It’s April 10, and that can only mean one thing. YES, THAT’S RIGHT! It’s the anniversary of Jón Jónsson and his son Jón Jónsson being burnt at the stake in Iceland for attacking a priest with witchcraft and casting fart runes on a girl.
Fart runes, or fretrúnir, are for when you want to
afflict your [enemy’s] belly with great shitting and shooting pains and … very great farting. May your bones split asunder, may your guts burst, may your farting never stop, neither day nor night.
I am indebted to G H Finn for alerting me to these marvellous things, which are, apparently, a doddle to deploy.
You simply write them out
on white calfskin with your own blood taken from your thigh and say… May it loosen you from your place and burst your guts; may your farting never stop day and night. You will be as weak as the fiend Loki, who was bound by all the gods.
To be honest, the fart stuff was actually a minor detail in the Kirkjuból witch trial, most of which hinged on Jónsson and Jónsson confessing to using sorcery on pastor Jón Magnússon. After their execution, he got all their possessions, but then claimed his torments hadn’t ceased and accused their daughter/sister Þuríður Jónsdóttir of witchcraft. So she sued Magnússon for persecution and was awarded all his belongings as compensation when she won.
Of course, if you’ve read the marvellously odd The Museum of Whales You Will Never See: And Other Excursions to Iceland’s Most Unusual Museums you will know there is a Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft in Iceland where you can find out all sorts about the history of paranormal practices in that fair land.
You can see their ABSOLUTELY AUTHENTIC zombie climbing out of the floor, for example:
…and, er… necropants, which are actually rather unsettling:
…and, dear god, whatever the hell these things are. Please don’t have nightmares. Do sleep well.
Apparently, these are tilberi, or milk-sucking demons, created by wicked women to suckle on the cows of other farmers until it was filled with milk. It would then return to its ‘mother’ and vomit up butter.
Yes, we have drifted away from the original premise, but there wasn’t *that* much to learn about fart runes, and this is where reading about them led.
