Skaði

Skaði is presented in the sources as the daughter of the jötunn Þjazi. After the Æsir kill Þjazi, Skaði goes to the gods to demand compensation. As part of the settlement the gods give her a husband; she chooses Njörðr after inspecting prospective husbands' feet (a feature present in fuller attestations summarized by the sources) and marries him. The marriage is explicitly framed as part of wergild/compensation paid by the gods for her father's death. In some euhemerized accounts (Heimskringla as summarized), an alternative tradition later presents Skaði as a wife of Odin and mother of sons, indicating variant narrative strands about her marital affiliations.

Primary summaries and epithet-forms emphasize Skaði's functional identity rather than a detailed physical portrait. She is called Öndurguð ('ski god') and Öndurdís ('ski dís'), marking her as a skiing-associated female supernatural. Sources place her at Þrymheimr (the mountain-hall of her father) and later at Nóatún through marriage, but they provide no consistent physical description of facial features, clothing, or precise bodily form in the supplied materials.

Attested roles and actions associate Skaði with skiing, bowhunting, mountains and winter. In narrative action she is specifically recorded as placing the venomous snake above the bound Loki (the snake whose dripping venom Loki's wife Sigyn catches), a single attested punitive/participatory act in the mythic sequence. She also demonstrates agency within the gods' legal/social order by insisting on compensation for her father's death and negotiating residence terms with Njörðr; she speaks and acts within assemblies (for example at Ægir's feast) and threatens or chastises Loki in Lokasenna.