Njord and Skadi

by Sheena McGrath

  It might be worth looking at their stories from the POV of the giantesses. As Larrington puts it, the story from Gerdr's point of view goes like this:

  Skírnismál is about a woman, apparently autonomous, and with unhampered access to wealth, who is sitting at home in her hall one day when an unknown man arrives and demands that she arrange a sexual rendezvous with a second man, Freyr. She refuses. Bribes and threats are offered and rejected. Finally a violent threat to the very core of her female identity brings about her submission and she agrees to meet the importuner.[297]

  Gerdr is quite clear about what she doesn't want; Freyr.

  But Skirnir's rune-wand also lays out a series of curses that presumably reflect his idea of things no woman would want. He threatens her with:

  a. Being invisible (26.4–6); being a public spectacle (28)

  b. Unbearable sexual frustration (29; 34.5–8; 36.3–4)

  c. A physically repulsive husband (31.1–3)

  d. Low social status and loss of autonomy (30; 35.4–10)

  e. Male, authoritarian disapproval (33)[298]

  This may seem odd to us, but such curses did exist at the time this poem was being composed. One 13th century runic inscription wishes a "harmful skag-valkyrie" with the ergi of the "she-wolf", wishing úþoli (unbearable desire) on her. (The she-wolf was believed to mate with the lowest animal in the pack, also reflecting the "three-headed thurs" that Skirnir wishes on Gerdr.) In Clarí saga, the maiden king Séréna suffers that very fate when she is humiliated, forced to wear coarse clothing which exposes her, and live with an ogre, all to break her spirit and humble her pride.[299]

  As for what women do want, their munr, or desire, is sovereignty, rule over themselves. The Wife of Bath, through her own example and through her tale, tells us as much. The curse on the Loathy Lady is only lifted when Gawain gives up his power to determine the course of her life, giving her back her autonomy. (Note, also, that both McTurk and Taylor saw the Wife as having similarities to Gudrun and Skadi.)

  As Larrington points out, Gerdr's choice is between Freyr and the three-headed Hrímgrímnir, but there is no other option on the table. She cannot choose not to choose. The autonomy that she seems to enjoy at the beginning of the poem, welcoming people into the hall and negotiating directly with Skirnir, as if she was without male relatives, is to end, either way. She won't be allowed to be a loose end like Skadi, who went off into the wild zone, leaving Njord behind.

  Skadi's story also looks a little different if we start from her end. Her father comes home one day with Idunn and her apples, and all the jotnar are happy. Then one day Thiazi (according to Snorri) goes out fishing, and Idunn disappears. Thiazi chases Loki, and doesn't come back. Somehow, word gets back to Jotunheimar that Thiazi is dead, and the gods consider this a great feat.

  Naturally, Skadi is incensed, and sets out for Asgard to see what concessions she can wring out of them by way of compensation and atonement. The Aesir seem to be reasonable, and offer her a choice of husband, but she winds up with the wrong one. Still, she decided to make the best of it, and gets to see Loki humiliated and her father's eyes cast into the heavens as stars. She and her new husband go to Thrymheim, but all he does is moan about how noisy it is. So they go to his place where the constant noise of the sea and the gulls starts to get to her. Skadi decides she doesn't, after all, want this man for a husband, not that badly, and leaves him. No husband is better than this one.

  When you compare the stories of Skadi and Gerdr, you wonder if one of the reasons Skirnir was so stern with her was to make sure she didn't wriggle out the way that Skadi did. Skadi managed to hang onto her autonomy, even if she did lose in the husband stakes. Gerdr appears to have lost hers.

  "The Gaze" and Norse Women

  Both the myths of Skadi and Gerdr involve questions of who is looking at whom, and the power that goes with that. If we accept Motz's interpretation of her name as meaning "Enclosed", then we could argue that like Gunnlod or Menglod she was hidden away, and the many barriers between them and suitors are a way of protecting that seclusion and, like Þryð in Beowulf, controlling who can see them.[300] For Menglod it all ends happily, we assume, although cynical me can't help but think of Michael Palin's bolshy peasant in The Holy Grail. Things don't go so well for Gunnlodr or Gerdr, perhaps because they're giants. Perhaps coming under the gaze of an Ase or even a Van is not so good.

  Skadi's story seems to completely invert that. She gazes at the gods, and chooses from among them, and the main sufferers are Njord, who ends up with no wife (again), and Loki, who’s endangered his testicles for nothing. Then she retreats to her mountains, away from them all and the troublesome glances of the gods; at least until Odin happens along, if we accept that genealogy.

  In the maiden king sagas we sometimes see the heroine deliberately avoiding being caught in the male gaze. In Sigurdar saga thogla, which Fridriksdóttir describes as one of the more violent and misogynistic stories, Sedentiana hides herself in her castle to escape male attention: "she decides to reside in her new castle, and the black one will never be able to look at her, with a view of pleasing his eyes."[301]

  Vision was no innocent thing in the Middle Ages, although their theories of gazing were somewhat different from ours:

  Vision, in the medieval period, went far beyond our modern conception of the sense. There was thought to be a physical continuity between the eye and the visible object; the eye was even considered to be able to "assimilate itself to the visible object as seen and cognized. In some sense, the eye becomes what it sees even as it sees what it sees." (Denery 2005, 89, 95)...A look could also hold baser connotations... looking was widely equated with lusting.[302]

  And no wonder, if looking was such a tactile thing. There were two competing theories of vision in the Middle Ages, one holding that the eye sent out rays that touched the object seen, while the other reversed the direction, with objects sending rays to the eye. Both types turned up in love-poetry, with either the poet seeking out the image of the beloved, or else rays from the woman's eye were sent to the poet's, often allegorized as Cupid's darts.[303] The "lowly" position of the courtly poet could be interpreted in this way, and perhaps Snorri's version of Freyr's lovesickness is his comment on romances and love-poetry.

  Vision is given a specifically Norse twist in the sharp, penetrating gaze of various characters in the literature. The god Thor nearly gives himself away when he's disguised as Freya, as Thrym asks why his eyes are so terrifying. (Thrym 27) Among mortals, males as diverse as St. Olaf and Sigurdr Fafnisbani were noted for their sharp or extra-good vision. Like Thor, Helgi Hundingsbana's eyes give away the game when he is disguised as a woman.

  The only female exception is Svanhid, who perhaps inherited it from Sigurdr. When she is sentenced to be trampled by horses, she has to have her head covered so as not to spook them. There is also the more magical side of vision: prophecy, which is mainly but not exclusively female, and sorcery, which is equal opportunity (and sorcerers were dispatched like Svanhild, so they couldn't ill-wish their executors).

  In a similar way, we hear of giantesses in the fornaldarsagas being shot through the eyes with arrows, presumably to both kill them and neutralize their magical abilities.[304] These giantesses are usually presented as monstrous, which legitimates violence against them, of course.

  Jacobs argues that Helga of Gunnlaugs saga reverses the conventions of the gaze, but in a very feminine way.[305] She does very little; many commentators have been surprised by how passive she seems compared to many other women in the sagas. However, her looking is emphasized throughout, at important plot-points. Her grandfather, Egil Skalla-Grimsson and her father are described as having excellent eyesight, which doesn't seem a big deal to us, but before modern medicine and contact lenses it was unusual.

  The story, in brief, is that Helga loved Gunnlaug, but was married to another. Her looking, even staring, at Gunnlaug is a motor of the plot. (Compare Steingerdr staring at Kormak, and Skirnir thr
eatening Gerdr with being stared at.) As Jacobs points out, Helga rarely speaks, so her gaze must speak for her; her continued looking at Gunnlaug is her way of asserting herself as subject, instead of the object of her father and husband's desires. Jacobs thinks that Helga's gazing does what love-poetry does for the skald, both inspired by the distance between themselves and their desire.[306]

  Giant-Girls, Phalloi, and Castration

  Moving right along from blinding, castration comes in three kinds in Old Norse literature: mimed, or at least, playful; religious, as in the odd rite related in Volsa thattr; and finally, real violence done by one man to another. (You could also include a fourth category; the magical curses laid on Kormak and Hrútr that prevent them from consummating their loves.)

  Writers of the sacrificial king school have tended to be (perhaps worryingly) interested in the episode where Loki ties his testicles to the nanny-goat's beard. From the outer limits (Barbara Walker) to the fairly normal (Richard North) this idea keeps cropping up. The idea that Loki has tackle ripped off to amuse a goddess is not out of bounds for mythology; the gods have done plenty weirder things. (When you can trace your ancestry back to an androgyne and a cow, your normal is different.)

  However, while I can see connections between Loki and Baubo, I don't think that Loki died or became a woman or otherwise "fertilized the earth" either sacrificially or sexually. I certainly don't think there was ever any ritual like this one:

  Like Kali, Skadi had to be propitiated each year with an outpouring of male blood in primitive sacrificial rites. Her annual victim was assimilated to the god Loki, who became a "savior" by fertilizing Skadi with his blood. Loki's genitals were attached by a rope to a goat, and a tug-of-war ensued, until Loki's flesh gave way and he fell into Skadi's lap, thus bathing her loins in his blood. The gods watched anxiously to see if Skadi smiled; and when she did, it means spring could return once more to the land.[307]

  Presumably Ms. Walker thinks that Skadi was pleased by the blood.

  I think that John Lindow and Anthony Adams get closer to the mark. Lindow thought that Loki was playing with notions of status, since the freeborn could only be punished with fines, while slaves were normally given physical punishment, including castration.

  Adams' rather more gruesome paper looks at some historical examples but mainly focuses on the blinding and castration of Órækja Snorrason. This unpleasant episode from Íslendinga saga (the same one that featured the killing of Sturla Sighvatsson) follows another, threatened, mutilation of Hrafn Oddsson, who escapes by submission, essentially. You could say he choose symbolic over actual castration, given the nature of masculinity as it was constructed in the medieval north.[308] While some at the time may have seen his giving in to Gizurr Thorvaldsson as cowardly, all he loses is face, while Órækja suffers terrible physical injury, social isolation, and loses his wife.

  This was certainly an illegal act, since castration was considered a "major wound" like blinding someone or cutting off their ears, which warranted retribution and payment.[309] Conversely, beggars, slaves and anyone guilty of bestiality could be castrated as punishment. Could this have been what Loki was referring to: a servile man, caught in a sexual act with a nanny-goat, and being paraded like an adulterer? I could see someone laughing at that.

  The incident with Loki is part of the reason that Skadi is connected with this rather bloody idea. The other is the name "Morn", which is used in Hst to refer to her, and in general usage means a giantess. In the Flt, there is a rather odd incident related in the saga of St. Olaf, which is usually called Vǫlsa þáttr. It might be an indication of a cult of the mornir, or giantesses.

  Vǫlsa þáttr

  This all supposedly took place while St. Olaf and his men were visiting a farm. While they were there, the farmer killed a stallion, and the story goes on to describe various possible rituals that are performed with it. (The Romans at least had the decency to stick to the tail for their rites.)

  The odd thing is that if you read the actual story, it seems to start as a prank, or at least incorporates an element of teasing, as when the actual penis is severed, the farmer's son takes it into the room where the women are and shakes it at them, saying:

  Here you may see

  a vigorous phallus

  severed from

  a father of horses.

  For you, slave-woman,

  this Völsi

  is not at all dull

  between your thighs.[310]

  After that, however, his mother takes it and preserves it with herbs and leeks, and wraps it in linen. Much later she takes it out, lays it on her husband's knees, and says:

  Enlarged art thou, Völsi,

  and raised aloft,

  enriched with linen,

  supported by leeks.

  May giantesses

  accept this holy object,

  but now, my husband,

  you must accept Völsi.[311]

  The last four lines act as a refrain as the people pass it around, each time naming the person it is being passed to. Not everyone is enthusiastic; the daughter swears "by Gefjun/ and the other gods" that she is unwilling to accept the penis, but she participates in the ritual anyway. The whole thing ends when King Olaf throws it on the floor and the dog gets it. This upsets the whole family, but Olaf converts them, of course.

  It's hard to know if we're meant to take this seriously as a pagan ritual, or if it's meant to be exoticizing in the same way as Thiazi and his brothers sharing out gold by mouthfuls. You don't have to be a Freudian to see that the Loki - goat incident, the serpent set over Loki later, and then this form a phallic pattern. Presumably this where the Frazerian school is getting the idea from.

  There are two objections, however. First, we don't know if this was ever a pagan ritual; it could just as easily have been a joke, or possibly the writer made it up to contrast the ignorance of pagans with the superior knowledge of Olaf, who throws the penis to the dog instead of venerating it.

  Obviously the "sacred king" school and its associated pagan and Heathen adherents see the volsi as another instance of the fecundation of the earth through sacrifice and ritual. What sort of evidence can be found to support such an idea?

  It's difficult to disentangle the antiquarianism that the story obviously shows from any actual residue of pagan lore and practice. The story is obviously constructed on the "strange doings by yokels" model, also found in Gautreks saga. As Tolley puts it:

  (a) each involves a king visiting an isolated farmhouse;

  (b) the setting is an out-of-the-way place remote from normal society;

  (c) the local inhabitants are shown living their lives in a manner which is contrary to the norms of society;

  (d) the manner of life depicted is a source of astonishment but also amusement - the yokels are looked down upon as benighted and ignorant souls;

  (e) the coming of the king marks the end of this strange society, by conversion or suicide;

  (f) the yokels put up no resistance to the newcomers, despite outnumbering them and being noticeably inconvenienced by them;

  (g) the strangest parts of the description of the yokels' actions are highlighted by accompanying them with verses.

  All of these elements tend to suggest that the writer finds the pagans funny and outlandish, which makes it more likely that the episode was invented. Tolley thinks that the author may have included just enough older material to make his story seem both genuine and old.

  One of these is the lin and laukr motif. While Tolley thinks that the lin was supposed to be flax rather than actual linen, he notes that leeks (for which read any allium) were both preservative and had a medicinal function: they were said to increase semen and help women conceive.[312] The shape of a leek or the shoot from an onion or garlic bulb left to sprout may well have suggested such ideas.

  The stallion sacrifice and the priapic nature of the whole rite suggest Freyr, of course, and the famous priapic statue found at Rällinge in Sweden is usually a
ttributed to him. This is mainly due to the account by Adam of Bremen, which states that there was a statue of Freyr at Uppsala, and it was notable for its enormous penis:

  The third is Frikko, who bestows peace and pleasure on mortals, His likeness, too, they fashion with an immense phallus.[313]

  He goes on to say that they make offerings for war to Thor, but for marriages to Frikko.

  Sacred horses were kept at Freyr's sanctuary at Thrandheim in Norway. In Olaf Trggvason came there to destroy it, and happened upon a sacrificial rite: a horse was about to be killed "for Freyr to eat"[314], but the king took the horse and rode it to the temple, which was completely taboo, of course. (He attacked images of Thorgerd as well.) Horses were kept at temples of Freyr in Iceland as well, and we know that Hrafnkell had a stallion dedicated to Freyr and twelve mares as a stud. In Vatnsdaela saga the sons of Ingimund were followers of Freyr, and they liked to attend the horse-fights held in the god's honour. None of this demonstrates a phallic cult, but it does show a connection between Freyr and horses, especially since both Hrafnkell's horse and that of Ingimund's sons were named Freyfaxi, "mane of Freyr".

  So we know that Freyr could be a phallic god, and that he was associated with horses. The other side of the equation is the word "mornir", which the horse's penis is being offered to. Tolley states that he does not see any evidence for a cult of the giantesses, but he does also say that the only giantess who is referred to as Morn is Skadi, in Hst, where Thiazi is referred to as Morn's father. (The poem also refers to Thor as the "waster of the morn's children"[315].) One reading of this is that the marriage of Njord and Skadi ("Njordr" read here as "strength, manliness", or else "concealment") is having a sacred wedding to Skadi. (Tolley is quoting Gro Steinsland, who has put forward a theory of sacred marriages between god/kings and giantesses as renewing the land.[316])