Wedding Bells And Wretched Smells: Three Folktales On Courtship, Marriage, And Beyond

So the endless onslaught of toxic positivity and shameless materialism that defines the Christmas season has long since ended but spring is still quite a way off – and further off in Iceland than anywhere else. Even in Scandinavia the crocuses can begin to sprout in February, but we won’t see a single leaf until May. And you can fucking forget about flowers. Perhaps this is why the United States commercialised the hell out of Valentine’s Day, quite literally just to have something to do in February. And while we can all agree that it’s just another capitalist crock of shit that probably makes more people feel worse than better, there’s nothing else to do!

With that in mind, I thought to wax poetic with some romantic tales from Icelandic folklore. Turns out that Icelanders through the ages were likely too concerned with daily survival to dally with the frivolity of love because tales of that type are few and far between. Stories about marriage, however, are endless. Some are comic, some are clever, and others are downright tragic. As the news is already rife with genocide, fascism and the looming threat of World War III, I’ll spare you any more tragedy. Since you could probably use a laugh right about now, I’ve picked out three tales of absurd arrangements, witty women, and a healthy helping of farts. IYKYK: nothing rings truer of the experience of marriage than farts. So many farts.

In sickness and in health

This first little ditty starts with two brothers. One is solemn and respectable while the other is a slapstick buffoon. There is a woman at a nearby farm named Sigríður and all the dudes in the area want to marry her, but she rejects them all. Mr Serious wants to marry her but fears he has no hope, so Mr Silly rides off to ask her on his brother’s behalf. Sigríður tells him that she is unable to marry because she is cursed. She explains that one day while she was home alone sewing, a mysterious woman entered her home and began to sew with her in silence. Rather than ask her, “Hey lady, the fuck you doing in my house?” Sigríður just let her stay. This happened repeatedly over the course of three years until one day, when the mysterious woman got up to leave, she farted.
“‘If you marry my brother and fart at the wedding, I’ll just say it was me.’ She agrees.”

Sigríður laughed, and the woman, who turned out to be an elf, was furious. She cursed Sigríður to fart on her wedding day and that was why Sigríður was afraid to get married.

“That’s no problem,” Mr Silly assures her. “If you marry my brother and fart at the wedding, I’ll just say it was me.” She agrees. When the time comes and she does absolutely rip one at the feast, Mr Silly takes the blame. As she continues to stink up her own wedding, he continues to laugh it off and even offers to leave. “No, no,” the guests insist to the loveable yet fraudulently flatulent rapscallion. So the curse is broken and these were surely just the first farts of many in a long, happy marriage. Because the jokes write themselves, this story is recorded with a cutesy title that rhymes in Icelandic: “It is not a sin(d), that the body passes wind.”

To love and to cherish

The next story starts a little Cinderella-esque. There are three sisters. Two of them are vain and self-absorbed but beloved by their parents while the youngest is hated and forced to do all the shittiest housework. One day, a three-headed giant transforms himself into a man and successfully woos the oldest sister and later comes back as a different man for the second. When he returns a third time to ask for the youngest, Helga, her parents refuse at first. They cannot trust any man with bad enough taste to want to marry their daughter who is not only hideous but the most disgusting pig on earth. (Their words, not mine!) But he insists, and they relent. When he asks if she’d rather be carried or dragged to the cave, she chooses to be dragged! Girl, what are you even doing?
“She watches from a safe distance as the brutes find the feast ready but realise that the bride is just a log in a dress.”

Once at his cave, she is forced to be his servant. Even so, he seems to treat her better than her own parents, which is pretty fucking sad if you ask me. She discovers her sisters locked up in the cave and hatches a plan to help them escape even though they clearly don’t deserve her. She tricks the giant into giving her the keys by agreeing to marry him, wraps the sisters in a bag and asks him a favour. She says she’s worried about her parents starving without her and says that if he’ll take this bag of food scraps to them, she’ll prepare the wedding feast for his return. While he’s gone, she sets up the wedding feast, disguises herself by rubbing ash all over her body and runs out the cave with the fire-poker between her legs like a witch on a broomstick.

She runs into the giant on his way back with an entourage of wedding-crazed giants, trolls, and ogres. She introduces herself as Coal-Face Poker-Rider and says, “Bro! Looks like one hell of a party and a super hot wife are waiting for you!” He eagerly rushes off. She watches from a safe distance as the brutes find the feast ready but realise that the bride is just a log in a dress. Believing themselves to have been pranked by the giant, the guests fly into a rage and everyone kills each other. She steals all the giant’s stuff, builds herself a mansion, marries a nice guy, and lives happily ever after. It doesn’t say, but I hope her god-awful parents and her harpy sisters live in misery.

Until death do you part

Speaking of pranks, this last one really sets a high standard. There are two women who make a bet to see which of their husbands is dumber. The first pretends to be spinning yarn when her husband gets home. He asks what she’s doing and she tells him she’s spinning a yarn so fine, he can’t even see it and he believes her. She goes through all the motions of making the yarn, weaving it on the loom, and then cutting and sewing clothes from this material so elegant he can’t even see it. When it’s “ready,” she says she needs to put it on him because it’s so delicate he would ruin it. So she “dresses” him in his finest “clothes” and he walks out the door bare-ass naked.

Meanwhile, the other woman acts shocked when her husband returns home. He asks why and she tells him, “You’re so sick, you should be in bed.” He thinks she must be right, so he goes to lie down. The next day, she arranges for his last rites and when he asks why, she asks, “Are you really so fucking dumb that you don’t even realise that you died?” He believes her and waits patiently as she makes arrangements, even ordering a custom coffin with a window so he can watch his own funeral. His naked friend arrives at the funeral with all his bits blowing in the breeze and every one howls with laughter. From inside the coffin, they hear the man say, “I would laugh, too, but I’m dead!” The wives’ pranks are revealed, and as far as I’m concerned they both win. I can’t help but imagine them exchanging smirks even as they’re publicly whipped for their transgressions, mouthing to each other, “Worth it!”