak and Steingerd were to marry, he doesn't turn up on the day, although there is no doubt that he loves her, and she him. In their case, this is due to a curse an old woman lays on Kormak after he kills her sons and drives her from her home, all unjust and dishonourable actions. So unlike Njord and Skadi, they don't make it past the altar, but like them, they end up separated, although it's by outside circumstances as much as their own natures. (As Steingerd later points out, a lot of what happened is Kormak's fault.)
One interesting point is that Steingerd takes matters into her own hands with regards to her marriage, telling Kormak to ask for her hand. Her choice may not be as free as Skadi's, but both of them do their best to get their man. Steingerd speaks a verse, too, a love-verse, which is unusual in Icelandic sagas. In fact, what happens is that Kormak speaks a half-verse asking her whom she would choose as a husband, and she finishes it, telling him she would choose him even if he were blind.[165] This is a far cry from Njord and Skadi bewailing their situations, but in both cases each speaks a verse giving their point of view, and the one answers the other.
John Lindow saw parallels between Kormak's coup de foudre and the love that Frey conceived for Gerdr when he first saw her (and her shining arms). He suggested that Skadi's choice by foot was also less capricious than it might seem - that she too had been struck by the beauty of a clean white foot.[166] Unfortunately, in her case they belonged to the older, unromantic Njord.
Steingerd's name is of significance here, since it echoes Gerdr, Frey's beloved. A kenning that Kormak uses in the same verse where he speaks his love is also interesting: fall-Gerdr or fjallr-Gerdr.[167] The latter would mean mountain-Gerdr, which given Steingerd, stone-Gerdr, seems reasonable, but it also suggests a giantess-name, which links back to Gerdr herself and also Skadi, who is a mountain-giantess.
Lindow goes on to point out that feet have potential in Norse myth, since the first giant, Ymir, created life between his two feet. That life was a six-headed giant, who, like Starkadr, was seriously excessive. Lindow thinks that by showing their feet the gods were emphasizing their normality at Skadi's expense. So their act of contrition (penitents went barefoot) was also a subtle act of one-up-man-ship.[168]
Kormak's end, too, seems to parallel the Vanir, but in this case he follows Freyr, rather than Njord. He fights his rival Bersi for the first time with a borrowed sword, and that after he planned to go into battle with an axe. Freyr has to fight Beli with an antler, having given his sword to Skirnir when he sends him to woo Gerdr. Kormak does not follow instructions, and the sword malfunctions. In later duels he uses a sword blunted by a witch, so that he winds up using it like a cudgel. He does have a sword at his final battle, but it obviously fails him.[169]
In all three cases, the marriage does not work or never takes place. We leave Frey in For Skirnis longing helplessly for his love, and Kormak is cursed to languish in a similar way. As for Njord and Skadi, the sight of a foot was no augur of a successful marriage, and Njord is left with neither his old wife/sister nor anyone to take her place.
Other Parallels
Folktales and Fairy tales
The play with Loki and the goat resembles a type of folktale like the Grimm tale of the Golden Goose. Whoever touches the goose sticks to it, and whoever touches that person sticks to them, and so on. There are also ruder versions, such as the himphamph, in which a lover tries to distract the cuckolded husband by getting him to construct the himphamph. The husband gets his own back, binding the lover, wife, maid and others in obscene situations.
There is also a Nordic version which combines the Golden Goose and the people getting stuck together in embarrassing ways, as well as a version collected in Telemark where:
the bird is a magpie, and the persons who get stuck are
a beautiful girl, a knight who has dropped his trousers more or less at the sight of the girl, a kitchen maid who, looking for a sausage, has grabbed the knight's penis, and the cook, who tried to hit the kitchen girl on the rear end with a ladle, thereby attaching herself to the himphamph, and who has the outhouse bucket attached to her own rear end.[170]
When you look at these stories, Loki's trick with the goat doesn't seem so outrageous.
The other folktale motif that the Loki episode brings to mind is the suitor test. This involves a princess or other woman who cannot or will not laugh, and the suitor has to surprise her into laughter. This is similar to many myths in which a god or goddess becomes wrathful, or is in mourning, and is restored to normal through laughter at some obscene display. This is also a common element in folk and fairy tales, so that the Aarne-Thompson index includes it in their tale types, as Types 559, 571-4, 1642.[171]
Skadi, of course, has her own suitor test, which instantly makes you think of Cinderella, although in this case it's the fairest rather than the smallest feet. (Cinderella crossed with Snow White, perhaps?) There are other versions of this sort of story, including an Indian tale in which a father and son choose brides. In this story, they choose their brides on the basis of their footsteps, only to find that the father has chosen the daughter and the son the mother. In the Stith Thompson index this is listed as H365: "Bride test: size of feet".[172]
The final compensation, turning Thiazi's eyes into stars, could be a just-so story that explains how a natural phenomenon came into being. These are common all around the world, and persist to this day. I can remember as a child being shown Father Duffy's well, the water gushing from the place where he struck the ground with his walking stick.[173] Thiazi's Eyes are usually assumed to be the main stars of Gemini, which are bright enough to attract attention and a story.
Chanson de Malmariée and Bridal Laments
The complaints of Njord and Skadi, echoed by Hadingus and Regnilda, are similar to the bridal laments found in many societies; especially ones where the bride is expected to relocate to her husband's home. Another, closely related genre, is the chanson de malmariée, which also details a woman's complaints against her husband, the difference being that in the chansons she has been married long enough to really have something to complain about. Malmariée literally means "badly married", and the songs are litanies of complaints about inconsiderate and slobbish husbands, who are sometimes violent as well. (Male readers may be pleased to know that there was a subgenre of masculine marital complaint, both comic and serious.)
The bridal lament is the more closely related to Skadi's circumstances, since the new bride or bride-to-be expresses both her fears about her new home and longing for the home and family left behind. Davidson quotes the Kalevala:
She must bear this without complaint, she is told, and if asked if her mother-in-law gives her butter to eat: 'always say it is given/ brought in a dipper, though you / get it but once in summer / and that from two winters back' (Bosley 1989: 23, 443). The advice to the bridegroom in section 24 as to how to treat his wife helps to complete the gloomy picture of the young bride's subordinate place in the household"[174]
A Lithuanian bridal laments reflects the weeping a young woman was supposed to perform before the wedding:
My heart is broken with grief...
Swiftly to my garden I run,
There shall I weep.
Like streams in spring my tears shall flow...
In my sorrow I am alone, I, a poor orphan...
Farewell my well-beloved flowers,
Farewell my darling garden.[175]
And, at the other end of the Indo-European spectrum, we have the laments of the Indian goddess Nandadevi, who once a year goes on pilgrimage to her native village, and then has to return to her husband, Shiva:
At her mother’s home life is very different: she has ‘butter from seven different places, and breads that are fried with the leaves of the forest’ with abundance of milk and rice (Sax 1991: 91), butter once more being regarded as something of primary importance in the diet. Not only do the songs express her reluctance to leave her mait [natal home] after marriage, but also during the pilgrimage it is claimed that when coming down from the mountain, her palanquin drags the men carrying it swiftly towards the village, while on the journey back it is so heavy that they have great difficulty in getting up the slope
(Sax 1991: 58–9).[176]
Young wives returned to their home villages for this festival, so the goddess' experience echoed their own. Bengal had a similar festival dedicated to the powerful goddess Durga, although the songs contrasting the hard life the bride had in her husband's home with her pleasant life with her family remain consistent.
The bridal laments clearly reflect a pattern where the bride must relocate to her husband's home, usually living with his family. It is not surprising that a young woman might worry about such a change. Njord and Skadi, however, try each other's abodes in turn, but without a satisfactory result.
The chanson de malmariée, on the other hand, is a direct complaint about the husband in question:
When the boor goes to market,
He does not go there to bargain,
But to spy on his wife
Lest someone seduce her.
In my heart I feel them, the sweet pains,
How could I be cured of them?
Boor, get away from me,
For your breath will kill me.
I am certain that your love and mine
Will yet separate.
In my heart I feel them, the sweet pains,
How could I be cured of them?[177]
As you might expect with Provencal songs, there is often a lover waiting in the wings, either real or imagined. They may not have been meant to be taken entirely seriously, although in society where arranged marriages were the norm, and husbands chosen for material reasons rather than sex appeal, many women must have felt a similar way. That women composed many of these songs adds to the interest.
It is easy to imagine the two dialogues of Njord and Skadi or Hadingus and Regnilda as a duet on similar lines. In much the same way the Newfoundland folk song 'A Great Big Sea Hove in Long Beach'[178] is often performed as a duet or with the choir split into male and female halves, so that each of the characters' views are put across by the appropriate gender.
Another, modern parallel
It seems appropriate that the modern variant on the Njord - Skadi story comes from Tolkien. The story goes that two races, the Black Númenóreans and the Gondorians, were at war. The Gondorians and Arnorians were breakaway Numenoreans who considered the others to be renegades.[179] It is not known why the Gondorian king Falastur married Berúthiel of the Númenóreans, presumably as a political accommodation. She went to live in Pelargir, Falastur's home, which was by the sea. She hated the smell of the sea and fish, and the noise of gulls. She wore dark clothing and loathed all ornament. Her name means something like "Angry Queen".[180] She became proverbial, to the point where more than 2,000 years later Aragorn mentions her and her cats in an off-hand remark.[181] Unlike Skadi, she was exiled by the Gondorians and returned home. Tolkien himself commented that Berúthiel was like Skadi, since both disliked their maritial homes.[182]
Perhaps it's just a comment on the sort of people I know, but it is amazing how many people referenced Berúthiel when I told them about this book.
Chapter 7
Theories About This Myth
it could be argued... that any myth is a neutral structure that allows paradoxical meanings to be held in a charged tension. Indeed, we might argue that this is one of the defining characteristics of a myth, in contrast with other sorts of narratives (such as novels): a myth is a narrative that is transparent to a variety of constructions of meaning.[183]
(Wendy Doniger)
Popular treatments of the Njord - Skadi myth seem to focus on a naturalistic explanation, where sea and mountains, or summer and winter, cannot meet. Ideas of
this kind often go back to the 19th century "nature-myth" school, which held that all myths were essentially early attempts at science, explanations of the world and how it worked. For example:
Skadhi’s anger against the gods, who had slain her father, the storm giant, is an emblem of the unbending rigidity of the ice-enveloped earth, which, softened at last by the frolicsome play of Loki (the heat lightning) smiles, and permits the embrace of Niord (summer). His love, however, cannot hold her for more than three months of the year (typified in the myth by nights), as she is always secretly longing for the wintry storms and her wonted activities among the mountains.[184]
I think it's pretty obvious that this is a pretty reductive explanation of a myth.
The reason it's still popular now is, I think, twofold. First, the economic reason: the books that explain everything in terms of nature are all out of copyright, and so cheap to buy, whether as a paperback or ebook. A lot of them are available free on the internet.
Second, and this does not apply exclusively to Heathens and Pagans, the emphasis these days is on getting in touch with nature, and the concern over the environment. Paul Birbre is perceptive about this:
The ritual marriage of sky and earth has been a popular interpretation [of the Gerdr-Freyr myth] doubtless because scholars wish to think that ancient people thought that way; they wish to think this, because they themselves find it an emotionally significant image. They feel this, I suspect, since they themselves are the product of one religion, Christianity, which involves a sky-god in whom they no longer, perhaps, wholly believe, and of a second, Darwinism, which involves a procreative Earth, Terra Mater.[185]
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