A Marriage That Could Not Hold, and the Venom Above Loki

The marriage of Skadi and Njord is one of the most human episodes in the mythology, a study in incompatibility. Njord cannot bear the cold and the howling of wolves in Skadi's mountain home Thrymheim, and Skadi cannot sleep for the cries of gulls and the noise of the sea at Njord's shore Noatun; they try each other's houses and part, unable to live together. Skadi returns to her mountains, to her skis and her bow. She appears once more in a memorable role: when the gods at last bind Loki as punishment for the death of Baldr, it is Skadi who fastens a venomous serpent above his face to drip its poison on him, a fitting act of vengeance from the giantess whose father Loki had helped to kill. Some later sources associate her instead, or afterward, with Odin. Her name may survive in Scandinavia itself, though this is debated.

Skadi's name was given in 2000 to one of Saturn's small outer moons, discovered that year and formally named Skathi in 2003 as part of a group of Saturnian satellites assigned names from Norse mythology, a modern astronomical echo of the goddess's old association with cold, distant, mountainous terrain. The choice fits a broader pattern in which giant, retrograde-orbiting moons of Saturn have been named for Norse giants rather than gods proper, since Skadi is herself a giantess only married into the divine Aesir and Vanir families rather than born among them, a genealogical nuance the naming scheme was designed to reflect.