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(Skadi’s Longing for the Mountains by W. G. Collingwood)

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Skadi:

From the north, from the north, from the howl and the ice,

From the crystalline lands and the wild blizzard’s bite,

Down the slopes of the mountains at giddying speeds,

Down the drops and the white curves impossibly steep,

 

From the north, from the blue caverns icicle-fanged,

From the heights would take long weeks to climb up again,

Down the grandeur sublime and the stinging-sharp air,

Through the cold of bright worlds and the crisp skies so fair,

 

Through the winds and the whirlwinds and glinting of frost

On my skis I swoop down, in these mists often lost;

And all things run together, all this white land so frore:

The trees run a-blur and the winds rush a-roar.

 

Down, down, down – down to Asgard I swoop on my skis

With a skating and slicing slick swoosh through the breeze:

Down to Asgard, to seek for a husband to wed –

For my father, dear father, in gods’ land lies dead!

 

Oh Thiazi, oh sire, by a flame-wall you fell,

By a trick of sly Lok thou wast rendered to Hel!

Now a daughter I’m not, but a wife I must be,

So the gods a fair consort must render to me.

 

To Valhall, to house perched on rainbow’s gold bend –

To the gloried vast portals and hallways I wend!

Now good father of gods, thou hast heard the just prayer,

And a recompense for forlorn child thou must swear!

 

Odin:

Oh good giantess, armed with the bow, and on skis,

From the white lands arrived, where the fingers quick freeze

And the toes and the nose – by red flames sit ye down,

That the blue of thy face might melt soft to the ground.

 

The morning is golden; I’ll conjure a mist –

And the men of us Aesir I’ll have tramp through this:

See their legs below fog, see their shapely white feet –

By these feet must thou choose what sweet husband thou’lt meet!

 

Skadi:

What legs are fair Baldur’s? I wonder and glance,

And I worry, frown, fret o’er such perilous chance

I might choose amiss – oh, how yearn I to take

Handsome Baldur from Nanna, to have as my mate!

 

Those legs are the fairest, that run at the end,

And the man they belong to is him I shall wed:

Those legs that run whitest through muck and through mire,

Those limbs in the soft gray that shine like white fire.

 

Odin:

Thou choosest; I bid the clogged mists to depart –

And like wisps of Frigg’s weaving they vanish ’midst stars.

The stomach is shown, and the arms and the chest,

And now face of that asa whom marriage shall bless.

 

Njord:

The curtain is lifted, oh giantess – hail

That man shall be husband to thee! strong and hale,

The master of shipyards, old lord of the port,

Boat-builder, rich chieftain of Noatun’s fort,

 

The father of Freya, and Frey’s shining grace,

Whose castle’s bejeweled, a night-winking place,

Who loves the songs honked by the swans on the sea,

Who life-blood runs briny – come, wife, unto me.

 

Skadi:

Nine nights now I’ve bided by margin of shores

In Noatun-stronghold – how miss I those tors

Where snowflakes set softly, the haunts of the wolves,

The cold of a brittle and mist-breathing world,

 

Delights of the mountains! Oh, how harsh this screech

Of gulls as they dive or they skip o’er the beach!

The dunes and the seaweed and waves sure I loathe,

This salt air that stings in my wrinkled-up nose…

 

Come up with me, Njord, to the rock and ice spires!

To forests and heights of my keenest desires,

To clearness and ski-runs and brightness of sun,

’Neath Gimle alone – all realms else high above.

 

Njord:

Nine nights now I’ve bided at roof of the lands,

Nine nights far from combers that wash o’er the sands

Like hands that caress – of the swan’s throats deprived,

Of melodies sung by the seabirds on high,

 

Now locked in this fastness, these rock walls and towers,

’Neath stars like cold eyes that so close to me glower,

’Midst howling of wolves, and these woods dressed in ice,

’Midst sheets of white blankness that stir with no life:

 

Of strand am I heartsick, of voice of the surf,

So down the long footpaths to beach I return.

Farewell, gentle wife, oh fair Skadi of skis –

Farewell, each must dwell in the realm that doth please.

 

Skadi:

Oh husband, the tears that now fall from mine eyes –

New snow-drops are they; and the fogs are my sighs.

I see thee descend, through the night, ’midst the rocks,

Through the forests; and towards the vast whale-yard thou walk’st;

 

Towards beach that I love not – yet, for thee I’m glad.

In silence I watch the rich rays on the strand –

In silence, the nighttime sings creatures to sleep;

In silence, the moon his strange secret close keeps.

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(Njörd’s Desire of the Sea by W. G. Collingwood)

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