Skoffín, skuggabaldur and urðarköttur

The skoffín, skuggabaldur and urðarköttur are dangerous and malicious creatures that were believed by many Icelanders to live on land. The skoffín is a creature or a monster that comes out of a roosters egg. When roosters become old they will lay one egg which  is a lot smaller than a normal egg. If a rooster’s egg is hatched, the creature that comes out of it is an evil monster, called a skoffín. Everything that the skoffín looks at dies, that’s how lethal its gaze is.

Once upon a time it happened in Iceland that when people were walking out from a church service that all the people who came outside from the church fell dead to the ground. Cautious people noticed what was happening and the deacon himself stopped the people who were running out to check on the other people.

The deacon went and got himself a mirror, which he tied to a long stick. He then stood at the church door and he forced the stick with the mirror all the way to the top of the church. Then he told the rest of the people that it was safe to walk out from the church.

The deacon knew that a skoffín was sitting on the top of the church roof, and that it  had killed all the people that walked out from the church just by looking at them. But when the deacon pushed the mirror all the way to the top of the church roof, the skoffín had to look at its own image and that killed it immediately.

The same nature follows the monster that is called the skuggabaldur. The skuggabaldur is a crossbreed from a male cat and a female fox. The skuggabaldur attacks sheep, which he devours.

Once upon a time it happened in the north of Iceland, in Húnavatnssýsla, that a skuggabaldur attacked the sheep there. The farmers sent out a search party for it and finally they found the skuggabaldur in its den. Just before it was killed it said: “Tell the cat in Bollastaðir (farm) that skuggabaldur was killed in its den today.”

The killer of skuggabaldur stayed the coming night at Bollastaðir, where he told this story and what the skuggabaldur had said just before it was killed. An old male cat was at the farm and when it heard what the skuggabaldur had said it jumped at face of the man. Nobody could get it off the man until both were dead.

The third creature is called urðarköttur. It eats dead bodies and it lives usually for three winters underground in cemeteries.

No living being can stand the look from any of these three creatures, and anybody that will meet the look from them will die instantly. There are only two ways to kill these creatures:

• make them look into their own eyes.
• shoot them with a silver bullet; before shooting with the gun the sign of the cross has to be made three times in front of the barrel.

The reason for using silver is that it is considered in folk belief to be a protection against evil things because it is such a pure metal.

Björk Bjarnadóttir is an environmental ethnologist. She works at the the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Holmavik, Iceland. 

References:
Íslenskar þjóðsögur og ævintýri I. Jón Árnason 1961, page: 610.