Hmm, wierd. Have you tried having Steam verify the local cache for Skyrim? Seems like something got corrupted.
I don't remember exactly what it's called, but if you go to the Steam Library, right-click on Skyrim, choose properties, there's a button somewhere in the properties window which is something like "Verify local files" or something like that. If you click that, it should look to see if any of the game files are changed, and it should re-download any corrupted files.