CLASS

LEMÚRINN
26
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 16 — 2015
Lemúrinn is an Icelandic web magazine (it's also the Icelandic word for the native
primate of Madagascar). A winner of the 2012 Web Awards, Lemúrinn.is covers
all things strange and interesting. Go check it out at www.lemurinn.is
The
Man
Who
Sold His
Corpse
For A
Drink
Words
Helgi Hrafn Guðmundsson
Photos
Frederick W.W. Howell
Reykjavík around 1900
In 1904, the municipal council of Reykjavík
agreed that the local medical
school should be allowed to use the
corpses of the poor for dissection and
anatomy lectures. This was not an uncontroversial
move, with many detractors
remarking that benefitting in this
way from the poor and helpless was, at
best, immoral. Wrote one critic: “Don’t
the poor suffer enough when they die?
Should they also feel horrified at the
idea of being all torn apart when they
are dead?” Moreover, why should only
the skinny and hungry be the subject
of an autopsy? “The fat and rich should
also be investigated to study the impact
of excessive eating,” our critic added,
somewhat ironically.
A century ago, medical schools
around the world were in constant need
of human bodies. And indeed, few were
really interested in being “torn apart”
after their death. This lead to a rise in
the very illegal act of “body snatching,”
the secret disinterment of corpses that
were sold on the black market to medical
schools, doctors and students.
Around the turn of the 20th century,
there was, not surprisingly, a constant
cadaver drought in Reykjavík’s
medical school. Iceland’s population
was, of course, very small, and autopsies
were publicly stigmatised. This
situation led to many rather strange
events. One year, this shortage meant
that the fledgling nation’s medical students
were unable to complete their
surgery class. Therefore, those medical
students would walk around Reykjavík,
gawking at passersby like a group of
hungry vultures circling above, waiting
for someone to die, already. Finally,
news got out that a lady had passed
away in the neighbouring town of Hafnarfjörður.
The students rushed over
to her house and bought the “fresh”
corpse from the grieving widower, paying
a high price for the lady, despite
their assessment that she was a bit
“flawed.”
The most notorious of the many
corpse shortage-related stories on record
occurred in the 1890s. Old Þórður
Árnason was a well-known drunk in
Reykjavík, as most drunks usually were
(to this day, local hobos tend to attain
a minor celebrity status in Iceland).
Þórður was described thusly by his
contemporaries: The arms were thick
and his hands big. The appearance was
generally strong and wholesome. The
face was pale and smooth, with few
wrinkles, but quite swollen because of
excessive drinking. His hair was gray
and thin, with extremely untidy and
messy curls hanging below the cheeks.
Þórður would drink in a bar on the
corner of Austurstræti and Aðalstræti,
at the heart of what’s now the centre of
Reykjavík. This bar was very filthy, attracting
the least elegant of Reykjavík’s
denizens. It was known as “Svínastían”
(“The Pig Sty”).
One time when
Þórður was completely
broke and fixin’ for a
drink, he recalled the
town’s desperate medical
students and their
constant quest for fresh
corpses. A glowing lightbulb
fixed over his head,
Þórður strode down to
the medical school and
offered to sell them his
own corpse, to be collected
once he no longer
needed it. In turn, he
asked for a rather meagre
fee that the school
was to pay in advance, but of course.
The medical school’s management accepted
the old lush’s offer and remunerated
him as per his requests. Þórður
of course took the money directly
to The Pig Sty, where he managed to
spend it all that same day.
From that moment on, Reykjavík’s
medical students went around literally
wishing Þórður dead. They really
wanted to go ahead and study his anatomy
already, and thus fostered sincere
hopes that he would drink himself to
death, sooner than later. After a couple
of years of frantic waiting, news finally
spread all over town that old Þórður
had finally kicked the bucket.
A teacher from the medical school
went to a small shop that allowed unemployed
workers and drifters to sit
and pass the time, to ask whether anyone
would assist in moving Þórður’s
body to the school’s operating room.
The doctor approached a man who was
sleeping on a table and tapped him on
the shoulder. Would he take this job?
The man turned around. Disappointingly,
it turned out to be Þórður
himself, alive and kicking. There would
be no anatomy studies that day.
Another time, Þórður was found
lying on the floor of The Pig Sty. The
medical school was once again alerted,
but the old man
A glowing lightbulb
fixed over his head,
Þórður strode down
to the medical school
and offered to sell
them his own corpse,
to be collected once
he no longer needed
it. In turn, he asked
for a rather meagre
fee that the school
was to pay in advance,
but of course.
turned out to be no
more dead than the
first time, merely
passed out after a
bout of heaving drinking.
In 1897, Þórður
finally died for real.
The medical students
scooped up his corpse
almost immediately
and commenced to
tear him up. They
were surprised to find
all his organs nearly
intact, despite all the
years of heavy drinking—learning
that his body had been
in a very healthy state right up until his
death.
Huge crowds showed up at
Þórður’s funeral, where the priest gave
an emotional speech over an almost
empty coffin, holding what remained of
the old man after the medical students
had undertaken their anatomy lessons.
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