Egill Skallagrímsson's Níðstang — The Curse Pole That Drove a King from Norway

Þórnes, West Iceland (Egill's farm)

When King Eiríkr Blood-Axe exiled the poet-warrior Egill Skallagrímsson, Egill's revenge was not military. He carved a hazel pole, fixed a horse's head on top, carved runes, and named the land spirits of Norway against the king. Eiríkr fled within the year.

Egill Skallagrímsson is the most fully drawn figure in the Icelandic saga tradition — poet, warrior, sorcerer, deeply difficult person — and his confrontation with Eiríkr Blood-Axe, King of Norway, produced one of the most specific acts of magical revenge in the historical record. Egill had been condemned by Eiríkr and his queen Gunnhildr on charges that included the killing of Eiríkr's son. Escaping from Norway, Egill landed on a small island on the Norwegian coast and performed an act of níð — formal cursing — of a type that was considered serious enough to be outlawed in later Icelandic law. He cut a hazel pole. He fixed a horse's head on it, facing toward the Norwegian shore. He carved runes on the pole. Then he spoke the níð aloud, naming the land spirits — the landvættir — of Norway directly, and calling on them to refuse Eiríkr peace in the land they protected. This was not metaphor. The landvættir in Norse thought were the embodied spirits of a specific landscape: they could be welcomed or driven out, honoured or antagonised. To turn them against a king was to make the land itself his enemy. The ground would not hold still. The cattle would not prosper. The wind would work against him. Eiríkr Blood-Axe left Norway within the year — driven not by military defeat but by the withdrawal of whatever compact exists between a ruler and the land he rules. He ended as a petty king in Northumbria and died at the battle of Stainmore. The níðstang was one of the most feared implements in the Norse magical tradition. It is the direct ancestor of the curse-pole. Egill's use of it is the most detailed early account of its mechanism.