She came in full armor, seeking what was owed,

The blood-price for her father, killed upon the road,

Where Asgard gleams so golden, false and bright,

Where oaths are weighed in words, instead of what is right,

She came as a true warrior, not suppliant, nor meek,

Demanding weregild, the way the just must speak,

She found instead a game, the Aesir played,

A rigged lot, not compensation, where her dignity was weighed,

Against their ruthless cunning, did you think her blind?

That she would just bow before the trick designed,

To strip her choices in life, while seeming to bestow,

A husband-payment for, her murdered father's woe?

You hid the truth behind, a dark curtain drawn,

Showed naught but their feet, at the early break of dawn,

While she, who sought the fairest, of your kind,

Was forced to choose by touch, not heart or mind.

"I've been tricked," she spoke, that's no courtly veil,

A warrior's bitter truth, turned her heart cold and pale:

The feet belonged not, to the god of light,

But to the sea-lord dwelling, in ocean salt's might,

Whose realm was so foreign compared to her mountain throne,

Whose soul's very nature fought the ways of her own.

What payment this? What honor in deceit?

Binding the wolf-hunt's mistress, to the sea God's fleet,

To chain the snow-clad peaks, to ocean's roar,

Calling it justice? Like that settled the score?

Nine nights in Njord's domain, she tried to dwell,

Shrieking gulls made those nine, a sleepless hell.

Nine nights in mountain halls, he fought to stay,

The wolves' wild howling, drove his peace away.

"Hateful to me," each spoke, "this awful foreign place,"

So dissolved any value, from their compensation case.

She sought no pity, when she left his hall,

Returned unbowed, to Þrymheimr's icy walls,

Where winter rules, and silence holds its court,

Where ski-tracks run, and game becomes the sport.

Yet you who sit in golden, Asgard's glow,

Would call her "giantess," let this saga show:

That she whose name, may grace those very lands,

Is no lesser than a Goddess, no lesser than the Aesir-band,

The jötnar blood you like to claim, when a useful oath is made,

But when it suits you later, use that kinship to degrade.

How many great halls, are named for her domain?

How many mountain peaks, still echo her refrain?

Yet in your sagas written, by weak scribes who bent to power,

Reduced her to a footnote, a truly bitter hour,

When Loki's punishment, then required her hand,

To place a serpent above his head, as the gods had planned,

A marriage made to fail, a vengeance barely told,

This is the sum of those histories you hold:

For she who came in armor, seeking what is right,

Found instead nothing but, a coward's twisted slight.

Did you believe the hiding, of Baldr's form,

That veiling the truth, would somehow make her conform,

To a valueless marriage, she was supposed to bow and take,

Your rigged compensation, for her father's sake?

She took it only, because the law demanded so,

When the sham collapsed, she chose to turn and go,

Unconquered, undiminished, she returned,

To peaks where life in winter's kingdom, is earned,

Where wolves howl true, where snow falls pure and deep,

Where those gods of manipulation dare not creep.

You, who thought that gold, and mead, could buy,

Her silence, her compliance, her reply,

Remember this now: mountains do not bend,

The winter's mighty fury, has no compromised end,

Skadi dwells there, where truth cuts sharp as ice,

Where nothing false survives, lies pay the frozen price,

She needed not your halls, your feasts, or your throne:

The winter wilderness, was always hers alone.

Let softer souls seek comfort, in your unrighteous lies,

Let weaker hearts believe, your false compromise.

Know now: places in Scandinavia still bear her name,

Though scribes erased, memory holds, true her claim:

The peaks remember things your old verses try to hide,

That she came seeking justice, not to become a bride,

But she was cheated by those, other gods' design,

So she left, uncrushed, to rule winter realms sublime.

So sit up there in in Asgard, and toast your clever schemes,

That turned bloodprices, to bondage, through unromantic dreams,

When the icy chill of those winter winds, howl above and below,

She sends them all a message, within the Yule moon's glow,

No false promises or deceptive tricks, matter anymore,

She'll never be some servant-wife, waiting by the door,

Where wolf-song echoes truth, where snow falls pure and white,

Skadi reigns, unconquered, through every winter night.

~Ash