Icelandic magic did not survive only in legends, trial records and stories told beside the fire. It was also preserved in small handwritten books: personal collections of charms, prayers, symbols, healing remedies and instructions copied from one manuscript to another across generations.

Today, these books are often grouped under the English term grimoires. In Icelandic sources, however, we encounter words such as galdrabók (book of magic), galdrakver (small magical booklet) and galdraskræða (magical manuscript). These are descriptive terms rather than the titles of one single, authoritative book. There was no universal Icelandic “Book of Shadows,” nor one fixed canon of spells that every practitioner followed.

Instead, each surviving manuscript is its own layered object. A book might combine a Christian prayer with a magical stave, a medical recipe with a secret alphabet, or an invocation of the Trinity with the name of an Old Norse god. Some entries promised protection from illness, theft, storms or hostile neighbours. Others attempted to influence love, uncover a thief, control an enemy or cause harm.

The result is a manuscript tradition in which religion, medicine, folk belief and learned European magic cannot be neatly separated. Icelandic grimoires preserve that complicated world in ink, parchment and paper.

What Is an Icelandic Grimoire?

The word grimoire generally describes a book containing magical knowledge: spells, invocations, symbols, recipes, instructions or rituals. It is a useful modern category, but the surviving Icelandic books vary greatly in form and content.

Some are recognisably dedicated collections of magic. Others are medical or legal manuscripts with charms added in margins, blank spaces or supplementary leaves. A few were copied neatly by a single known scribe; others accumulated entries in several hands over decades. Many are pocket-sized and appear to have been made for practical use rather than display.

The Icelandic terminology reflects this variety:

• Galdrabók literally means “book of magic.” It can be used generically, although it is also commonly used as the name of a particular manuscript now held in Stockholm.
• Galdrakver means a small book or booklet of magic. Kver often refers to a modest manuscript or stitched gathering rather than a large formal volume.
• Galdraskræða is another broad term for a written collection of magical material.
• Lækningakver means a medical or healing booklet. Such a work may contain remedies, charms and magical signs alongside practical medicine.

These labels overlap. They should not be treated as separate, rigid genres, and they certainly should not be assumed to refer to the same object.

Why Handwritten Books Mattered

For most of the period in which Icelandic grimoires developed, manuscripts remained central to Icelandic literary culture. Knowledge travelled through copying. A useful prayer, charm or diagram could be transferred from an older book into a new collection, altered by a copyist and combined with material from other sources.

This method of transmission helps explain why grimoires are so inconsistent. They were not printed manuals reproduced in identical editions. A scribe might misunderstand a symbol, omit a line, modernise the wording or add a new instruction. Visual designs could become more elaborate—or more distorted—with every copy.

Small handwritten books also made knowledge portable and personal. A manuscript could be carried, concealed, lent or inherited. Its owner could add material gradually, creating a working reference book suited to local needs.

Secrecy mattered as well. In early modern Iceland, possession of suspicious magical writing could be dangerous. According to the Icelandic Web of Science, magical signs, images or books were mentioned in 62 of approximately 130 Icelandic witchcraft trials between 1554 and 1719. It is plausible that owners hid or destroyed manuscripts out of fear, although the true scale of such destruction cannot be known.

The books that survive are therefore only a fragment of a much larger written tradition.

What Did Icelandic Grimoires Contain?

There is no single table of contents that defines an Icelandic grimoire. Across the surviving manuscripts, however, several recurring kinds of material appear.

Protective charms

Many entries offered defence rather than attack. They promised protection against sickness, injury, drowning, hostile magic, dangerous weather, theft or unjust treatment. A magical sign might be worn on the body, drawn on a material object or accompanied by a spoken formula.

This protective emphasis is important. Modern descriptions often market these manuscripts as sinister “books of black magic,” but the label can obscure their everyday purposes. Even collections containing harmful spells may devote substantial space to healing, safety and religious protection.

Galdrastafir and seals

The most visually striking entries are often galdrastafir: magical signs or staves made from lines, crosses, branches, circles and letter-like forms. Grimoires may also contain seals associated with Solomon, the Holy Spirit or other sacred and learned traditions.

A stave was rarely just an isolated picture. Its meaning depended on the surrounding text: what it was called, what it was supposed to accomplish, how it should be drawn and which words or materials accompanied it. Removing the symbol from its manuscript context can therefore change—or erase—much of its original meaning.

Prayers and Christian formulas

Christian language appears throughout Icelandic magical writing. Grimoires invoke God, Christ, the Virgin Mary, angels, saints, the Trinity and biblical figures. Crosses and sacred names may form part of a charm, while prayers can sit beside material that church or civil authorities would have condemned.

This is not necessarily a contradiction from the manuscript user’s perspective. Sacred words could be understood as powerful. A charm might draw authority from Christianity while still operating outside approved religious practice.

Runes, coded writing and secret alphabets

Some manuscripts preserve rune-like characters, invented signs, substitution alphabets and collections of so-called “speech runes.” These systems could conceal knowledge, demonstrate learning or give a text an aura of antiquity and authority.

Not every mysterious character in an Icelandic grimoire is an ancient Viking rune. Many alphabets are late, learned or deliberately cryptic. Some reflect European traditions of magical writing, while others were repeatedly recopied within Iceland. Their presence tells us as much about secrecy and the prestige of writing as it does about pre-Christian religion.

Healing and practical knowledge

The boundary between a remedy and a spell was often porous. Grimoires and medical booklets contain treatments for pain, bleeding, fever, skin conditions and other illnesses. Plant knowledge, spoken charms and Christian prayers could appear alongside more recognisable medical ingredients.

Other entries address childbirth, fishing, travel, sleep, luck, livestock and the identification of thieves. These concerns reveal magic as a response to ordinary uncertainty rather than a world limited to ceremonial sorcery.

Coercive and harmful magic

The manuscripts are not harmless throughout. Some charms seek to frighten, silence, humiliate, control or injure another person. Others aim to manipulate affection or sexual desire. Such entries are historically valuable evidence, but they should not be romanticised or reproduced as consequence-free spiritual practices. Several also require toxic substances, animal remains or actions that would be unsafe, unethical or illegal today.

Six Manuscripts That Illuminate the Tradition

The manuscripts below do not form a complete history, but together they show how Icelandic magical writing changed and survived from the late medieval period into the nineteenth century.

AM 434 a 12mo: the Lækningakver

Dated to around 1500, AM 434 a 12mo is usually described as a medical booklet. It contains remedies, charms, spells, instructions involving magical signs and runes, and a lunarium connected with the phases or days of the moon.

Its importance lies partly in its age. The manuscript is recognised as the oldest surviving Icelandic example in which written and visual magical communication occur together. Its medical content also makes a crucial point: magic did not always occupy a separate book. It could form part of a broader body of healing knowledge.

The booklet has links to the Scandinavian herbal and medical tradition associated with Henrik Harpestræng. Yet its magical signs also show how imported learning could be adapted within an Icelandic manuscript environment.

The stave in Hlíðarendabók

AM 158 4to, known as Hlíðarendabók, is not primarily a grimoire. It contains legal and religious material, including the Book of John and law texts. Nevertheless, a magical stave was added in a margin around the beginning of the sixteenth century.

At some point the sign was partly scraped away. Whether this was an attempt to suppress dangerous material or simply a later act of correction is uncertain. Even so, the damaged image is valuable evidence. Magical knowledge could live at the edges of an otherwise respectable manuscript, not only inside a dedicated book of spells.

The Stockholm Galdrabók

The manuscript most often called the Galdrabók is catalogued as ATA Ämb. 2, F 16:26 and is held by the Swedish History Museum. Written on parchment by several hands between the late sixteenth and the mid-seventeenth century, it contains 47 entries arranged without a clear thematic system.

Its contents range from protection and healing to coercive or harmful magic. Christian prayers and sacred names appear alongside staves, seals, runic material and occasional references to Old Norse mythological figures. The mixture demonstrates that Icelandic magic was not divided cleanly into “pagan” and “Christian” compartments.

The book is also a traveller. It was acquired in Copenhagen in 1682 by the Swedish scholar and collector Johan Gabriel Sparfwenfeldt and later entered a Stockholm collection. Its journey is a reminder that the survival of Icelandic magic depended not only on Icelanders but also on antiquarians, collectors and institutions abroad.

Lbs 143 8vo: a seventeenth-century Galdrakver

Lbs 143 8vo is a small parchment manuscript dated to around 1670. Written in Icelandic and Latin, it contains strongly Christian material as well as magical signs and protective charms.

Among the designs associated with the manuscript are the Ægishjálmur, or Helm of Awe, and seals linked with the Holy Spirit and Solomon. Their coexistence places Icelandic magic within a wider European sacred and esoteric world. It also challenges the idea that galdrastafir were simply unchanged survivals from the Viking Age.

This Galdrakver must not be confused with the Stockholm Galdrabók. They are distinct manuscripts with different shelfmarks, dates and histories. The similarity of their descriptive names is one reason online accounts so frequently merge them.

Lbs 2413 8vo: magic recopied around 1800

Known as Rúna- og galdrakver and sometimes described as a Galdraskræða, Lbs 2413 8vo was written around 1780–1820. The manuscript contains 74 leaves and approximately 200 items, including magical signs, charms and coded or runic material.

Its relatively late date does not make its contents “fake.” Manuscripts can preserve material older than the physical book in which it appears. At the same time, a later copy should not automatically be projected backwards into Viking or medieval Iceland. It records what a particular scribe selected and understood around 1800, after centuries of transmission and alteration.

Huld: a nineteenth-century archive of signs

ÍB 383 4to, better known as Huld, was copied in 1860 by Geir Vigfússon in Akureyri. It includes roughly 30 magical staves and an extensive collection of around 300 letter and rune alphabets, much of it based on older models.

One reason Huld has become famous is its inclusion of the Vegvísir, the “wayfinder” sign now widely used in jewellery, tattoos and popular culture. The manuscript is nineteenth-century, not Viking Age. That fact does not diminish its cultural value; it locates the surviving evidence honestly.

Huld shows that the copying of magical knowledge continued well after the age of Iceland’s major witch trials. By then, the act of collecting could be antiquarian as well as practical. A scribe might preserve older material because it was curious, learned or culturally important, whether or not every charm was intended for use.

How a Written Spell Was Supposed to Work

A grimoire entry was often more than a symbol plus a short definition. Its intended effect could depend on several interacting elements:

1. The design: a stave, seal, cross, rune sequence or diagram.
2. The words: a prayer, sacred name, spoken formula or written command.
3. The material: paper, parchment, wood, metal, food or another surface.
4. The action: carrying, carving, concealing, washing, burning or placing the sign.
5. The timing: a particular day, hour, church observance or phase of the moon.

The Swedish History Museum notes that signs could be placed on many different surfaces, including paper, parchment, wood, plates and food. Meaning therefore arose through the relationship between image, language, object and action.

This is why a stave copied from a modern image search is not equivalent to its historical manuscript entry. The original page may include conditions, prayers or material instructions that are absent from the isolated design. In other cases, the manuscript itself is incomplete or ambiguous, leaving modern readers with no secure interpretation.

Christianity, Pagan Names and European Learned Magic

One of the most persistent myths about Icelandic grimoires is that they preserve a pure, secret form of Viking paganism. The manuscripts tell a more interesting story.

Most surviving grimoires were created in Christian Iceland. Their scribes knew Christian prayers, biblical narratives and European traditions of sacred names and seals. Some material has parallels in continental works associated with Solomon, astrology, alchemy, Hermetic writing and books attributed to Moses. Recent scholarship has also traced many galdrastafir to Mediterranean and European esoteric traditions that were localised in Iceland.

Old Norse names do appear. A charm may refer to Óðinn, Þór or another mythological figure, sometimes in the same collection as Christ, angels or Solomon. Such combinations should not be forced into a simple religious identity. Scribes copied sources from different periods and may have valued a name for its legendary power rather than as a statement of personal faith.

Icelandic grimoires are therefore neither purely pagan survivals nor merely corrupted Christian prayer books. They are hybrid manuscripts created at the meeting point of local folklore, practical need, Christian sacred language and international learned magic.

Grimoires and the Icelandic Witch Trials

Icelandic witchcraft prosecutions reached their height in the seventeenth century. Unlike the pattern familiar from many parts of Europe, most people executed for witchcraft in Iceland were men. Literacy, access to manuscripts and the social image of the learned male magician all contributed to the way accusations developed, although women also practised folk magic and faced prosecution.

Written evidence could make suspicion tangible. A strange booklet, an unfamiliar alphabet or a sheet covered in signs might be interpreted as proof of forbidden knowledge. Trial records mention magical writing often enough to show that authorities took it seriously.

Yet a manuscript’s presence does not reveal exactly how its owner used it. A person might have copied a charm, inherited a book, collected old material or performed some entries but not others. Judicial records are equally complicated: testimony was shaped by fear, conflict, legal pressure and the expectations of officials.

The grimoires and trials should therefore be read together, but cautiously. One preserves texts and images; the other preserves accusations and legal narratives. Neither offers a transparent window into private belief.

What These Books Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

An Icelandic grimoire can demonstrate that a charm was written down, copied or considered worth preserving. It may reveal connections between manuscripts and show how a symbol changed across time. The physical object can also tell us about handwriting, materials, ownership and the organisation of knowledge.

It cannot prove that every listed ritual was performed, widely known or believed effective. Nor can it tell us that a nineteenth-century design existed unchanged a thousand years earlier. Copyists made errors, combined sources and sometimes reproduced words they may not have understood.

This distinction matters especially today, when individual staves circulate online without shelfmarks, dates or manuscript context. Historical credibility begins with a traceable source. A responsible account should identify the manuscript, give its approximate date and distinguish the date of the surviving copy from any claim about older origins.

Common Myths About Icelandic Grimoires

“There is one book called the Galdrabók”

There is a famous manuscript commonly known by that name, but galdrabók is also a generic Icelandic term. Other magical books have their own shelfmarks and identities.

“All Icelandic magical signs are Viking symbols”

Most well-known galdrastafir survive in post-medieval manuscripts. They reflect Icelandic development as well as Christian and wider European magical traditions. A later date is not evidence of worthlessness, but it is evidence against casually labelling a design Viking Age.

“Grimoires were books of Satanic black magic”

Some contain harmful or coercive spells, but protection, healing and Christian formulas are prominent. “Black magic” is usually too blunt a label for such mixed collections.

“Every copied spell was actively practised”

Copying can indicate interest, preservation or collecting. It does not prove performance.

“A late manuscript must be a modern invention”

Later books can preserve older material. The correct approach is to date the physical manuscript securely and evaluate the history of each entry separately.

Preserving Iceland’s Magical Manuscripts Today

Many Icelandic grimoires are now held by the National and University Library of Iceland and the Árni Magnússon manuscript collections. Detailed catalogue records and digital images are increasingly available through Handrit.is, allowing readers to examine handwriting, page order and manuscript context rather than relying on modern redrawings.

Other important objects remain abroad, including the Stockholm Galdrabók. Museums such as the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík help interpret these sources for a wider public.

Digitisation has transformed access, but it also places responsibility on writers, artists and spiritual practitioners. A clean modern illustration may be easier to reproduce than a faded manuscript page, yet the shelfmark, date and accompanying text are what make the symbol historically meaningful.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the oldest surviving Icelandic grimoire?

AM 434 a 12mo, the Lækningakver, dates to around 1500. It is primarily a medical manuscript but includes charms, spells and magical signs. It is regarded as the oldest surviving Icelandic example that combines written and visual magical material.

Is the Galdrabók the same manuscript as Huld?

No. The Stockholm Galdrabók was compiled between the late sixteenth and mid-seventeenth century. Huld was copied by Geir Vigfússon in 1860. They contain different material and belong to different historical settings.

Were Icelandic grimoires pagan or Christian?

Most are mixed. Christian prayers, crosses, sacred names and biblical figures are common, while some entries use Old Norse names or motifs. They also draw on European learned magic, medicine and astrology.

Why are men so often associated with Icelandic magic books?

Formal literacy and manuscript access were historically uneven, and the learned male magician became an important figure in Icelandic accusations and folklore. Most people executed for witchcraft in Iceland were men. This does not mean women were absent from healing, charms or folk belief.

Can the public see these manuscripts?

Yes. Catalogue records and digital images for several manuscripts are available through Handrit.is. The Swedish History Museum and the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft also publish information and exhibit related material.

Is it safe to use spells from historical grimoires?

Not necessarily. Some instructions involve toxic substances, bodily materials, coercion, animal harm or dangerous actions. Historical manuscripts should be approached as cultural evidence, not assumed to be safe or ethical practical guides.

Magic Preserved in Ink

Icelandic grimoires survived because generations of people chose to write, copy, conceal, collect and eventually preserve them. They carry traces of fear and hope: the wish to heal illness, avoid danger, understand hidden forces, defeat an enemy or protect a household in an uncertain world.

Their greatest value lies not in offering a single secret key to Icelandic magic, but in preserving its contradictions. Christian prayers share pages with forbidden signs. Medicine overlaps with enchantment. Ancient names are recast through post-medieval hands. A tiny booklet made for practical use becomes, centuries later, an archive of cultural memory.

To read these books responsibly is to resist the temptation of easy labels. They are not Viking spell manuals, not one unified tradition and not merely books of darkness. They are handwritten witnesses to the changing meanings of magic in Iceland.

Continue Exploring Icelandic Witchcraft

• Icelandic Witchcraft: A History of Magic, Witch Trials and Survival
• Icelandic Folk Magic: Everyday Charms, Beliefs and Superstitions
• Galdrastafir: The History and Meaning of Icelandic Magical Staves
• Ægishjálmur: The History of the Helm of Awe (future article)
• Vegvísir: The Real History of Iceland’s “Viking Compass” (future article)

Historical Sources and Further Reading

• Alessia Bauer, “What is the oldest example of an Icelandic grimoire?”, Icelandic Web of Science.
• Handrit.is, AM 434 a 12mo — Lækningakver.
• Handrit.is, Lbs 143 8vo — Galdrakver.
• Handrit.is, Lbs 2413 8vo — Rúna- og galdrakver.
• Handrit.is, ÍB 383 4to — Huld.
• Swedish History Museum, “Two Icelandic Books of Black Magic”.
• Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, “Grimoires”.
• Roberto Luigi Pagani, “The Mediterranean Origin of the Galdrastafir”, Gripla 36 (2025).