Nithing poles such as this have been popping up in Iceland more and more over the last few decades. Anna Björg, CEO of the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavik, says nithing poles are “pointed against someone you want revenge on” and considered deeply personal. She explains that it’s more serious when directed at an individual as opposed to a larger entity, such as an industry or the government. Björg says, “People take it like a death threat.”
It is, approximately. The word is a cognate of “nothing,” and is a declaration that the cursed is considered no better than nothing in the eyes of the one issuing the curse. Just to call someone that verbally was a punishable offense under the old laws, requiring you to pay a portion of their wergild. Apparently current Icelandic law handles it exactly like issuing a threat against someone’s life, if it is pointed at a person instead of an organization.
The most famous example is from Egils saga Skallagrímssonar.
7 comments:
I always wonder where the details come from. Why does only a horse's head work? Why the poem in that orientation? Etc.
The horse head comes from Egil’s saga. I don’t know how else you would carve a poem on a staff than vertically, but perhaps you could do a spiral if you were talented.
Yes, but where did Egil get it? Even if he started it, why that particular form? And the poem has to be written upside down and in 8 lines?
“The poet/cursemaker has to write the poem on the stick (pole) upside down by its own end (making eight lines),”
I think there were reasons, but they seem to have been lost to us.
Horse sacrifice was an Indo-European custom and was probably related. There is evidence not only of Greek and Roman sacrifices, but as far east as India. Some Danes did one as an art work as recently as 1970. Culturally pretty close, I suppose, though those particular Danes may not have much accuracy behind them. https://bjoernnoergaard.dk/en/works/aktioner/horse-sacrifice.
The other group big in Icelandic ancestry were the Irish, who also had horse-sacrifice for kingship. How you get from those ceremonies to cursing I can't tell you. It is more likely a parallel than derived custom, I would guess.
I didn't know that about horse sacrifice. Seems connected, though. If horses have some particular value or meaning to the gods, then using them in curses could make sense.
Speaking purely as a saga reader, without any more credentials than a lifetime of interest in the subject, I have a theory that putting a head on an inanimate object (Viking ships would be an example) transformed them magically into magical creatures, which would be empowered by the magic of the runes. Thus the nidstang becomes a living witch-being, constantly cursing the object of the curse.
I grieve over the slide of the Icelanders, and other Europeans, into pre-Christian magic. They will suffer for this, not only in eternity, but in this life. I take no pleasure in saying it.
I recall back in the 90's an Icelandic student, if I recall correctly one Ullr, who paraded around the school with a goats head around Halloween. I wonder if that was a poor attempt at a nithing pole ceremony...
Where do they get the horse heads??
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