Steam has the game's system requirements listed at the bottom of this page:
http://store.steampowered.com/app/72850/If you click on Start, type in "Run" and hit enter, and then enter "dxdiag" into the box that comes up, you can see most of your system specifications. If you tell me your RAM, your processor, and your graphics card I might be able to tell if you can run it.
Granted, Skyrim is one of those games that's designed to play on just about anything, just not at maximum settings, so it's likely you can play it on low or medium if your laptop was purchased in the past year or so.