Tolkien NorsePlays Njord & Skaði.
During a recent read of Tolkien's Unfinished Tales of Númenor and Middle-Earth I ran across the tale of "Aldarion and Erendis: The Mariner's Wife". Now it's not any secret Tolkien's rife with NorsePlay, so this specific story's like a fan-fic expansion of the marriage of Njord & Skaði.
[Njord and Skadi on the Way to Nóatún by Wilhelm Wägner (1882 CE)]
The connection of one to the other is that the husband is enamored of seafaring, while the wife is attached to the mountains, and they're both of different species.
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| [Aldarion x Erendis meme from feanoriel's tumblr.] |
Specifically compare the following excerpts:
[When] all was made ready and men prepared to weigh anchor Erendis came there, little though she loved the noise and bustle of the great harbour and the crying of the gulls.
~ Tolkien
"Hateful for me are the mountains,
I was not long there,
only nine nights.
The howling of the wolves
sounded ugly to me
after the song of the swans."
Skaði responded:
"Sleep I could not
on the sea beds
for the screeching of the bird.
That gull wakes me
when from the wide sea
he comes each morning."
~ Prose Edda ch 23.
The gull reference is the tell here, and that makes it seem that Tolkien wanted his more erudite readers to catch that and enjoy his homage and filling-out of that story from the Norse Lore.
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