Iceland, as you may or may not know, is an actual country in the farthest North which in reality is far more interesting than Disney’s version of it. It’s stuffed with volcanoes, peppered with geysers, and crisscrossed by glaciers and glacial rivers. Until World War II the people who lived there eked out their living on this seemingly inhospitable island mostly by farming or fishing, which kept them alive but not much more than that. So to tip the decidedly stacked odds in their favor, they turned to magic.
If you’ve ever known anything about Northern European folk magic, the magical staves used by 17th century Icelanders would probably look familiar to you. Mostly symmetrical patterns of lines and circles painted or carved or burnt onto something in order to impart specific effects like protection or luck or fertility – the usual sorts of things a farmer or fisherman might want a little magical assistance with. Nothing weird about that at all, right? But then there was the stave called Nábrókarstafur…
(Warning: This video may be somewhat unsafe for work.)