Make money fast with ancient magic
The Grapevine, deeply worried about the global economy, has commissioned a series of articles to provide you, industrious readers, with ideas to grease the engine of commerce.
Have you ever been angry with your neighbour? To the point that you’re seething in anger — crying, swearing, spitting, denouncing. At those times the sensible course to take is to relax, take deep breaths through your nose and out through your mouth. Notice your breathing. Then get out the craft kit and turn all that built-up angst into a work of art. Like a pole, decorated with runes spelling out the curse you’ve written. This curse should touch on the source of your anger, your neighbour, for example, and spell out how, theoretically, you’d like them to suffer.
Now find a mare; run your hands through its lush mane, avoid its trusting eyes; stare instead at the limitless horizon, redolent of eternity. Pat it gently as you lead it around the back of the stables. When you’re done, put the horse’s head on top of the pole. Orient the head toward your neighbour’s house.
Good job! You’ve erected a nithing pole. Now declare your curse and you’re done. What’s so good about the nithing pole is that it’s a highly automated piece of equipment. You erect the nithing pole and the nithing pole does the rest. Watch in pleasure as misfortune visits your neighbours.
Viking Age tech
Nithing poles have likely been around since the Viking Age. Icelandic saga hero-villain Egill Skallagrímsson used it to curse Queen Gunnhildur and King Erik Bloodaxe, a Norwegian power couple with whom he was no longer on speaking terms. His curse asked the landvættir (nature spirits, sort of) to drive them from Norway. Being good sports, the landvættir complied, and soon the deposed royals were on a longship to England.
The nithing pole doesn’t just come in useful when cursing your enemies, they’re also highly insulting on their own. Today insults are thrown about with little care (you’re looking haggard today, by the way, have you been getting enough sleep?), so their power has diminished. Now you’ve got to make a big statement to get noticed. Horse heads send a strong unambiguous message. The Vikings knew it, the director of The Godfather also knew it.
As such, the nithing poles are making a comeback. The French can attest that nothing brings a protest together like a head on a stick, and we’ve seen a few variations of fish and sheep’s head nithing poles in the last decade. But no actual horse heads until 2022, when someone in Kjalarnes — one of the windiest towns in Iceland and inexplicably an administrative part of Reykjavík — got so angry at Sólsetrið, a woo-woo meditation centre filled with drum circles, chanting, free love, et cetera, that they erected a nithing pole facing toward it, topped by a horse head.
Raking in the money
Trust me on this one. Soon everyone’s going to want to erect nithing poles. But here’s the thing: not everyone has the time, inclination and resources to find a pole, behead a mare, or compose an effective and eloquent curse. This is where you come in.
If you’re one of the many Americans who read this paper then you’re overflowing with something called pluck and initiative. This will come in useful as curse-objects haven’t made a big splash in the US market (yet) so you’ll need all the pluck and initiative you can muster.
I suggest you sell the following package:
- Premium hazelwood pole
- 50 customisable curses by award-winning nith-writers, covering occasions from land dispute to infidelity to mid-term elections.
- Wood carving tools to carve your chosen runic curse.
- Nithing Pole User manual, complete with alphabet to runic conversion and curse primer.
- Ethically sourced mare’s skull.
You’ll figure out the rest. Good luck. Years down the line, when you motor down Rodeo Drive in that red convertible, just remember that it was us and the humble nithing pole that brought you so high. Spare a thought, and a few dollars, for your old chum, The Reykjavík Grapevine. We don’t run a regular money-saving column just for the hell of it.
Freyr Thorvaldsson also writes Atlantic Islander, his high-powered business newsletter, find it at freyr.substack.com.
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