When I Say “Necro”, You Say “Pants!”

*warning: this post starts off with some nudity, which is neither tasteful or necessary….and no, it isn’t either of us*

Well, today was the day we did one of the things I’ve most been looking forward to since we started planning this trip! And we started the day with the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft. Now, Mo is not a museum-enthusiast, but I must have really sold this museum in my extreme anticipation to meet the Necro Pants!!! And here they are, in all their revolting hairy glory!!!

You’re probably wondering what the heck you’re looking at, but yes, they really are what they appear to be! Pants made from human skin! Your next question is probably some variation of the phrase “dear God, why??!?!”, and that’s a fair question. Let me enlighten you! A sorcerer makes a pact with a living man to get his permission to dig up his body, skin it from the waist down, and then the sorcerer steps into the skin which immediately becomes one with his own. Now, that’s not all! The sorcerer must then steal a coin from a poor widow at either Easter or Christmas (hey, if you’re gonna steal from a poor widow, why not do it on a festive religious holiday, eh?), and it must then be kept in the scrotum, where it will then draw money from other living persons, keeping the sorcerer rich. You’re all lucky they don’t sell these pants in the gift shop, or you’d all be getting a pair!!! They didn’t even have mini necro pants Christmas ornaments…I was very disappointed!

Now, other than that juicy bit of messed up folklore, we also learned the recipe for invisibility! All you need is some blood from the index finger of your left hand, and some from the ring finger of your right hand, some from both of your nipples. Mix those with some blood from a living raven, and melt it all with the raven’s brain and pieces of a human stomach. Carve the sign of the lignite with magentic steel that’s been hardened 3x in human blood. Easy-peasy! You’re welcome!

We learned a lot of other fantastic and useful things, but we’re keeping them to ourselves! Let’s just say that I’m excited for Mo to try a particular spell that involves growing nipples on her thigh to suckle a creature she’s made out of a human rib and grey cloth. These Icelanders sure have some interesting and colourful folklore!

As much as we wanted to stay in this museum all day, we had to get moving. Our next stop was more turf-houses (you can never have enough!) at the 2nd part of the sorcery museum (which is randomly 25km away, up a gravel mountain road). It was showcasing how the poor lived, to show why someone might risk being burnt at the stake, and turn to witchcraft to better their circumstances. Cute as they are on the outside, the cramped and damp interior would make anyone throw on a pair of Neco Pants, and snatch coins from widows!

….followed by finding the abandoned throne of a giant:

Since the giant clearly wasn’t using it, I attempted to scramble up, but failed miserably and retreated to the car. I’m pretty sure a herd of sheep who witnessed my humiliation were mocking me.

This brings me to the highlight of the day: Our excursion on Icelandic ponies, where I must say we rocked the helmets:

Mo rode a horse named Franz, and I was on Kvica:

They were super sweet horses, and our guide Cami (or maybe Tammy….we’re not sure) was very nice. And the surroundings were beyond beautiful!

These horses are famous for their gait and smooth ride….I didn’t find it that “smooth” and was jostled up and down, and tossed around everytime we went faster than a walk (there may have been a small amount of screaming from me in the beginning….), but it was still a lot of fun! Mo is more horse-savvy and said she could definitely tell the difference between these horses and the kinds more common in North America. Her horse Franz had 5 gaits, and looked really pretty when he was trotting along, whereas mine had 4 gaits, and an aversion to water which made crossing the river (and some puddles) very exciting. But this outing was definitely a highlight!

We drove through some incredible scenery on the way to our night’s accommodation. We’ve now entered the Western Fjords, which is an area of Iceland that only about 10% of tourists get to, and you can tell the difference because there’s vast stretches of road where you don’t see anything but sheep (who like to lie in the middle of the road and dare you to honk at them or swerve around them). Here’s a few pics of the Fjords and the surrounding areas. I didn’t alter these photos in any way, I swear everything really is that blue and green:

We’ve been soooo incredibly lucky with weather, it’s almost laughable. The only times it’s rained has been when we are in the car, and the day we did the hike in the national park (which was less “rain”, and more “refreshing mist”). We thought our luck had run out today when it was raining as we arrived at the horseback riding, but as soon as they were saddled the sun came out and it was gorgeous! Must be the good travel karma from the cairn we built at th beginning of the trip!

We came up with a new game in the car today, very similar to the punch-buggy game (when you yell “punch buggy, no return!” and slug the unsuspecting person next to you in the car, which is even more fun when that person doesn’t even realize they’re playing), except we do it when we see waterfalls….well, it only took about 2hrs to see about 150 waterfalls (no joke, it’s insane), and both of us had sore arms, so we gave it up. But we both got out some good pent-up aggression during that 2hrs! haha.

I know today doesn’t seem like we did a lot, but it was a lot of driving and breath-taking scenery! We feel pretty lucky to be in this spectacular place! Here’s the view from our guesthouse tonight: