The pagans are coming!

When the banks in Iceland collapsed a year or two ago, having offered wildly exaggerated interest rates to attract investors from outside the country and then found that they couldn't afford to pay what they'd promised, some European governments - particularly Holland and Britain - exerted enormous pressure on the Icelandic government to repay their citizens who'd been affected. Britain went so far as to seize all Icelandic government assets.

Needless to say, this didn't go down well with the citizens of Iceland, who demonstrated in the streets against their bankers, their Government and the nations who were applying pressure. Indeed, some went further than merely demonstrating. The Reykjavik Grapevine reports:

A spell cast against Iceland's enemies by members of the Ásatrú Society at the start of the banking crisis has finally began to bear results.

Vísir reports that at the start of the 2008 crash, members of the pagan faith gathered to work magic with the dual purpose of protecting the country from harm, and also to drive away enemies who might approach (called "griðníðing", often erroneously translated as a curse).

As the Dutch government coalition is falling apart, and Gordon Brown [the Prime Minister of England] tumbles in popularity, it would appear the magic has begun to work, contends Ásatrú Society chieftain Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson.

The griðníðing against Gordon Brown, written in English, reads as follows:

In London town this lying clown
our land he drowns and shatters.
Gordon Brown is going down,
his good renown in tatters.

"It fortunately seems to have worked," Hilmarsson told reporters.

Er . . . well, yes, quite! However, I suspect Prime Minister Brown's current problems have far more to do with his political ineptness and the faults and failings of his Labor Party than they do with the 'spells' of an obscure Icelandic pagan cult. Still, one never knows . . . perhaps the British Conservative Party should make a donation to the Icelandic Ásatrú Society before the forthcoming General Election in Britain, to ensure their success?



Peter