Some Icelandic Folklore

Necropants
Firstly, the sorcerer must make a pact with a wealthy man who’s willing to let his body be used after death. Then, as soon as the man dies, the sorcerer digs up the body and skins it from the waist down being very careful not to tear or make any holes in the skin. These are the necropants and they can be used to generate money. This is done by stealing a coin from a poor widow – it’s got to be a poor widow because…well, it just has ok? The widow’s coin is then placed in the scrotum of the necropants. After that, the scrotal sack will periodically fill up with money provided that the original coin stays in place. I’m not making this up. Before the sorcerer himself dies, he must be careful to pass the necropants onto someone else who carefully steps into them one leg at a time. If the sorcerer doesn’t pass on the necropants, his body will become infested with lice – something presumably far worse than being dug up and having your knackers used as some kind of magic purse.

Tilberis
To get a Tilberi, a woman has to steal a rib from a corpse in a graveyard on Whitsunday. She walks around the grave a bit – so many times clockwise, so many times anti-clockwise – puts some blood on it from her left big toe, then wraps the rib in wool. This is then kept nestled between her breasts. On the next three Sundays, during mass, she must spit her communion wine into her cleavage and onto the rib. After the third gobfull, the thing starts to grow until it’s too big to conceal and she releases it into the countryside to steal milk for her. To feed the Tilberi, the woman cuts a notch in her right inner thigh and raises the flesh to produce a nipple which it can suckle on. When the woman is finished with it, she sends it out to collect the lamp wax from three counties and it eventually explodes from exhaustion. It’s tempting to think that all this is made up to amuse tourists – it certainly seems a lot of trouble to go to for some free milk. However, there is documented historical evidence that in the 18th Century, several women were convicted of keeping Tilberis. It’s doubtful whether they actually did of course, but the interesting thing is that people must have believed in the existence of the creatures at the time.

The Fisherman of Stokkseyri
‘As everyone knows, seals love pregnant women’. When an audio-commentary starts like that, you’re going to carry on listening aren’t you? Unfortunately, it turns out that seals don’t like pregnant women for any nice, cuddly reason – instead they prefer to tear them to pieces and eat the unborn babies. A fisherman who lived on the shore decided to exploit this weakness by keeping his wife permanently pregnant so that seals would be lured into attacking her. Before the seal had chance however, the fisherman would leap out, kill it, and have a plentiful supply of food and oil. This worked brilliantly for twelve years until one day, the fisherman was delayed and the seal got close enough to his wife to ‘stroke her fiercely’. She survived but could no longer produce children – something I imagine she’d be rather pleased about after being pregnant for twelve years.