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Skadi, the Cold Mountain Bride · Norse Mythology Sleep Story · 3 Hours · The Sleeping Almanac: Sleep Stories for Adults from Myth and Fairy Tale

• 0:00
  Welcome to The Sleeping Almanac.
• 0:02
  Tonight: the story of a marriage that was paid for in blood and laughter, and ended in eighteen nights of trying to sleep in the wrong house.
• 0:12
  A young giantess in winter snow. A row of feet behind a curtain. A pair of clean white feet that she thought belonged to one god and that turned out to belong to another. And then, after the wedding, the slow careful months of trying to make a life with a husband whose country was the salt sea and whose ears could not, in any version of the nights they tried, hear the cold mountain wolves the way that hers could.
• 0:45
  We will tell the story tonight from Snorri Sturluson's Skáldskaparmál — the second part of the Prose Edda — and from the Poetic Edda's Lokasenna, the flyting at Ægir's hall where Skaði comes back, years later, to speak of her father's death and to do, in the deep cave under the earth, the small careful steady thing the gods needed her to do.
• 1:15
  The Hávamál, the wisdom-poem of the old north, has a verse for this kind of story. It says: it is better to have a home, even if it is small. In your own house you can be your own master. It hurts the heart to have to ask for every meal at others' tables.
• 1:36
  Tonight, by the time the story is done, Skaði will be back in her own house.
• 1:41
  Settle in. Let your shoulders drop. We begin in the cold hall of a dead father, in the high mountain country, on the morning a daughter learned that her father was not coming home.
• 1:56
  Chapter One. The Hall of Þjazi.
• 2:00
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that Þjazi had a daughter.
• 2:04
  We have told the story of Þjazi himself in an earlier episode of The Sleeping Almanac. He was the giant who, with Loki's help, stole the goddess Iðunn and her apples of youth out of Asgard. The gods came to take her back. Þjazi flew after them in the shape of a great eagle. The gods of Asgard built a wall of fire on the inner side of their gate, and Þjazi flew into the fire, and his wings caught, and he fell. That is, for the long story tonight, the only thing about him that matters.
• 2:42
  He had, the Skáldskaparmál tells us, a daughter.
• 2:47
  Her name was Skaði. She lived with her father in his great hall at a place called Þrymheimr — the Thunderhome — in the deep eastern country of the jǫtnar. Þrymheimr, the old north remembered, was built into the side of a great peak, with the wind always coming down off the high slopes above and the small cold cries of mountain birds always echoing in its rafters. It was one of the coldest halls in any of the worlds. And Skaði loved it.
• 3:22
  She was, the Skáldskaparmál implies, a hunter. Her father had raised her with a bow in her hands. She knew, by the time she was a young woman, every track and every trail of the high cold country. She knew the small careful ways of the mountain hare and the slow steady walks of the high reindeer. She had learned to ski, the old north imagined, before she had learned to walk.
• 3:53
  She would, in later days, be called by many names. The bow-goddess. The ski-goer. The lady of Þrymheimr. But on the morning this story begins, she was a young woman in a cold mountain hall, waiting for her father to come home, and she had not yet learned that he was not going to.
• 4:15
  The news came by a small careful messenger.
• 4:19
  A small dark figure on a small dark horse, the old north imagined, coming up the long winding road that led to Þrymheimr. A knock at the door of the cold hall. A servant going to the door. A few quick low words exchanged. The servant turning with a face that already had the news written on it, and coming through the cold corridors of Þrymheimr to find his lady.
• 4:46
  Skaði was at her bow.
• 4:48
  She was, perhaps, in the small armoury at the back of her father's hall. She was tending to a string. She was checking the flights on her arrows. She was doing the small careful work that a hunter does in the early hours of any winter day.
• 5:06
  The servant came to her.
• 5:08
  The Skáldskaparmál does not tell us what was said. The poem moves through this moment with the dry brevity it uses for the worst moments in any of these stories. We can imagine the servant standing in the doorway, with his head bowed, and the small careful words coming out of him in the broken pieces of a being who did not, in any version of his life, want to be the one to say what he was about to say. Your father, my lady. The gods of Asgard. The eagle. The wall of fire.
• 5:44
  Skaði did not, at first, say anything.
• 5:47
  She stood in the small armoury, with the bow she had been working on still in her hands, and she looked at the servant in the doorway, and she said nothing. She did not cry. She did not sit down. She listened. She listened to the small details — the names of the gods who had been there, the description of the wall of fire, the place on the inner side of Asgard's wall where her father's body had finally come to rest. She listened with the small careful attention of a being who had already, in the first moment of hearing the news, begun to think about what she was going to do about it.
• 6:30
  When the servant was finished, she put the bow down on the bench.
• 6:35
  She walked out of the armoury. She walked through the cold corridors of Þrymheimr. She walked to her own room. She sat down on the edge of her own bed. And she sat there, the poem implies, for what we can imagine was a long quiet hour, with the small careful clarity of a being who had just lost the only living being she loved, and who was now slowly, in the cold of her father's hall, beginning to understand what she was going to have to do next.
• 7:09
  She would go to Asgard.
• 7:10
  She would go armed.
• 7:12
  She would go, in the old north's careful language of justice, to demand the compensation that the killing of a father required, by the long laws of the cold country, the killers to pay.
• 7:26
  She got up from the bed.
• 7:28
  She walked back to the armoury, and she began to prepare.
• 7:32
  Chapter Two. The Winter March.
• 7:35
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that Skaði took up her arms.
• 7:40
  She took up her great bow — the long curved bow of horn and yew that her father had given her on her tenth winter, and that she had drawn ten thousand times in the long quiet hours of her hunting on the high slopes. She took up her quiver, filled with the long careful arrows she had fletched herself in the small dark evenings of the late autumn. She took up the long spear of ash-wood that hung on the wall of her father's hall. She took up the sword at her father's belt, which now, with her father gone, was hers.
• 8:20
  She put on her winter armour.
• 8:22
  Long leggings of grey wool over felt boots. A long tunic of heavy wool dyed the colour of cold winter sky. A heavy cloak of dark fur over her shoulders, the fur of a great northern bear. A small belt of carved bone around her waist with the small everyday tools of a winter hunter. A wide felt cap pulled down over her dark hair. Mittens of soft sealskin on her hands.
• 8:53
  She took her skis.
• 8:55
  The skis were long. They were of pine. They had been oiled and waxed and cared for through the long years of her hunting on the high slopes, and they were, in the practical careful way of the cold country, the most important thing she would carry. The skis were how, in the long winter march that lay ahead of her, she was going to cross the cold country at the speed of a goddess of winter rather than at the slow ordinary pace of a being who had to walk.
• 9:30
  She left at first light the next morning.
• 9:33
  She did not, the Skáldskaparmál implies, say goodbye to anyone in particular. The servants of Þrymheimr were her father's servants. They had been good to her all her life. She nodded to them as she went. She did not stop. She did not look back at the hall. The hall had been her father's. Without her father, it was a quiet stone building full of his absence, and she did not, on the morning of her march, want to look at it.
• 10:06
  She skied west.
• 10:08
  We can imagine the long days of her travel. The high cold mountain passes. The deep blue valleys. The small careful fires she built in the deep snow at evening, the small careful meals of dried meat and dried apple she ate beside them. The long quiet nights wrapped in her bear-fur cloak in shelters of pine boughs she made herself. The cold breath on her own face in the dark. The two stars that, weeks later, would belong to her father, but that on the night of her march had not yet been lifted up into the sky.
• 10:47
  She crossed the long brown lands of Mithgarthr in seven days.
• 10:52
  She came to the gates of Asgard on the eighth.
• 10:55
  The watchman saw her coming.
• 10:57
  Chapter Three. The Goddess at the Gate.
• 11:01
  The watchman, the Skáldskaparmál implies, was Heimdallr.
• 11:08
  He stood, as he always stood, on the high wall of the gate of Asgard, and he watched the long road that came up from the south. He had keen sight. He could see, the old stories said, the small grass growing on the long fields of the south country. He could see the small dust kicked up by the small foot of a small bird walking on a far hill. And on the morning Skaði came up the road, he saw her from a long way off — a small dark figure on long pine skis, moving steadily across the snowfields, alone, armed, dressed for the long winter and the long march.
• 11:51
  He sent word ahead.
• 11:53
  The gods of Asgard, the Skáldskaparmál implies, came out to the gate to meet her. They came in some number — Óðinn, in his long grey cloak, his one good eye watching the road. Frigg, in her long blue dress, standing slightly behind him. Bragi, the god of speech, who would do most of the careful talking. And, at the back, the others — Týr, Heimdallr, Freyr, Njǫrðr. They stood in the bright morning sun on the inner side of the gate, and they watched the tall woman in the bear-fur cloak come up the road.
• 12:33
  Skaði stopped at a respectful distance.
• 12:36
  She did not bow. She did not speak first. She slid her skis off. She set them, carefully, in the snow at her feet. She set her bow down. She set her quiver down. She set the spear of ash-wood down. She did not take off the sword at her belt. She stood, with her hands open, in the small steady stillness of a being who had come a long way and had no intention of leaving without what she had come for.
• 13:08
  Óðinn spoke first.
• 13:10
  He said: Welcome, daughter of Þjazi. We have heard of you. We are sorry for your father's death. Speak. What do you wish.
• 13:21
  Skaði said: Vengeance. Or weregild. I will not leave without one of the two. If you do not give me one, I will come back at the head of an army of the high mountains. I will tell every frost-giant and stone-giant and mountain-troll in the north of the world that the Æsir have killed my father, and I will lead them down upon your gates.
• 13:47
  The gods, the Skáldskaparmál implies, did not laugh at her. They took her seriously. She was a giantess. She was the daughter of a great giant. The threat of an army of frost-giants and mountain-trolls was the kind of threat that the Æsir, in their long history, had learned not to dismiss.
• 14:09
  They considered.
• 14:11
  Óðinn, the Skáldskaparmál implies, asked her to speak her terms.
• 14:16
  Chapter Four. The Three Demands.
• 14:20
  Skaði, the Skáldskaparmál tells us, had thought about it on the long road south.
• 14:26
  She had eight nights in the high mountain passes to think. She had eight nights of small careful fires and small careful meals and the long quiet wrapped in her bear-fur cloak. She had thought, in those eight nights, about what she actually wanted from the gods who had killed her father.
• 14:47
  Vengeance, she knew, the Æsir would not grant. They would not put one of their own to death over the death of a giant. That was not, by the long careful laws of the worlds, going to happen.
• 15:02
  Gold, she did not want.
• 15:04
  She had gold of her own. Her father had been a great giant. His hall at Þrymheimr was full of the small heavy treasures of a long old life. She did not need, in the quiet hours of her hunting, any gold from the Æsir.
• 15:21
  What she wanted, she had thought, on the eight long nights of her march, was something more difficult. She wanted, in the deep practical careful way of a being who had lost a father, something that would change her life and give her something instead of him. She wanted, the Skáldskaparmál implies, three things.
• 15:45
  She told the gods.
• 15:47
  The first thing, she said, was a husband. Not in the form of a gift. In the form of a fair choice. She would pick a husband from among the Æsir, but she would pick him only by the sight of his feet. The gods would stand in a row behind a long cloth curtain, with only their feet visible. She would walk along the row. She would choose. Whoever she chose, she would marry, and that god would come with her, into the high cold country, and live as her husband.
• 16:23
  The gods, the Skáldskaparmál implies, looked at one another.
• 16:29
  It was not, in the strict legal sense, a punishment. It was a marriage. The Æsir were not, by the long laws of the cold country, in a position to refuse it. They considered. They thought, the surviving sources imply, that she would look for the most beautiful feet, and that she would choose Baldr — the most beautiful of all the Æsir, who was young and unmarried, and who could endure, for a time, the cold of the mountains.
• 17:04
  They agreed.
• 17:05
  The second thing, she said, was harder.
• 17:09
  She said: One of you must make me laugh. I have not laughed since my father died. I have not, in the long days of the march and the long days of the preparation, even smiled. I do not believe, in the deepest part of myself, that I will laugh again. But the killing of a father deserves more than gold, and more than a husband. The killing of a father deserves, the laws of the old north imply, a small careful undoing of the cold the killing put into the daughter's chest. If one of you can make me laugh, here, in front of the council of Asgard, I will count that as the third weregild paid.
• 17:56
  The gods looked at one another.
• 17:58
  None of them, the Skáldskaparmál implies, was famous for making giantesses laugh.
• 18:05
  The third thing, she said, was the smallest of the three, and the one that the Æsir, the poem implies, did not see coming. She said: My father's eyes were taken when he died. They are, I have been told by the messenger, kept somewhere in Asgard. I do not want them back. I want them lifted.
• 18:29
  She said: Lift them up. Put them where they cannot be taken away again. Put them where I, and every being who lives under the cold sky of the worlds, can see them.
• 18:42
  The gods, the Skáldskaparmál implies, were quiet for a long moment.
• 18:48
  Then Óðinn nodded.
• 18:50
  He said: All three things will be done. We will stand for the choosing. We will try to make you laugh. And the eyes of your father will be lifted.
• 19:01
  He turned, and he called for the long curtains to be brought.
• 19:06
  Chapter Five. The Row of Feet.
• 19:09
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that the curtains were set up in the courtyard of Asgard.
• 19:14
  We can imagine the scene, the way the old north imagined the council scenes of the gods. The long flat courtyard. The high stone walls. The clear cold winter sky above. The gods of Asgard standing in a row, the way they had agreed to, behind a long heavy cloth curtain that hung from a wooden frame. The curtain hung down to a foot above the ground. Only the feet of each god were visible. The rest of each god was hidden.
• 19:49
  The Æsir, the Skáldskaparmál implies, were thinking of Baldr.
• 19:55
  Baldr was the most beautiful god in the worlds. His feet, like the rest of him, were beautiful — clean, well-made, fair-skinned. The Æsir were sure, the surviving sources imply, that Skaði would look at the row of feet, would pick out the most beautiful pair, and would point to Baldr.
• 20:17
  Skaði walked along the row.
• 20:19
  She walked slowly. She looked at each pair of feet with the small careful attention of a being who had hunted on long mountain slopes and who knew how to read the small careful signs of a body she could not see. She was, in some quiet way, the Skáldskaparmál implies, doing the same thing she would have done in her own country if she had been tracking a stag — looking for the small careful clues that would tell her which body she was looking at without seeing the whole.
• 20:53
  She stopped at one pair of feet.
• 20:55
  They were smoother than the others. They were whiter. They looked as if they had been washed every evening of a long careful life in cold clear water. They looked, the Skáldskaparmál implies, like the feet of a being who lived close to water, who walked every day on wet sand, whose toes had been worn smooth by years of small careful tides. She thought, certainly, these are the feet of the most beautiful god.
• 21:27
  She pointed.
• 21:29
  She said: This one. I take this one.
• 21:33
  The curtains, the Skáldskaparmál implies, were drawn back.
• 21:38
  The feet did not belong to Baldr.
• 21:41
  The feet belonged to Njǫrðr — the father of Freyr and Freyja, the god of the calm sea and the harbours, who had spent his whole long life walking on wet sand and standing in salt water, and whose feet were, accordingly, the smoothest and whitest of any feet in Asgard. He was not, in the way Baldr was beautiful, the most beautiful of the gods. He was older. He was quieter. He was a god of small waves and of ships and of fishing-nets and of the small steady weather of the long coast.
• 22:20
  Skaði stood, the Skáldskaparmál implies, for a long moment, and looked at him.
• 22:27
  She had been tricked, in a sense. She had done what she said she would do. The gods had done what they said they would do. But she had not gotten the husband she had hoped for. She had gotten this older quieter god of the sea, who was now her husband by her own oath, and who would have to come with her into the mountains.
• 22:48
  She did not break her word.
• 22:50
  She nodded.
• 22:52
  But she said, with the small careful firmness of a being who had not lost the thread of what she had come for: Now. The second thing.
• 23:04
  Chapter Six. Loki and the Sky.
• 23:07
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that the gods of Asgard looked at one another.
• 23:13
  The second debt was harder than the first. The first had been arrangeable. A wedding could be planned. A husband could be brought. But laughter, the Skáldskaparmál implies, was not, in the strict legal sense, something that could be commanded. It would have to be earned. And none of the gods of Asgard, in the small careful silence that followed Skaði's demand, looked particularly confident that they could earn it.
• 23:45
  Then Loki stepped forward.
• 23:47
  Loki, of course. Loki, who had brought all of this on in the first place. Loki, who was responsible, in the truest and deepest sense, for the death of Skaði's father — because it had been Loki who had handed Iðunn over to Þjazi to begin with, and Loki who had then gone to take her back, and Loki who had led Þjazi, in his great eagle shape, into the wall of fire above Asgard.
• 24:19
  Loki had not been forgiven for any of it.
• 24:22
  He stepped forward into the council circle. He looked, the Skáldskaparmál implies, at Skaði with the small clever inviting expression he used when he was about to do something absurd. He said: I will make her laugh.
• 24:39
  What Loki did next, the Skáldskaparmál tells us in some detail, and we will tell lightly. Loki got hold of a goat — a billy-goat, with horns, the kind that lived in the high places. He tied one end of a rope to the goat and the other end of the rope to himself, in a place that, if the goat pulled, would be very painful for Loki. The goat pulled. Loki pulled. The goat did not understand and bleated. Loki cried out and grimaced. The two of them did an absurd tugging dance, the goat at one end, Loki at the other, both of them shouting, until at last the rope gave way and Loki fell forward into Skaði's lap.
• 25:29
  He landed there, at her feet. He looked up at her, helpless and grinning.
• 25:35
  Skaði, the Skáldskaparmál implies, watched the whole absurd performance — watched the great Loki, the foster-brother of Óðinn, who had stood at the high councils, who had taken treasures from dwarves, who had bound great wolves, reduced to a man tied to a goat by his most private parts — Skaði laughed.
• 25:59
  She laughed out loud.
• 26:01
  She could not stop herself. It was the first time she had laughed since her father's death. The laugh filled the courtyard of Asgard. It was, in some sense, the strangest sound the gods had heard in many days — the sound of a giantess of the high mountains laughing, surprised by her own laughter, at a fool of a god lying tied to a goat at her feet.
• 26:27
  When she stopped laughing, she nodded.
• 26:29
  She said: That counts.
• 26:32
  The second debt was paid.
• 26:34
  But the third, the Skáldskaparmál implies, still remained.
• 26:39
  Óðinn, in his long grey cloak, walked to a small heavy chest that had been brought, at his quiet earlier order, into the courtyard. He opened it. He lifted out, the Skáldskaparmál implies, the two great pale yellow eyes of Þjazi — eyes that had been the eyes of the eagle, eyes that were larger than any eyes in any of the gods of Asgard, eyes that had been kept, since the killing, in the small careful dark of Óðinn's own storeroom.
• 27:13
  He carried them out into the centre of the courtyard.
• 27:16
  He lifted them, one in each hand, up to the cold winter sky.
• 27:22
  He said, to Skaði: Daughter of Þjazi. Look up.
• 27:27
  She looked up.
• 27:28
  He threw them.
• 27:29
  The eyes rose. They rose higher than the towers of Asgard. They rose past the walls. They rose into the air, faster and faster, and they did not stop. They went up into the sky and they kept going up, and they passed through the lower clouds, and then the higher clouds, and then up into the deep cold air above the clouds. They became smaller, and brighter, and at last they became two small steady points of light that hung above the world, and they did not move.
• 28:06
  The two stars are still there. They have been there since that night. They are the eyes of Þjazi, the giant who carried the goddess of apples away in his wings, and who flew through fire above the walls of Asgard, and who was killed in a courtyard between high walls on a bright autumn day. They look down on the cold winter world from a long way up. They are pale. They are steady. They do not flicker.
• 28:38
  Skaði, the Skáldskaparmál implies, did not say anything.
• 28:43
  She looked up at the two new stars for a long quiet moment. She looked at her father, lifted at last into the sky.
• 28:53
  Then she lowered her head, and she looked at the gods of Asgard, and she said: Now we are done. Now the marriage.
• 29:03
  Chapter Seven. The Nine Nights at Þrymheimr.
• 29:07
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that the marriage was held the next morning.
• 29:13
  We can imagine, from how the old north imagined weddings between gods, what the ceremony was like. The gods of Asgard, all in their dignified council dress. The bride, in the same winter-blue tunic she had come south in, with a small wreath of mountain heather in her dark hair. The groom, the sea-god Njǫrðr, in the long dark blue cloak of his coastal country, with the small careful expression of a being marrying a giantess he had met the night before. The wedding-feast in the great hall. The cups of mead. The small careful speeches. The small careful old north tradition of every important moment.
• 30:03
  After the feast, the question came up.
• 30:05
  The question was: where would they live?
• 30:09
  Njǫrðr had his hall on the coast — at Nóatún, the Ship-yard, where the long beaches met the long sea and the small careful sounds of his country were the sound of the wind on the water and the calling of gulls.
• 30:25
  Skaði had her hall in the mountains — at Þrymheimr, the Thunderhome, where the high slopes met the high sky and the small careful sounds of her country were the sound of the wind on the cold rocks and the calling of wolves.
• 30:42
  Neither of them wanted to give up their country.
• 30:45
  We can imagine the small careful discussion that followed in the council hall of Asgard, where the gods were still gathered, where Óðinn and Frigg and Bragi and the others were watching this new marriage take its first careful difficult steps. Neither was willing to live, for the rest of their life together, in the other's hall. But neither was willing, either, to call off the marriage that had only just begun.
• 31:15
  So they reached, with the small careful compromising habit of beings who were trying to do their best with a difficult situation, an agreement.
• 31:27
  They would alternate. Nine nights together in Þrymheimr. Nine nights together in Nóatún. And so on, for the rest of their marriage.
• 31:38
  They left Asgard, the Skáldskaparmál implies, the morning after the wedding.
• 31:45
  They went, by Skaði's choice, to Þrymheimr first.
• 31:49
  Skaði was glad. She put on her skis, and she came down through the long winter passes with the small steady gladness of a being going back to the country she belonged to. Njǫrðr walked behind her. He had no skis. He walked, the Skáldskaparmál implies, in heavy winter boots through deep snow, the way a sea-god of the coastal country who had spent his whole life on soft sand walked through deep mountain snow — slowly, awkwardly, with the small uneasy attention of a being who was already, on the first morning of his new marriage, a long way from home.
• 32:33
  They arrived at Þrymheimr in the deep blue evening of the day after the wedding.
• 32:39
  We can imagine the hall, the way the old north imagined the cold mountain halls of the eastern country. A great stone hall built into the side of the peak. Heavy timber doors. Cold stone floors. Deep fur rugs over the floors. A great hearth-fire in the centre, burning all night to keep the cold out. Carved beams. The small careful old details of a hall that had been kept, for many generations, by the same family of mountain giants.
• 33:12
  The wind, the old north imagined, always outside the hall. The wind always calling. The wind always reminding the beings inside that they were a long way from anywhere warm.
• 33:28
  Skaði slept well that first night.
• 33:30
  She slept the way she had slept her whole life. In a small heavy fur-lined bed in the small heavy stone chamber of her father's hall. With the wind outside and the small steady distant calling of the wolves in the deep high valleys around the hall. With the small careful certainty, in the deepest part of herself, that she was home — that the country around her was the country she belonged to, that the sounds in the dark were the sounds she had grown up with, that the walls around her were the walls of a place that had been hers since she had been a small child in her father's arms.
• 34:16
  She slept the deep clean sleep of a being entirely at peace.
• 34:21
  Njǫrðr did not.
• 34:23
  He lay, the Skáldskaparmál implies, in the same fur-lined bed beside his new wife, and he listened, all night, to the wind on the cold rocks and to the small steady distant calling of the wolves. He lay with the small uneasy attention of a being who had spent his whole life going to sleep to the sound of the sea, and who could not, in the cold high country, find the sound he needed to sleep at all.
• 34:53
  The wind, to Njǫrðr, did not sound like wind on water. The wind, in the high mountains, sounded like a being. It sounded like a great cold being moving past the hall, looking for the small careful warm things inside. It sounded, to a god of the sea who had never heard the wind move that way before, like a thing that wanted in.
• 35:20
  The wolves, to Njǫrðr, did not sound like wolves either. The wolves, in the deep high valleys, sounded like the long careful voices of beings who were calling to each other in a language Njǫrðr did not know, in the small steady careful way of beings who were not, in any version of the world Njǫrðr understood, going to be his friends.
• 35:46
  He lay there, all night, listening.
• 35:49
  He thought, the Skáldskaparmál implies, of the sea. He thought of the small steady careful rolling-in of the waves on the long beach at Nóatún. He thought of the small careful calling of the gulls in the morning. He thought of the sound of the wind moving across the long open water — which was, he understood with the small slow certainty of a god who knew his own country, not the same wind at all as the wind he was listening to now. The wind on the water was a wind that moved. The wind in the mountains was a wind that came at you. He could not, in the small uneasy attention of his first night at Þrymheimr, sleep beside the second one.
• 36:38
  He lay there the second night. He did not sleep. The third night. He did not sleep. The fourth.
• 36:47
  By the seventh night, he had begun to count the nights.
• 36:51
  He told no one. He did not, the Skáldskaparmál implies, want to be the kind of husband who complained, in the first week of his marriage, about his wife's country. He understood that this was, in the small careful balance of the agreement they had reached, fair. He had agreed to nine nights at Þrymheimr. He would honour the nine nights. But he counted them, in the small slow way of a being who was waiting for a difficult thing to end.
• 37:24
  Skaði, the Skáldskaparmál implies, watched him.
• 37:29
  She had not, the poem implies, expected him to like Þrymheimr. She had hoped, the small honest expectation of a young wife in a new marriage, that he might, with time, grow used to it. She watched him through the first nine days. She watched his face in the morning. She watched his hands at the small hall table when they ate together. She watched the way he held himself, the small careful way of a being who was holding a great quiet fear at the edge of himself and not letting it come fully in.
• 38:07
  By the ninth night, she understood.
• 38:10
  He had not slept properly even once. She had seen, in the long careful nights of their first nine days together, that he was not, in any version of the next nine nights they would spend at Þrymheimr many months hence, going to learn to sleep here.
• 38:30
  On the morning of the tenth day, the Skáldskaparmál implies, Njǫrðr sat up in the small heavy bed in the small heavy chamber of Þrymheimr, with the wind still outside and the wolves still calling, and he looked at the small dawn light just beginning to come in through the high window.
• 38:51
  He understood that the nine nights at Þrymheimr were over.
• 38:55
  He understood that the nine nights at Nóatún were about to begin.
• 39:01
  He understood, with the small slow certainty of a being who had been counting the nights for a week, that he was, in this strange and difficult marriage, going home.
• 39:14
  He told Skaði, the Skáldskaparmál implies, that he was looking forward to seeing his own coast again.
• 39:22
  Chapter Eight. The Nine Nights at Nóatún.
• 39:26
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us, with the small dry note of a poet who has watched too many marriages, that the second nine nights were, in their own way, just as difficult.
• 39:40
  They went, the poem implies, west.
• 39:44
  Njǫrðr was leading, this time. He walked with the small steady ease of a being going back to country he knew. He had, by the second day of the walk, begun to look like himself again — the slow careful shoulders unbent, the small slow smile beginning to come back to the corners of his eyes, the small steady humour of a god of the sea returning to him with each step away from the cold mountains.
• 40:15
  Skaði walked behind him.
• 40:17
  She watched him grow easier with the small careful attention of a wife who saw, more clearly with each mile, that her husband had not, in any deep way, been at ease in her own country. She did not, the poem implies, hold this against him. She had not, in any version of the eight nights of her march south, expected him to. She had only hoped, in the small honest way of a young wife, that the country she loved might be loveable, in time, by him also.
• 40:53
  They came to Nóatún in the long blue evening of the day after they had left Þrymheimr.
• 41:00
  We can imagine the hall, the way the old north imagined the coastal halls of the western country. A great long timbered hall built on a low sandy rise above a long curved beach. Long open windows looking out over the sea. A roof of weathered driftwood. The smell, the old north imagined, of salt and seaweed and the slow steady smoke of cooking-fires fed by driftwood. The walls were lined with the small careful pale shells of the long coastal seasons. The floor was clean dry sand pressed down hard with the small careful tread of a hundred coastal years.
• 41:46
  The sound, always, was the sea.
• 41:49
  The long slow rolling-in of the waves on the beach. The small careful calling of the gulls. The small steady wind that came in off the long open water and moved through the long open windows of the hall and carried with it the small soft salt smell of a being's whole life.
• 42:09
  Njǫrðr slept beautifully at Nóatún.
• 42:12
  He slept the way he had slept his whole life — to the sound of the sea coming in. He slept the small careful sleep of a being who was home, who was in the country he belonged to, who was at peace. His face, in the long blue evenings of the hall, was the easy face of a husband who had been quietly miserable for nine nights and was now, on his own coast, quietly happy again.
• 42:44
  Skaði did not.
• 42:46
  She lay, the poem implies, in the long bed in the long open chamber of Nóatún, and she listened, all night, to the small careful calling of the gulls and to the long slow rolling-in of the waves on the beach.
• 43:04
  The gulls, to Skaði, did not sound like wolves. They sounded like beings of no consequence — small light beings who had nothing important to say and who said it constantly. She lay in the dark and she listened to the small careful calling and she did not know how, in the deep practical part of herself, to find rest in it.
• 43:31
  The sea, to Skaði, did not sound like wind in cold stone. The sea sounded like a great slow breathing thing that never stopped. The sea did not call. The sea did not pause. The sea simply came in, came in, came in, in the long slow steady rolling of a being who had been coming in since the first morning of the worlds and would, in the small careful steady understanding of any sea-god, keep coming in until the worlds were over.
• 44:04
  She lay there the first night. She did not sleep. The second night. The third. The fourth.
• 44:12
  The smell of the hall did not help.
• 44:15
  The salt smell, to Skaði, was the smell of a wet country. She had grown up in a country where the small careful smell of cold pine and cold stone and small careful winter fires was the smell of every safe place she had ever been. The salt smell of Nóatún, in the small careful first nights of her marriage, did not feel safe. It felt, the poem implies, like a smell that belonged to someone else's life.
• 44:48
  The bed, too, was different.
• 44:51
  The bed at Nóatún was a long low bed, raised slightly off the sand floor on a frame of pale driftwood, with linen sheets that had been bleached white by long coastal summers. The bed at Þrymheimr had been a small heavy bed in a small heavy stone chamber, with thick fur rugs and a wooden frame carved with the small careful patterns of her mother's family. She lay in the long low bed at Nóatún, in the long open chamber, and she could not, the poem implies, find in any of the small careful details of her husband's hall the small careful familiarity she needed in order to close her eyes.
• 45:38
  She lay there the fifth night.
• 45:40
  She watched, in the small careful dawn that came through the long open window, the small steady arrival of another day she had not slept through. She heard, the poem implies, the small careful calling of the gulls beginning to start up again. She heard the long slow rolling-in of the waves. She heard, the poem implies, the small steady careful breathing of her husband in the bed beside her, the long peaceful sleep of a being entirely at home.
• 46:17
  She lay there the sixth night.
• 46:20
  She lay there the seventh.
• 46:22
  Somewhere in the seventh night, the Hávamál verse arrived in her, the way old true verses sometimes arrive in beings who are slowly understanding a thing.
• 46:34
  The verse, the Hávamál implies the old north knew, says: only the heart knows what lies close to itself. A wise being can bear many things. But to crave what they cannot have, the verse says, is the worst sickness a wise being can carry.
• 46:53
  Skaði, the poem implies, was a wise being.
• 46:58
  She lay in the long bed in the long open chamber of Nóatún, and she listened to the gulls she could not learn to sleep beside, and she understood, in the small slow clear way of a being who had been understanding it for several nights already, what the verse meant.
• 47:17
  She had been wise enough, on the morning her father died, to put down her bow and walk south.
• 47:25
  She had been wise enough, in the council hall of Asgard, to lay down her arms and bargain instead of demanding blood.
• 47:34
  She had been wise enough, when the curtain had been drawn back and the wrong god had been revealed, to honour her own word and accept the marriage that her own word had bound her to.
• 47:46
  She had been wise enough, in the long quiet days that followed the wedding, to give the marriage a fair chance — to come down out of the mountains, to try the agreed alternation, to lie in her husband's bed in her husband's country and try, with the small careful honesty of a being who wanted to be fair to her own oath, to sleep there.
• 48:12
  She had also become, the poem implies, in the slow steady weeks since the wedding, wise enough to understand that the marriage was not, in any version of the days she could imagine ahead of her, going to be a marriage either of them could live in.
• 48:30
  She lay back down in the bed.
• 48:32
  She lay there, the Skáldskaparmál implies, beside Njǫrðr, who was still sleeping peacefully, with the small careful steady breathing of a being entirely at home. She looked at the dawn light coming in through the long open window. She made, the poem implies, the decision.
• 48:54
  She would go home.
• 48:56
  She would not refuse to honour the bargain. The bargain had been kept. The compensation had been paid. The marriage had been performed. But the marriage, the poem implies, had been tested. The marriage had been answered.
• 49:12
  It was not a marriage that either of them was going to be able to keep.
• 49:17
  Chapter Nine. The Slow Parting.
• 49:20
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that Skaði did not, the next morning, simply leave.
• 49:27
  She lay in the bed for the rest of the seventh night.
• 49:30
  She lay in the bed through the eighth night.
• 49:33
  She lay in the bed through the ninth.
• 49:36
  She wanted, the poem implies, to be sure. She had been a wise being all her life. She had not made the decisions she had made — to come south alone, to choose by feet, to honour the choosing — by acting quickly. She had made them by sitting with the question, in the small careful steady way of a hunter who could wait, patient as a stone, for the small certain moment when the question answered itself.
• 50:09
  So she sat with this question.
• 50:12
  She sat with it through the ninth long sleepless night at Nóatún. She listened to the gulls. She listened to the sea. She listened, in the small careful dark of the long open chamber, to her husband's deep peaceful breathing. She thought, the poem implies, about the alternative.
• 50:34
  The alternative was to stay.
• 50:36
  She could, the small honest part of her admitted, learn to sleep here in time. She could, with enough months and enough seasons, train her ears to the small careful calling of the gulls. She could learn, perhaps, to find some small careful version of rest in the long slow rolling-in of the waves. She could spend, in this country, the long slow careful years of a wife. She could become, with time, a being of the coast.
• 51:11
  She could.
• 51:13
  But she would not, the poem implies, become herself, in doing it.
• 51:17
  She would become, in the slow careful arrival at sleep on her husband's bed at Nóatún, a smaller version of the being she had been at Þrymheimr. The bow would not, in the soft sandy country of the coast, be needed. The skis would not, on the long wet beaches, be useful. The small careful long quiet stride of a hunter walking the high slopes at dawn would not, in any version of the days she could imagine ahead of her, be hers any longer in the way it had been.
• 51:52
  She would be Njǫrðr's wife.
• 51:54
  She would not, the small honest careful part of her said in the deep dark of the ninth night, be Skaði any longer.
• 52:04
  That was the question. That was what she sat with, in the long careful dark, with the gulls calling and the sea coming in. That was what she answered, in the small slow clear way of a being who had been answering hard questions all her life.
• 52:22
  She would not, the poem implies, become smaller.
• 52:27
  When the dawn came on the tenth morning, she got out of the bed.
• 52:32
  She put on her winter cloak. She walked quietly to the long open window of the chamber, and she looked out at the small careful pale beach and at the long open water beyond it. She looked at her husband's country, the country she had not been able to sleep in, the country she did not, in any deep version of the days she could imagine, want to live in.
• 52:57
  She turned back to the bed.
• 52:59
  She woke him.
• 53:01
  She did it gently, the poem implies. She had not, in any of the eighteen nights of their marriage, been unkind to him. He was, in his own way, a good being. He was an older god of the calm sea, who had not asked to be married to a giantess of the cold mountains, who had agreed to come north with her because his oath had required it, and who had tried, in the small careful careful way of a being doing his honest best, to make the marriage work. She did not, the poem implies, blame him for any of it.
• 53:41
  She sat on the edge of the bed.
• 53:43
  She told him.
• 53:45
  The Skáldskaparmál does not give us the words. The poem moves through this moment with the dry careful brevity it uses for the moments in any of these stories that are too tender for the long telling. But we can imagine the small careful steady honest words. Husband. I have tried. You have tried. We have done, between us, what the oath required. But the country I belong to is the country of cold stone and the high wolves. The country you belong to is the country of warm sand and the slow gulls. Neither of us, in the slow careful steady test of the eighteen nights, has been able to sleep in the other's country. And I would rather, in the small careful long honest practice of a being who knew herself, sleep in my own.
• 54:41
  He listened.
• 54:42
  He did not, the Skáldskaparmál implies, argue. He had, in his own way, in the long sleepless nights at Þrymheimr, come to the same understanding. He had been waiting, perhaps, for her to be the one to say it, because she had been the one who came south to begin with, because she had been the one whose father had been killed, because the marriage had been hers to demand and hers, in the slow careful steady way of these things, to release.
• 55:16
  He nodded.
• 55:17
  He said, the poem implies, that he had thought, also, that the marriage was not going to work.
• 55:24
  They sat for a long moment.
• 55:27
  The Skáldskaparmál implies, in the small careful brevity of its description, that they did not, in the small careful moment of the parting, hate each other. They had, in the long quiet eighteen nights, tried something difficult and discovered it could not be done. The discovery was not, in the small old slow careful way of the old north, anyone's fault. It was simply the small slow clear answer that the eighteen nights had given them.
• 56:02
  They would remain married, by name.
• 56:05
  The bargain had been kept. The oath had been sworn. There was no need, by the long laws of the cold country, to undo the oath. They would live, the Skáldskaparmál implies, separately, each in the country that they belonged to, each in the hall they could sleep in, and they would, in the long slow steady weeks and months and years that followed, see each other rarely.
• 56:34
  That was the agreement.
• 56:36
  That was what the long quiet conversation at the dawn of the tenth morning at Nóatún came to.
• 56:42
  She stood up from the bed.
• 56:44
  She gathered her small careful belongings — her bow, her quiver, her small belt of carved bone, the long winter cloak of dark bear-fur. She did not take much. She had come south with little. She would go north with the same.
• 57:02
  He walked her, the Skáldskaparmál implies, to the door of the hall.
• 57:07
  He stood there with her, the small careful steady older god of the calm sea, in the small careful clear morning light, and he said the small careful steady goodbye of a being who had tried to do an honest thing and who knew that the honest thing had not, in the end, worked.
• 57:28
  She said, the Skáldskaparmál implies, the small careful steady goodbye in return.
• 57:36
  She put on her skis.
• 57:38
  She turned away from the long open hall and from the long curved beach and from the long open water and from the husband she had chosen by his feet alone, and she began, with the small steady stride of a being going home, the long winter walk back north.
• 57:57
  Chapter Ten. The Long Walk Back.
• 58:01
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us that the walk back to Þrymheimr was slower than the walk south.
• 58:08
  She was, the poem implies, not in any particular hurry. The work that had brought her south had been done. The compensation had been paid. The stars of her father had been lifted. The marriage had been tested and answered. There was nothing waiting for her, in the long high cold country, except her own house. And her own house was, by the small careful long laws of the Hávamál, the kind of place that did not need to be hurried back to. It would be there. It had always been there. It would still be there in a week, or in two weeks, or in any of the small careful quiet days she chose to take in the long slow walk home.
• 58:57
  She took her time.
• 58:59
  She crossed the long brown coastal country in three days. She crossed the long flat lands beyond the coast in another three. She came, on the seventh day, to the small first hills of the deep eastern country, where the long brown plains began to lift up into the small careful low rises of the mountains.
• 59:24
  She slept, the Skáldskaparmál implies, well on the long walk.
• 59:30
  She slept the way she had slept on the way south. In the small careful pine-bough shelters she built for herself in the deep snow at evening, with her small careful fire of pine and birch crackling at the door of the shelter, with the small careful smell of cold pine and cold stone and the small careful absence of any gull in any direction. She slept the small careful long quiet sleep of a being who was, with every mile, walking back into the country her body knew.
• 1:00:07
  The small careful old wisdom of the Hávamál, the poem implies, kept her company on the long walk.
• 1:00:15
  The verse the welcome of this story remembered — the verse about a small home being better than a great hall at another being's table — kept turning in her, in the small slow clear way of an old true verse turning in a wise being who was, in the small careful steady weeks of her long return, understanding the verse more deeply than she had ever understood it before.
• 1:00:45
  She thought, the Skáldskaparmál implies, on the long walk, about her father.
• 1:00:51
  She thought about him on the eighth night of the walk, in a small pine-bough shelter on the rim of the first deep high valley of the eastern country, when she looked up at the cold winter sky above her camp and she saw, for the first time on the walk north, the two new stars.
• 1:01:12
  The two stars, the poem implies, were just visible above the high rim of the valley.
• 1:01:19
  They were small. They were pale. They were steady. They did not flicker. They were the eyes, she remembered, that Óðinn had thrown up into the cold sky on the bright cold morning in the courtyard of Asgard, in the small careful steady gift that the killer of her father had owed her father's daughter. They had been there now for many nights. They would be there, the poem implies, for many more.
• 1:01:50
  She looked at them for a long time.
• 1:01:53
  She did not, the Skáldskaparmál implies, say anything. There was nothing to say. Her father was dead. Her father was also, in the small careful slow way of the long memory of the old north, lifted. The two things were both, in the long quiet practical understanding of a hunter who knew what kind of world she lived in, true.
• 1:02:19
  She watched the two stars for a long quiet hour.
• 1:02:24
  She got up, the poem implies, when the small careful first cold of the dawn began to come into the high valley. She rolled up her sleeping fur. She put on her bear-fur cloak. She put on her skis. She began the long quiet stride of the next day's walk.
• 1:02:43
  She came, the Skáldskaparmál implies, to Þrymheimr on the fourteenth day after she had left Nóatún.
• 1:02:53
  The hall was, in the small careful steady way of all halls that had been waiting a long time for their lady to come back, exactly as she had left it. The hearth-fires were low. The fur rugs were clean. The small careful steady servants — her father's old servants, who were now hers — came out to meet her at the door of the cold stone hall, and they bowed, the small careful steady bow of old retainers welcoming a young lady home from a long careful difficult journey.
• 1:03:29
  She did not, the Skáldskaparmál implies, say much.
• 1:03:34
  She nodded to them. She handed her bow to the servant who had always taken her bow. She handed her cloak to the servant who had always taken her cloak. She walked, in the small steady stride of a being going back to the small careful daily life of her own house, through the cold corridors of Þrymheimr to her own chamber.
• 1:03:58
  She sat down on the edge of her own bed.
• 1:04:01
  She sat there, the small careful long steady moment of a being who had been gone a long time, who had been south to Asgard and west to Nóatún and back through long winter country, and who was, at last, in the small careful clear way of an old true Hávamál verse, home.
• 1:04:23
  She lay down.
• 1:04:25
  She slept, the Skáldskaparmál implies, deeply.
• 1:04:30
  She slept the long clean deep sleep of a being who had been a long time away from the sound her ears knew, the smell her nose knew, the feel of the small heavy fur-lined bed her body knew. She slept through the long quiet rest of the day, and through the long quiet night, and into the long quiet careful early morning of the day after.
• 1:04:55
  When she woke, she was, in the deepest small careful steady way of the verse the Hávamál had given her, herself again.
• 1:05:07
  Chapter Eleven. The Goddess in the Mountains.
• 1:05:11
  The Skáldskaparmál tells us, briefly, the small careful long years that followed.
• 1:05:18
  It tells us that Skaði went back to her bow. It tells us that she went back to her skis. It tells us that she went back to the long high slopes of the eastern country, to the small careful tracks of the mountain hare and to the slow steady walks of the high reindeer. It tells us that she became, in the long memory of the old north, the goddess of winter.
• 1:05:44
  The lady of Þrymheimr.
• 1:05:46
  The bow-goddess.
• 1:05:48
  The ski-goer.
• 1:05:49
  The hunter of the high cold country.
• 1:05:52
  She was, the old north remembered, alone in her hall.
• 1:05:57
  But alone, the Hávamál preserved this understanding in the small careful verse the welcome of this story remembered, was not, in every case, a worse thing than not-alone.
• 1:06:11
  The verse said: it is better to have a home, even if it is small. In your own house you can be your own master. It hurts the heart, the verse said, to have to ask for every meal at others' tables.
• 1:06:27
  Skaði, the old north imagined, was her own master at Þrymheimr.
• 1:06:33
  She did not, the poem implies, ask any other being in any of the worlds, in the long careful steady years that followed, for permission to do any of the small things she did. She did not ask for permission to ski the long high passes of her country. She did not ask for permission to hunt the high reindeer. She did not ask for permission to sit, in the long winter evenings, by the great hearth-fire of her father's hall, with her father's spear leaning against the wall beside her seat, and to look up, through the small high window of the hall, at the two new stars that her father's eyes had become.
• 1:07:15
  She was alone.
• 1:07:17
  She was also, in the slow careful steady deep way of the verse, free.
• 1:07:23
  The long careful steady seasons passed.
• 1:07:27
  She watched, the old north imagined, many long winters at Þrymheimr. She watched the small careful steady arrival of the first snow each autumn, the long slow careful deepening of the drifts through the cold deep months, the small careful first soft melt of the late spring. She skied, the old north imagined, every long high pass of her country. She hunted, the old north imagined, every long high slope. She knew, by the long careful steady end of her first solitary winter, every small careful track of every small careful living thing in the high cold country, the way her father had known them before her, the way her father had taught her to know them.
• 1:08:19
  She became, the old north imagined, the small steady careful steady presence at the high edge of the worlds.
• 1:08:29
  The skalds, the small careful steady poets of the long winter halls, sang of her.
• 1:08:36
  They sang of her in their kennings. They called the snow on the high passes Skaði's pale road. They called the wind on the high slopes Skaði's breath. They called the small careful sharp arrows that came down out of the long cold sky in deep midwinter Skaði's gift. They sang of her, in the small careful long quiet way of the small careful skalds, with the small careful steady respect of beings who knew exactly what kind of being she was.
• 1:09:11
  She was, the small careful steady old north remembered, a being who had not, in any of the careful steady years that followed her marriage, ever once asked for her marriage back.
• 1:09:25
  She had been wise enough, the old north remembered, to let the marriage end. She had been wise enough to come home. She had been wise enough, the small careful steady old north imagined, to be exactly what she was.
• 1:09:41
  The Lokasenna, the Skáldskaparmál implies, gives us one small later glimpse of her.
• 1:09:49
  The Lokasenna is the great flyting at the feast of Ægir — the night, much later in the long story of the gods, when Loki came uninvited to the hall by the sea and accused, one by one, every god in Asgard of every small private thing they had done wrong. We have told that story in an earlier episode of The Sleeping Almanac.
• 1:10:13
  In that story, Skaði was at the feast.
• 1:10:17
  She did not, the poem implies, say much. She had not, in the small careful long years between the eighteen nights and the night of the flyting, become a god of long speeches. She sat in her seat at the long table, with the small careful steady listening attention of a being who had spent a long time alone and who knew exactly when to listen.
• 1:10:44
  But when Loki, near the end of the long evening of accusations, turned to her, the Lokasenna gives us one of the small fierce careful steady lines that Skaði ever spoke in the surviving sources.
• 1:11:00
  She told him, the Lokasenna says, that he would not, in the end, escape the long cold consequences of his cleverness. She told him, in the small careful steady voice of a being who had not, since the night of the goat in the council hall, forgotten who he was or what he had done, that he would be bound. She told him that there would be, in the long story of the gods, a cave. She told him that there would be stones. She told him that there would be a serpent.
• 1:11:36
  The Lokasenna tells us, then, that when the gods of Asgard finally caught Loki and bound him in the cave with the three stones, it was Skaði who placed the venomous serpent above his face. She placed it, the Lokasenna implies, with the small careful steady hands of a being who had been waiting, for a very long time, to do exactly this. She fastened it carefully. She walked away.
• 1:12:06
  That, the old north remembered, was Skaði.
• 1:12:10
  That was the goddess of winter who had lost a father, and who had walked south alone to demand his compensation, and who had chosen a husband by his feet alone and discovered she had chosen wrong, and who had laughed at a goat and a god in spite of herself, and who had tried for eighteen nights to live in a marriage that could not be lived in, and who had walked, finally, back up into her own country and let the marriage end.
• 1:12:40
  That was the goddess who, when she had had the chance, had placed the serpent.
• 1:12:47
  That was the goddess, the old north imagined with the small careful respect of a tradition that knew exactly what kind of being she was, who lived alone in the high cold country and was, in the long evenings, her own master.
• 1:13:04
  Chapter Twelve. Goodnight. And the Wolf at the Edge of Time.
• 1:13:10
  That is the story for tonight.
• 1:13:12
  The story of a young giantess who lost her father, and who walked south to demand what was owed, and who walked back north with the marriage in name and her own life in hand. The story of a being who had been wise enough to know when a thing was working and when a thing was not, and who had been wise enough, when the thing was not, to let it end.
• 1:13:39
  The Hávamál, the small careful steady wisdom-poem of the old north, has one more verse for this kind of story.
• 1:13:48
  The verse says: a small house of your own, where you can be your own master, is better than a great hall where you must ask for every meal. A small fire of your own is warmer than a great fire that someone else has built. The verse means, the small careful steady old north understood, that the country you belong to is the country you should live in, and the bed you can sleep in is the bed you should sleep in, and the small careful steady life you can be your own master in is the life worth keeping.
• 1:14:27
  Skaði, the old north remembered, kept that life.
• 1:14:32
  She kept it, in the small careful long steady years that followed her marriage, with the small careful steady patience of a being who had learned, in the eighteen nights of trying to live in another being's country, what kind of country she actually belonged to.
• 1:14:51
  She kept it through the long careful steady seasons. Through the long high cold winters of her own country. Through the long quiet hours of her hunting on the high slopes. Through the long evenings at the great hearth-fire of her father's hall, looking up through the small high window at the two new stars that her father's eyes had become.
• 1:15:16
  She kept it, the small careful steady old north imagined, until the appointed twilight came.
• 1:15:25
  The wolf in the east — the wolf that we have spoken of in earlier episodes of The Sleeping Almanac, the great wolf Fenrir who waits in the small careful steady patience of the old north's longest story for the moment when the cord that holds him will at last give way — that wolf was waiting, the old north remembered, all through Skaði's long quiet careful years in the mountains. He was waiting, the old north remembered, on the small careful long island of Lyngvi where he had been bound. He was waiting, the small careful steady old north remembered, through every long winter of Skaði's life, with the small careful steady patience of a great cold thing that knows its moment will come.
• 1:16:18
  That moment, the old north remembered, has not come yet.
• 1:16:23
  For tonight, that is for another evening — for the last episode of our season, when we will tell the appointed twilight and what comes after.
• 1:16:34
  For tonight, the story closes in the small careful long quiet of Skaði's hall.
• 1:16:41
  She is at the great hearth-fire in the centre of the cold stone room. Her father's spear is leaning against the wall beside her seat. Her bow is on the carved wooden rack above the fire. Her skis are at the door, ready for the long quiet careful early morning when she will put them on and go out into the small careful steady cold of the high passes. The hall is quiet. The wind is, as always, outside the hall. The wolves are, as always, calling in the deep high valleys. The two new stars, the small careful steady old north imagined, are just visible through the small high window of the hall, hanging in the deep cold sky above the eastern country.
• 1:17:31
  She looks up at them for a small careful moment.
• 1:17:34
  Then she lowers her head.
• 1:17:36
  She watches the small careful steady old fire in the hearth.
• 1:17:40
  She sits, the old north imagined, in the small careful long quiet of her own house.
• 1:17:47
  You may have felt, in your own life, the small careful steady thing the Hávamál was trying to say. The small careful steady weight of a home that is yours. The small careful steady peace of a bed you can sleep in. The small careful steady freedom of a country that lets you, in the small slow careful way of the small careful steady years, be your own master in the small careful quiet ways that the country you do not belong to would not have let you.
• 1:18:21
  Tomorrow, in another evening, we will tell of what came after.
• 1:18:26
  We will tell of Loki, who fled from Asgard after the long story Skaði saw the end of, and who in the form of a salmon hid in a river under a waterfall, and who was caught in a net the gods themselves had taught the salmon. We will tell of the cave under the earth. We will tell of the three stones. We will tell of the serpent. We will tell of the small careful steady old north hands of a goddess who had been waiting, for a very long time, to do exactly the thing the appointed twilight required of her.
• 1:19:04
  We will tell, in time, of the new world. We will tell, in the very last of these evenings, of what Vǫluspá tells us: that after the appointed twilight has come, after the wolf has swallowed the sun and the moon and the great burning has happened and the gods have fallen and the world has sunk back into the sea, after all of that, the sources say, the sea will rise again. Green earth will come up out of the water. A small clear morning will come. The gods who survive — and there are, in the prophecy, a few — will walk out into the new grass. They will find the small game-pieces of the old gods, the small carved wooden tokens the old gods used to play with on the long evenings, half-buried in the new earth where the old halls had been. They will pick them up. They will sit on the new grass in the new morning, and they will look at the game-pieces in their hands, and they will, in the slow way of survivors, begin to remember.
• 1:20:17
  In that new world, Vǫluspá tells us, Skaði is not, in the surviving prophecies, named among the survivors.
• 1:20:27
  But the country she loved is.
• 1:20:29
  The cold high mountains. The long high passes. The deep winter snows. The small careful steady wind on the cold rocks. The small careful steady calling of the wolves in the deep high valleys. The two stars above the eastern country, looking down on the cold winter world from a long way up. The small careful steady cold of the country that, the old north imagined, was Skaði herself, in the small careful long way the country and the goddess become, in the long memory of the old north, the same thing.
• 1:21:11
  Skaði is the country. The country is Skaði.
• 1:21:15
  In the new world after the burning, the country will be there.
• 1:21:20
  That is the story for tonight.
• 1:21:22
  The Almanac will return.
• 1:21:24
  Goodnight, dear listener.
• 1:21:26
  Goodnight.