I haven't even played or looked at either of the games but I will say Zelda...why? Because Zelda has a massive history of nostalgia for me...Skyrim is like "wut"....why? because Skyrim seems to be this massive bandwagon as of recent.
Having played both quite a lot (Skyward Sword around 36 hours, Skyrim 40-50hours) I voted for Skyward Sword.
Why? It just motivated me to play, and made me feel better along with the game. When things didn't go my way it made me feel them and get a reason to do what I did. While Skyrim only has my own curiosity of "what might be behind this ridge" to motivate me. And after 50 or so hours that is losing it's flair.
Both are really good games, but only one managed to make me feel and be "I gotta do this S*it!" and that feeling is really what I play games for (Single Player).
skyward sword. i like like to have a clear opjective with some optional stuff around, instead of alot of optional stuff with a little bit of clear objective :>
I haven't got to play Skyward Sword yet, but I love Zelda games. I rented Skyrim from my library to give it a try and I returned it two days later because I didn't get what was so great about it.
I can't say that I can judge fairly, I have a lot of bias as in Zelda is my all time favorite gaming series (And game, since I can't choose which is my favorite), and I haven't played Skyrim yet. I can say this, Skyward Sword was FANTASTIC. The gameplay, the characters, the story- I nearly cried at the end, and I've never in my life cried at a Video Game -- that's how much I cared for about the characters in this game. The whole story is just simply.. wonderful, and when you consider the other games in the series, for the past 25 years, it makes the story EVEN better since it's a prequel to all of the games.
So biasly I will say Skyward Sword for now. Having played Oblivion, I wasn't honestly impressed, the open world bored me fast, and the main story just didn't interest me at all. I know, a lot of people have disliked Oblivion too, and ended up loving Skyrim, so we'll see, it might woo me over, I have no idea.