Among Icelandic tales of sorcery, few objects inspire as much fascination or discomfort as the nábrók, or necropants. These so-called “corpse breeches” occupy a strange place in the nation’s folklore, described as trousers made from the skin of a dead man and believed to grant endless wealth to those bold or desperate enough to attempt their creation.
From dark pact to magical wardrobe
The concept of nábrók is found throughout the Icelandic canon of stories about witchcraft and magical practices. Chronicled by folklorist Jón Árnason, these trousers were the subject of whispers about sorcerers and their peculiar methods of attaining riches. Names for these fabled garments abound in stories: skollabrækur (devil’s breeches), Finnabrækur (Lappish breeches), gjaldbuxur (money trousers) and Papeyarbuxur (Papey breeches). Yet all point to the same improbably grisly recipe, trousers, carefully flayed from a corpse below the waist, believed to become imbued with an uncanny ability to summon coins.
To achieve this supposed windfall, folklore stated that one must make a sinister agreement with another living person: upon the partner’s death, the survivor would have permission to exhume the corpse and peel away the skin from waist to toe. If this grim task was performed flawlessly, creating a skin “suit” without holes, the would-be sorcerer would don the trousers, which, it was said, would then meld to the wearer’s own body.
Wealth, ritual and diabolical consequences
However, acquiring the trousers was not enough. The real magic, according to the legends, was activated by a further act: stealing a coin from a desperately poor widow, during a church festival at a particular moment between readings. This coin had to be deposited into the pungur (the scrotum, referred to in stories as the ‘pocket’) of the trousers. In some versions, a slip of paper marked with a magical Icelandic stave, a symbol such as the nábrókarstafur, should also be included with the coin.
Once complete, the necropants would allegedly begin to produce coins without end, as long as the original stolen coin remained in place. Over time, stories about nábrók took on an increasingly diabolical tinge. Some commentators described the trousers as a gift of the devil, promising wealth at a terrible spiritual cost. The wearer, legend insisted, could not remove the trousers at will. To secure the salvation of his soul, he must transfer them to someone else before death, by having the next wearer step into one leg as he stepped out, making it impossible to back out of the exchange.
While the existence of nábrók is extremely unlikely outside of folklore, physical representations today can be found at the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft. The reconstructed pair on display stand as a reminder of how Iceland’s tales have explored the mingling of magic, greed, the supernatural and the sombre humour shadowing the fight for survival.
Sources
- Wikipedia
- Wikipedia (Icelandic) in Icelandic
