Description

Skadi pronounced “SKAHD-ee;” is a giantess or Jötunn and goddess in Norse mythology. She lives in the highest reaches of the mountains, where the snow never melts. She’s an adept huntress, and her bow, snowshoes, and skis are her most often-mentioned attributes.

She was once married to the god Njord. However their marriage failed as Njord couldn’t stand the cold mountains far from his beloved sea and Skadi couldn’t stand the light and noise of Njord’s home by the seashore, so the two parted ways.

Despite being a Jötunn she claimed her status of goddess by marriage, and in a capacity as a patroness of winter subsistence activities such as hunting.

In this piece I portrayed her with some animals I associate with survival as well as all being at risk of extinction with the onset of catastrophic climate change. They represent to us resilience and adaptability to harsh cold conditions as well as reminding us of how fragile and interdependent life is to environmental conditions.

On one side of her is the Arctic wolf, on the other Polar Bear, above hangs the skull of the long gone Cave bear, a casualty of another drastic environmental shift from ice age to the present climate. In her arms she holds and Arctic Fox and on her shoulder is a Raven. All animals past and present are hunters and survival experts in the hostile and harsh conditions of a far north winter.

She is Skaði the winter huntress, my survival goddess. She is an ancient predator of the wild, she is my resilience in the face of a hostile world.