Imagine yourself far away in the wild mountains of Sweden.
There is little wind howling on the distance.
Snow is slowly falling from the sky.
The winter sun touches the snow and makes it shimmer in the sunlight.
It is peaceful and beautiful.
This is a harsh environment to live,
But to be here on an adventure,
That is something different.
Today Skades is also from Scandinavia.
In Norse mythology Skadi is the goddess of the north.
Some scholars believe that the world Scandinavia is derived from her name,
And the home of Skadi was in the Scandinavian mountains.
For those of you who don't know,
The Scandinavian mountains are located in the Lapland of Norway,
Finland and Sweden.
She is the goddess of hunt and the goddess of skiing.
Skadi is a Jotunni,
She is a giantess,
A giant goddess.
Skadi was the daughter of the giant Tjatsi.
Tjatsi hold grudge towards the gods of Asgard,
And he was killed by the trickster god Loki.
Skadi wanted to revenge her father's death,
So she travelled to Asgard to confront the gods.
The gods did not want to have another conflict with her.
Brokenhearted by the loss of her father,
She asked that the gods would make her laugh.
They all tried,
But she remained sad.
Finally,
Loki tied a rope to a goat,
And then to his own genitals,
Causing both the goat and Loki to scream in pain.
Skadi was amused and laughed,
Thus sealing the deal.
But the noise and the merriment of the deities got on her nerves,
And she missed her home terribly.
The gods allowed this,
With the condition that she would marry one of them.
But she could only see the feet of the gods and decide her future husband that way.
Skadi looked at the feet and chose the most beautiful pair.
She thought they belonged to the god Baldur,
Who was the most handsome of the gods.
But no,
The pair of feet belonged to Njord,
God of the sea.
Skadi married Njord and moved to the seashore.
They tried living together,
But Skadi wanted to live in her father's hall in Trinheim,
And Njord wanted to live in Noatun,
His seaside hall.
She was very unhappy,
And eventually the couple divorced.
She did not like to live by the sea,
She missed the mountains and the wild nature.
Skadi returned home and married Odin,
The god of wisdom,
And they had several children.
The word that we associate with Skadi in this meditation is patience.
She was patient.
When she went to meet the gods,
She was turned from Jotuni to a goddess and become one of them,
And yet she remained true to herself.
She married Njord because she was forced to,
But leaving him and following her heart was the right thing to do.
In this life we are bound to make mistakes,
And we learn and grow from them.
We need to be patient with ourselves and with others.
Trust yourself,
Trust that the life you want for yourself is something you don't need to compromise with others.
You can sit down and close your eyes if you wish.
In Finland,
Thousands of years ago when there were visitors from far away lands exploring the world of the north,
Like Roman travelers and historians,
They wrote down into their journey books about the northern people who had the ability to fly over the snow.
These people were not flying,
They were actually skiing.
I don't know if there are similar stories told about people in Sweden from those times,
But I would not be surprised if that was the case.
Skadi was the goddess of skiing.
Some of you may know what skiing is like.
It can be lots of fun,
And especially when you are skiing in the forest,
You pay attention to the nature around you,
And if you are sliding very fast,
There is an element of freedom,
And I think that feeling is what represents Skadi,
This feeling of being in touch with nature and flying above the snow with the skis.
Trinheim is Skadi's home,
And essentially it was a giant cave.
Imagine granite grey mountains in front of you,
With snow covering the top.
There we have Trinheim,
And when we step inside,
We see that there are crystals everywhere.
The hall is glittering with crystals.
They are silver,
Purple,
Pink,
Green and all the different shades of blue that you can ever imagine.
And there we meet Skadi.
She is a tall woman with pale skin and snow-white hair that is braided and flows on her back.
She has a staff with crystals on it.
Skadi sits on her throne and welcomes you to her home.
There is a white snow owl on her shoulders and wolves lay on her feet.
Skadi,
The Norse goddess,
Is associated with the domains of winter,
And mountains symbolize resilience and strength.
She lives far away from other gods,
But she has not completely abandoned them.
This rural,
Harsh area is just what she prefers.
As we can hear from her story,
She is not afraid of challenges.
The element of Skadi that we can reflect on ourselves is that this is the goddess of wilderness,
And she represents the wilderness inside ourselves.
She is not a savage,
She is very sophisticated,
But that does not mean that she would like to live like the other gods.
Skadi is the goddess of mountains,
Who draws strength and comfort from the tall peaks and cracky cliffs that surround her domain.
Her actions and influence are set against the backdrop of these magnificent natural features.
Now imagine,
What is your soul landscape?
We know that the soul landscape of Skadi are these white mountains.
But what is your soul landscape?
Perhaps it is the sea,
Beautiful beach with palm trees flowing in southern warm wind.
Or perhaps it is a wild,
Free northern forest with tall pine trees and spruces.
Or maybe it is somewhere in middle Europe,
With leafy trees like aspen and ash and maple slowly dancing in the wind.
Or maybe it is a meadow filled with flowers.
We all have different landscapes in our souls.
Places that we long to see and to feel.
Memories from our childhood.
Beautiful places where we have visited and lived.
When we think about our soul landscapes,
Those are reflections of ourselves,
Reflections of our souls.
Skadi is known for exceptional skills in archery,
Skiing and hunting.
She was the best archer of all the gods,
Always hitting her targets.
She managed to navigate in this winter environment,
Avoiding sharp cliffs and downfalls.
All these shows the patience of the goddess,
Who took her time to learn these skills and sharp them into perfection.
Eventually Skadi becomes one with her environment.
She finds harmony in this world that is unpredictable and constantly changing.
If there is a time when your patience is being tested,
One of the things that you can do is to think about your soul landscape and calm yourself down.
We might be intimidated by a goddess who lives such a wide life.
Last time when we talked about Lovjatar,
Who represents the shamanic journey,
Especially from a place of home and comfort.
Skadi represents another type of shamanic journey.
A journey where a person finds themselves when they go out in nature and find those places where their soul is resting.
It is time to say farewell to Skadi.
She stays here in her cave whenever you wish to meet her.
The goddess of raw power and the untamed beauty of wilderness.
Goddess of the forces that no human can control and we can only have respect for her and for those forces that she represents.
Slowly return back to this reality.
You can stretch your hands and your legs.
Thank you for joining me to this meditation.
Blessed be.
