The tilberi or Snakkur is an amazing magical creature of Iceland.
Description
The tilberi is a worm-like creature with one mouth on each end.
Origin
The tilberi is part of a kind of sorcery that Icelandic witches allegedly used to steal milk from their neighbors. According to a Danish source, a woman was burnt at the stake in 1580 in Iceland for practicing tilberi magic. In 1635 another woman was acquitted after someone had accused her of creating a tilbery.
In order to make a tilberi, a woman should go to a graveyard early on Whitsunday and dig a human rib there. Then this rib needs to be wrapped in grey wool and be preserved between breasts for three weeks. Each Sunday during this period, when the woman goes to church, she must not swallow the holy wine at the communion, but has to spit it on the bobbin she has between her breasts. The tilberi will come alive at the thirde spite. Then the woman has to carve a nipple inside her thigh on which the tilberi will hang on and nourish itself. A tilberi needs to drink the blood from its mother in order to survive. Witches would usually cut off a part of the skin and let the tilberi suck on the wound.
Behavior
When it is fully grown the woman can order the tilberi to steal milk from cows and sheep. A tilberi will use both mouths to drink the cow dry and then crawl back to its mother and throw up the milk into a bucket. The tilberi would often say to the mother mama i´m full of milk and the mother would answer then throw it up my son. The tilberi is also said to be able to steal wools from the sheeps
The only way to know if you are drinking tilberi milk or eating tilberi butter is to make a special sign called smjörhnútur(butterknot) over the milk and if it turns into foam or explodes then you have been drinking the milk from a tilberi.
The only way a witch can get rid of her tilberi, is to order it to gather all the sheep droppings in three highland pastures. Eager to get back on the nipple the tilberi will overexhaust itself and explode, leaving only a human rib beside the heap of droppings.