Fryske Akademy creates Old Frisian magic spells for NPO feature film 'Geestig'

Director Ivo van Aart talks about his latest film: “Geestig” is about Anna, a fun-loving student who's living her wild '70s life to the fullest. She dies in a big house fire. She doesn't accept her death, and her spirit keeps hanging around. Fifty years later, the house is converted into a student residence, where the cheerful Quinn (19) comes to live."

"Quinn suspects that the house is haunted. Together with her group of friends, she holds a séance: a gathering to summon spirits. They use the Old Frisian spell book belonging to Quinn's grandmother. Anna is sucked into Quinn's body and gets her coveted second chance at life, but she soon realizes that the generation gap is very wide. The world has changed so much that exposure is just around the corner."

Frisian roots

Director Van Aart, who was born in Brabant, has a great passion for regions. “In the original script, I had given the main character Quinn Scandinavian roots. But when I immersed myself in North Sea culture, I found a map that also included Friesland. That's when I realized that Scandinavia and Friesland have many interesting cultural similarities. That's how the idea of giving Quinn Frisian roots came about.”

His search for Old Frisian history brought him to the Fryske Akademy and then to Tresoar. "In the Tresoar archives, together with Han and Ewoud and my Frisian girlfriend, I looked at a number of very old, mainly medical books. They also contained medical recipes and spells, for example, how to talk to worms to leave someone's body. Han and Ewoud used such texts in the creative process to devise new Old Frisian spells. Worms, for example, were replaced by evil spirits."
 

Old Frisian scholar Han Nijdam and historian Ewoud van Aalst of the Fryske Akademy were pleasantly surprised when they received the filmmaker's request and enthusiastically accepted it. Nijdam: "I had already done some research into witchcraft in Frisian history in 2001, and thus also into Old Frisian tradition. There is one Old Frisian spell that has been handed down for stopping bleeding. But thanks to this research, I also knew something about witchcraft in Friesland in later times: the devil banners and the few magical manuscripts from modern times. We obtained all this material while searching for good spells for Ivo."

He also asked his colleague Ewoud van Aalst, who has been working at the Fryske Akademy since 2025, to contribute his ideas. "For my bachelor's thesis in History, I had coincidentally done research on Old Germanic spells and also written an article about them for Historiek. As a result, I already knew a thing or two about the material that has been preserved in Old High German and Old Saxon. When it turned out that only one Old Frisian spell had been preserved, we even wrote new spells. That was a really great process," says Van Aalst.

The past to the present

Nijdam: “The director already had his script ready. Based on that, we saw what spells were needed. In addition to that one Old Frisian spell, we were also able to draw inspiration from earlier oath formulas that have been handed down from Old Frisian law.” According to the researchers, the body plays an important role in this. Nijdam: “When summoning spirits in the past, all parts of a person's body were named. For example: I call upon you by your head, your bones. And so it went, through all parts of the body.”

This was a wonderful assignment, especially for Van Aalst, who has only just begun his scientific career: “I was already interested in this field, so it's great to be able to share your knowledge and see it reflected in a film. I love how science allows us to bring the past into the present in a creative way.”

In fact, more Frisian source material was used as inspiration in ‘Geestig’. Nijdam: "The magic book that appears in the film was inspired by the medieval Frisian manuscript known as the Basel Codex. It is kept in a Swiss archive. At the time, it belonged to the Frisian medieval cleric Bernardus Roordahuzum, who came from Reduzum. The book is available digitally and could therefore be used."

Director Ivo van Aart often works with experts: "It is important to note that this film is fiction. So from a scientific point of view, we take a loose approach to the spells. Not out of contempt for science, but because a film must of course also be credible. That's why lead actress Quinn's pronunciation of the Old Frisian spells isn't always perfect. Precisely because she has no idea how to pronounce the words.'

The film ‘Geestig’ can be seen (online) on NPO-Start throughout the month. On Saturday, February 28, the film will be shown on NPO3 at 10pm.