No, “necropants” aren’t a set of elite Dungeons & Dragons magicwear that gives you a sweet +2 damage bonus to all unholy spells. Nor is it the nickname for Michael Jackson’s red vinyl leggings from “Thriller.” They’re something quite a bit more insane, definitely much more macabre, possibly abhorrent and/or profane, and absolutely not a waist-down clothing item you can pick up on the discount rack at the Gap.

Necropants, or nábrók in Icelandic — literally “corpse britches” — are exactly your worst guess at what they could be: skin pants. As in, literally a dude’s skin worn as pants, genitals included (mismatched size notwithstanding). Sheered off his corpse, no less, in one go and in one piece, whole and ready to slide into like skinny jeans, hah (credit to Ripley’s for that joke). Basically, just imagine if Hannibal Lecter had a particular pajamas preference instead of a facemask preference (not the COVID-19 surgical kind).

However, necropants weren’t fashioned by anyone so villainous. Rather, as Atlas Obscura explains, they were part and parcel of a suite of widely-believed, ritualistic, oddly specific, pre-Christian folklore circulating in Iceland since at least the 11th century. (Bear in mind that Iceland, despite its extremely progressive values, is also the country where, as of 2017, 54 percent of people still believe in elves, per National Geographic.) These beliefs developed in a brutal natural environment with a need for sorcerous escape routes from reality and fled underground from Christianity’s spread in the 17th century. 

A scrotal slot machine of infinite wealth

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