Pagan Poetry

Daginn,

We enjoyed our final excursion this weekend. We drove across the fjords to a village about an hour away called Hólmavík. The village is rather tiny, as most are in the West Fjords, but it has a Vínbúð (the state-owned monopoly liquor store chain in Iceland, literally the only place to get alcohol outside a bar/pub/club here in Iceland). As exciting as Vínbúðið is, it was not the primary reason for our visit to Hólmavík. Our primary reason? the Hólmavík Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft.

The museum is a humble but modern building that gives a whirlwind tour of the history of sorcery and witchcraft in Iceland from the mediaeval to the early modern age. It features an interesting guided tour (great mp3 recordings spoken by an Icelandic man with a rumbly baritone) and many real or replicated artefacts. Real artefacts include Grimmoires and charms. Replications include the necropants.

Wait what?
Necropants?

Okay get this. The necropants are a charm/spell whatever from mediaeval Iceland. A sorcerer must make a pact with a living man in which the living man, when he dies, agrees to let the sorcerer skin him from the waist down to make a pair of necropants. The skinning job must be impeccable. No holes or tears. Once skinned and dried, the sorcerer puts on the necropants and they fuse magically with his own skin. Then he puts a coin in the scrotum of the necropants and they will always magically draw money into the scrotum.

They even work across generations! If you can get the next in line to step into one leg as you step out, the pants will still magically draw money into the scrotum.

SCROTUM!

Let me say it one more time: human skin pants. Money. In the scrotum.

I don´t know what´s freakier, that this even exists or that people actually did it. No, this is the freakiest bit. Someone at some point in Icelandic history made this up. They just decided it would be a great way to magically make money.

Anyway, the museum is full of stuff like that. But the most interesting part is the hysteria. Americans will be more familiar with the Salem witch trials, but similar things happened in Iceland. People were accused of being sorcerers or witches and punished in a variety of horrible ways including death. Much like Salem, those accused were of low social status, poor, or generally disliked. Also interesting, is that most of the accusations were made by a single mildly powerful family.

I would definitely like to know more about these social systems. The poor who used magic to improve their life chances, and the wealthy who used allegations of witchcraft to eliminate individuals they did not like or outmanoeuvre their rivals.

Because these dramatic historical events played out largely in the Strandir region of the west fjords, the people here have made a great effort to communicate their unusual history. The first and biggest step of course, being the museum in Hólmavík.

The second step commenced in 2005 in nearby Klúka, Bjarnarfjörður--The Sorcerer´s Cottage. The cottage is a reconstruction of a typical Strandir dwelling in the mediaeval period. Most reconstructions or publications are centred around rich families and power homesteads. The cottage is different in that it is meant to be a realistic depiction of a commoner´s house. It is dark, claustrophobic and slightly shabby.

I found the cottage to be the more effective delivery of information. There was a great informational booklet about the magical staves (symbols) and the history of witchcraft and sorcery in the Strandir region. Better still, most of the staves could be found in the cottage reconstructed as they were presented in historical texts.

For example the warding stave was carved over the entrance door frame as it would have been used in the mediaeval period.

Before returning to Reykjanes, we enjoyed a delicious lunch at a restaurant in Hólmavík. I had a 12´´pizza (are pizzas measured in inches in every country?) and some coke. Definite luxuries here in the West Fjords.

Bless bless,

Nick

Necropants.



Come a little bit closer baby...



A cod with a piece of staved wood. Summons storms.



Tilburyinn. A woman steals a rib from a grave and wraps it in wool. She keeps it hidden between her breasts and feeds it communion wine until it grows up. Then she stores it next to her fannie and cuts herself a thigh nipple to feed it from. It races around the countryside gathering milk for the woman. When it gets to big and demanding you kill it by sending it off to complete some impossible task.



An example of an Icelandic "stave", a magical inscription.



A stone that was found with traces of blood (using chemical fluorescence methods). Possibly used in human sacrifice.



A sorcerer casting a spell in the Sorcerer´s Cottage.



The Sorcerer's Cottage.