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Historical Context

In the distant past galdrabækur (magic books, sing. galdrabók), also known as “black books,” were thought to possess their own special and innate power. Their physical existence was a threat to the status quo of the universe—as is the book you now possess. This is why they were hunted down and destroyed as if they were dangerous beasts in Iceland during the early modern period. However, this did not stop the stalwart galdor men of the northern Atlantic. Such books of magic continued to be compiled and hidden away by men (and a few women) in a private and secret way right up until the middle of the twentieth century. Some of these books survived and eventually found their way into the National Library of Iceland. But for every one that survived there must have been a hundred that did not.

In and of itself, a galdor book is a magical object and the chief icon of this kind of magic. What you now possess is also a genuine book of magic and should be treated with reverence to ensure that it maintains its magical essence. It is also essential for you to keep the power level of the book up by adding your own galdrastafir (galdor staves or signs) to the text as you master the inner language and grammar of the staves. This will make your book what every galdrabók is supposed to be: a unique expression of the magician who is the owner of the book.

Much has rightly been made of the uniqueness of the traditions of Icelandic magic—how it is fundamentally different from the type of magic that might have been imported from the continent of Europe in the Middle Ages. Nevertheless, certain features from the South were certainly incorporated in the new Icelandic synthesis of magical tradition. This new synthesis brought together elements of ancient Germanic magic, classic medieval magic (largely derived from the Mediterranean region), and combined these with an innovative and pragmatic magical technology belonging to Iceland.

To establish a context for the magic practiced in the Icelandic magical books that began being set down in the early 1500s, we must look at the various stages of religious and cultural development in Iceland. There are three such periods: the Heathen Age, the Catholic Age, and the Protestant Reformation Age.

Iceland was first settled in the latter decades of the ninth century, mainly by Norwegians (along with their Celtic thralls). These Norwegians sought political and religious freedom from the monarchical onslaught of King Haraldr Hárfagra (Harald Fairhair). Under the political influence of already Christianized Europe, the still-pagan Haraldr had set about to conquer all of Norway and govern it as a Christian-style monarchy.

Icelanders formed a social order deeply rooted in their Scandinavian heritage. This was a sort of representative or republican aristocracy. Iceland never had a king. The island was governed by the local priest-chieftains (ON goðar, sing. goði), who would meet once a year at the Althing (great assembly), or parliament. There legal cases were settled, and other affairs of state were conducted. This form of government exercised a minimum of central authority. Courts could decide capital cases but in fact had no ability to execute any sentences. The actual punishment was left up to the kinsmen of the wronged party. For example, those who had committed manslaughter would be “outlawed.” This means that they would be declared to be outside the protection of the law, and thus they could be killed without legal repercussions to the avengers. Another main feature of Germanic law was the idea that the wronged party was the one entitled to compensation by the criminal. In other words, the “state” did not profit from crime. A monetary value was set for almost every sort of crime. This meant that a man might be able to satisfy the wronged party with a monetary payment instead of being outlawed. In the case of murder, the penalty was called manng jöld, literally meaning “man-payment” (the equivalent term in Old English is weregild). Each goði held an authority (ON goðorð, which means “authority as a goði”) that approximately corresponded to a district in the country. The authority in question was thought to be owned by the goði as a form of property and could be sold, inherited, or subdivided.

At first the Icelanders practiced the religion they brought with them from Scandinavia—an age-old polytheistic Germanic heathenism. This is a religion that allowed for much individual freedom, and such views influenced the original form of the Icelandic system of state government. One man may have worshipped Óðinn (Odin); another, Þórr (Thor); another, Freyja (Freya); and yet another may have “believed in his own might and main.” It is also true that there were a number of Christians among the Celtic thralls brought to Iceland from Ireland and the islands of the North Atlantic, and a few of their masters even converted. However, these conversions did not survive to the next generation in those families. But it is important to keep in mind that the first Icelanders tolerated these differences.

By the end of the first millennium, most of Iceland’s main trading partners—Ireland, England, Norway, and Denmark—had nominally been Christianized. In Iceland, Christianity was formally accepted as the official religion on the basis of a vote at the Althing in the year 1000. This occurred under a variety of social, economic, and religious pressures, although deep religious belief does not seem to have played a great role.

The reception of Christianity by the Icelanders was in many ways formalistic, marked by little conviction even on the part of those who voted to accept it. Public sacrifices to the Germanic gods were outlawed, but private practices of the traditional faith were allowed to continue. These included the eating of horseflesh and the exposure of unwanted or deformed infants. Conversion to Roman Catholicism was marked by a lengthy and gradual transition period. This process lasted for several generations. There was also an undiminished interest on the part of Icelanders in their own native traditions. In the earliest phase of this historical period many of the goðar just had themselves ordained as Christian priests without any further education or training. Others lent their religious duties to relatives. This was because the traditional synthesis of “religious” and “secular” authority seemed un-Christian. There were also officials known as leiguprestar (hired priests) who were bound to a chieftain like thralls.

For the first thirty years of this period Iceland would have remained largely heathen in its practice of religion and magic, as there was no one there to teach them differently. Following this time there was a period referred to as the Friðaröld, the Age of Peace, from 1030 to 1118. During the Age of Peace feuding subsided and a new culture began to take hold as individual Icelanders started to observe the tenets of the new religion. This could also be called a period of mixed faith, as Christianity actually began to gain some foothold in the culture. For this it was necessary for Icelandic clerics and scholars to travel abroad to learn of the new faith, and then schools began to be established in Iceland itself. In the latter part of this period the Icelandic language began to be used to record histories, sagas, and poetry.

A general love of written literature developed in the country. This led some men to join the clergy to be educated abroad and others to enter monasteries out of a love of learning. Some wealthy men set up schools on their private estates. There they worked as scholars and teachers. These traditions of learning were in fact deeply rooted in the pagan age, in which oral tradition was just as lovingly preserved. It should be recalled that Iceland was settled largely by the culturally conservative aristocracy of Norway. This led to an unusually high level of interest in national intellectual traditions, even in later times. Today it is reported that Iceland has the highest literacy rate and the highest per capita book-publishing rate in the world.

These developments do not seem to have appreciably changed the nature of the church or clergy in Iceland. There was always a vigorous secular element in the Icelandic church and a strain of cultural conservatism. All this fostered the preservation and continuation of national traditions in statecraft, religion, and literary culture. It is also important to note that those Icelanders who joined the church and the monasteries during this time were not forced to reject worldly pleasures for ascetic lives of strict piety. The rule of celibacy was never enforced in the Icelandic priesthood. Priests could not marry according to church law, but this fact simply left the door open for the continuity of the age-old practice of polygamy, or “multiconcubinage.” In most respects the old ways just carried on in new forms.

The Age of Peace began to disintegrate in a period of civil strife that began around 1118. The old behaviors of feuding, blood vengeance, and similar patterns began to reemerge, and to this were added elements of political conspiracy and intrigue involving foreign powers and the offices of the church. Although aspects of such civil unrest would continue for centuries, in 1262 the situation was sharply curtailed by the forceful intervention of the Norwegian king. The era of Norwegian dominance lasted until 1397, when Norway was absorbed by the Kingdom of Denmark in the Kalmar Union. Thus began the long period of Danish domination, which would last for centuries. In 1944, during the time when the Danes found themselves rather distracted while under Nazi occupation (1940–1945), Iceland was able to once again establish its complete independence.

In spite of the domestic strife and foreign exploitation endured by the Icelanders between the end of the Age of Peace and the beginning of Danish domination, this period was nevertheless a sort of golden age of Icelandic culture and literature. It was at this time that the poems of the Poetic Edda were committed to parchment, when Snorri Sturluson wrote the Prose Edda (1222), and when most of the great sagas were compiled. It seems that Icelanders had become comfortable with their “National Catholicism,” which had allowed indigenous traditions to survive and native “saints” (some official, some not) to be revered.

The Protestant Reformation itself began with Martin Luther in Germany in 1517. It rapidly spread throughout northern Europe. It was there that secular authorities, the kings and princes, had long harbored cultural animosities toward the centuries-long domination of Rome. In 1536 the Reformation was officially accepted in Denmark. This meant that Iceland, as a possession of the Danish crown, was also destined to follow that course. Because Iceland continued to be isolated, and due to its intrinsic conservatism, the Reformation did not come easily to the island.

There were two sources for the Reformation in Iceland: the foreign forces of the Dano-Norwegian crown and the domestic clerics who had become convinced of Luther’s doctrines. This often occurred when they were studying abroad in Denmark or Germany. One of the reasons the crowned heads of northern Europe found Protestantism so attractive is that it allowed the kings to nationalize—and, in effect, confiscate—the wealth and properties of the Catholic Church in their countries. On the other hand, resistance to the Reformation came mostly from the conservative populace and, of course, from the Catholic clergy still loyal to Rome. From 1536 to 1550 there existed what amounted to a low-intensity war in Iceland. The forces of Protestantism, which is to say the crown, finally won with the execution of Bishop Jón Árason in 1550. But this only marked the beginning of any real Reformation at the popular level. Certainly it would take a full century, until around 1650, before Protestantism could be considered to have been fully accepted by the population at large. Catholicism itself was receding into the past.

It was within the cultural mixture of the heathen heritage and the recent Catholic past that the magic contained in various Icelandic galdrabækur was first practiced. But it was during this period of religious change—and, ultimately, of religious persecution—that the magical work was actually committed to parchment and paper.

This time of “popular Reformation” was marked by increasing economic exploitation and political domination by the Danes. In 1602, Denmark established a trade monopoly over the country, which meant that Icelandic merchants could no longer trade freely with other countries. The resulting period of economic hardship is one that is often reflected in the folktales of the time. Powerful Danish tradesmen and the Protestant churchmen (who were virtual agents of the Danish crown) ruthlessly exploited and oppressed the people. A full quarter of the tithe paid to the church and the fines imposed by the courts went directly to the king of Denmark. The laws of the country were also altered to impose the death penalty for moral crimes such as heresy and adultery. At first the charge of heresy was mainly aimed against those thought to practice Catholicism in secret, but the net would eventually be expanded to include “witchcraft.” As in other Protestant countries of the time, defendants who were convicted of such crimes had to forfeit some or all of their personal estate to the king. In certain areas this process led to the practice of industrial and entrepreneurial “witch hunting,” in which the estate of the executed witch would be divided three ways between the state, the judge, and the “witch finder.” Although similar procedures were established in Iceland, it must be said that the situation there never escalated to the level of genocidal executions such as took place in seventeenth-century Germany.

Throughout the 1600s Iceland spiraled downward into economic and political decay. But the age was not without its benefits, for the scholarly humanism that developed throughout Scandinavia gave rise to a concerted effort by antiquarians to save the Icelandic literary heritage. However, like the economic wealth of the nation, its cultural treasures were also siphoned off to Copenhagen. Ironically, these antiquities were probably actually saved by the Danish scholars from the material ravages wreaked by Danish tradesmen. Many manuscripts that remained uncollected were in fact eaten by starving Icelanders, or, for want of other materials, were used to make shoes or clothing! In the decades following Iceland’s independence in 1944, most of the important manuscripts that had been preserved in Denmark were repatriated back to the island.