Between 1625 and 1683, twenty-one people were burned for witchcraft in Iceland. Twenty were men. Only one was a woman.

Those stark numbers make the Icelandic witch trials unusual, but they do not tell the whole story. Behind them were farmers, labourers, healers, manuscript owners, poor newcomers and people already burdened by dangerous reputations. There were also frightened neighbours, sick householders, learned clergymen and officials convinced that harmful magic was a crime demanding the severest punishment.

The Icelandic term brennuöld—literally the “age of burning”—is often used for this period. Yet there was no single, continuous national hunt. Prosecutions rose and fell, clustered strongly in the northwest, and depended on local conflicts, accusations and officials. Some suspects were acquitted. Others escaped, were whipped or were forced from their communities. A smaller number reached the fire.

Court documents record charges, testimony and verdicts, but they rarely preserve the accused as complete human beings. Their voices reach us through legal summaries written by the same society that condemned them. To understand the burning times, we must therefore look beyond strange spells and sensational confessions. We must ask who was vulnerable, who was believed, who controlled the courts and what happened when illness or misfortune demanded an explanation.

The Icelandic Witch Trials at a Glance

These numbers are based on surviving sources, not a perfect national register. A few older or ambiguous executions are sometimes added to broader lists, but their connection to witchcraft is uncertain. For that reason, careful historians distinguish the twenty-one recognised witchcraft executions from disputed cases.

What Made the Icelandic Witch Trials Different?

In many parts of early modern Europe, the imagined witch was female. In Iceland, magical learning was more often associated with men. The surviving prosecutions reflect that difference: approximately ninety percent of the accused were male, as were twenty of the twenty-one people on the standard execution list.

This does not mean that Icelandic women had no connection to charms, healing or folk belief. It means that the forms of forbidden knowledge most visible to the courts—written spells, magical characters, rune-like signs and grimoires—were strongly linked with male literacy and the social figure of the learned magician. A man reputed to know galdur could be admired when his skills appeared helpful and feared when misfortune struck.

Another difference is the limited role of the witches’ sabbath and organised satanic conspiracy in Icelandic records. European demonological ideas entered Iceland through educated clergymen and officials, many of whom had studied in Denmark or northern Germany. Some Icelandic confessions mention the Devil, but accusations more commonly concerned immediate harm: a person became ill, livestock died, fishing failed or a suspicious page of symbols was discovered.

The imported framework and local beliefs met in the courtroom. A charm that one person regarded as healing could be interpreted by an official as unlawful sorcery. A reputation for hidden learning could turn into evidence. A neighbour’s illness could become proof of an invisible attack.

From Suspicion to a Death Sentence

An Icelandic witchcraft case often began with conflict or unexplained suffering. The sequence was not identical in every case, but certain patterns recur:

1. Someone suffered an illness, loss, frightening experience or repeated misfortune.
2. Suspicion settled on a person with whom the victim had quarrelled or who already had a reputation for magical knowledge.
3. Officials questioned the suspect and searched for books, pages, signs, charms or witnesses.
4. The accused might deny everything, confess to limited knowledge or make increasingly elaborate admissions while imprisoned.
5. Courts evaluated testimony, reputation, physical evidence and the willingness of respectable neighbours to swear for the accused.
6. A verdict could result in acquittal, whipping, exile, escape or execution.

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft notes that no evidence has been found of physical torture being used to secure confessions in Iceland. This important difference should not be mistaken for humane treatment. Months of confinement, fear of execution, religious pressure and repeated interrogation could shape testimony even without a formal torture chamber.

Nor were all confessions straightforward admissions of a stable magical practice. Some defendants acknowledged owning a book or knowing a sign while denying that they had caused the alleged harm. Others confessed only after conviction or imprisonment. Court records tell us what was said within a dangerous legal process; they cannot automatically tell us what a person privately believed or actually did.

The Twenty-One People on the Standard Execution List

The following names and summaries are based primarily on the list maintained by the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík. The wording of accusations has been condensed, and an accusation should never be confused with proof that supernatural harm occurred.

A list restores names, but names alone still flatten the past. Several cases reveal how quickly reputation, poverty, illness and authority could combine into a fatal story.

Jón Rögnvaldsson: The First Confirmed Burning

Jón Rögnvaldsson was burned in Eyjafjörður in 1625, nearly three decades before the clustered executions at Trékyllisvík. He was accused of raising a dead spirit that troubled a farm, where horses had died and a boy had become ill.

Jón denied causing the events. During a search, however, officials found papers bearing runic or magical characters. Possession of this writing turned suspicion into something that could be presented as physical evidence. The signs did not prove that Jón had harmed a child, killed horses or raised the dead. To the magistrate, they proved that he possessed forbidden knowledge—and that was enough.

His execution occurred before the Danish witchcraft ordinance of 1617 was formally proclaimed in Iceland in 1630. The case therefore stands somewhat apart from the later wave, but it established a terrifying precedent: a local accusation, a magical reputation and a piece of writing could end at the stake.

Trékyllisvík in 1654: When One Accusation Became Three Deaths

The main Icelandic witch-hunt is often dated from 1654, when Þórður Guðbrandsson, Egill Bjarnason and Grímur Jónsson were burned at Trékyllisvík in Strandir.

The community had experienced frightening disturbances interpreted as supernatural attacks. Þórður was accused first. After imprisonment, his story expanded into a confession involving the Devil appearing as a fox. Egill confessed to killing a sheep with magic and making a demonic agreement. Grímur admitted knowledge of magical characters and was also connected to the magical killing of a sheep.

Read literally, the confessions look like proof of diabolical magic. Read in their legal context, they also show how questioning could create a chain. One suspect’s words directed attention toward another. Familiar folk practices and local reputations were translated into the language authorities expected from a serious witchcraft case.

The three deaths transformed Trékyllisvík into a landmark of the Icelandic burning times. At Kistan, a cleft in the coastal landscape between Litla-Ávík and Finnbogastaðir, local memory still connects the place with the executions. The location reminds us that the trials were not abstract events held somewhere in a distant capital. They happened within small communities where accusers, defendants and judges often knew one another.

The Kirkjuból Case: Two Jóns and a Suffering Clergyman

The best-known Icelandic witchcraft case began when the Reverend Jón Magnússon became seriously ill. He suffered shaking, sweating, weakness and vivid experiences that he interpreted as supernatural persecution. He became convinced that two members of his congregation—a father and son both named Jón Jónsson—were attacking him with magic.

Local officials were reportedly reluctant to pursue the case at first, but the clergyman pressed his accusations. In custody, the elder Jón admitted owning magical books. The younger admitted using signs, including the notorious fretrúnir, or “farting runes,” against a girl. These strange details have made the case famous, but focusing only on their oddity risks hiding the fatal core: both men were condemned and burned in 1656.

The Reverend Jón received a substantial part of their property as compensation. That does not by itself prove that he invented his illness or acted only for profit. It does reveal that accusation and material interest were not always separate. A successful prosecution could redistribute property as well as settle a spiritual or personal conflict.

Most revealingly, the clergyman’s suffering did not end after the executions. He then accused Þuríður Jónsdóttir, daughter of the elder Jón and sister of the younger. This time the authorities refused to follow him to another burning.

Jón Magnússon later wrote Píslarsaga, his “story of sufferings,” to describe and defend his interpretation of the events. It is one of the richest narrative sources connected with an Icelandic witch trial—but it is not a neutral record. It is the testimony of the accuser, written by a man who believed he had survived a magical assault.

Þórarinn Halldórsson: When Healing Became Evidence

Þórarinn Halldórsson, a farmer at Birnustaðir, treated people and cattle. His case exposes one of the most dangerous boundaries in early modern magic: the line between a useful healer and a criminal sorcerer.

Þórarinn used signs in his healing and admitted carving forms of the Ægishjálmur, or Helm of Awe, on oak. These practices gave the court tangible evidence of forbidden knowledge. According to surviving proceedings described by historian Már Jónsson, Þórarinn fled twice, was captured and was finally burned at the Alþingi in 1667.

It is tempting to describe him simply as an innocent folk doctor punished by superstition. The sources do not allow us to reconstruct every treatment or motive. What they show clearly is that an attempt to heal could become part of a death sentence when the healer’s methods fell outside approved religious and medical boundaries.

His case is also a warning against treating every galdrastafur as a harmless modern emblem. A symbol now sold on jewellery once existed inside a world where carving it could be presented in court as evidence of a capital crime.

Selárdalur: Illness That Kept Finding New Suspects

In 1669, Helga Halldórsdóttir, wife of the learned clergyman Páll Björnsson at Selárdalur, suffered a severe and frightening illness. The household interpreted disturbing events around her as the work of hostile supernatural forces.

Suspicion first settled on Jón Leifsson, a farmhand who had wanted to marry one of Helga’s maids. Helga had opposed the match. Jón was accused of causing her illness and admitted that he had sought magical knowledge. He named Erlendur Eyjólfsson as a teacher, and both men were burned in 1669.

But Helga’s illness returned. More suspects were drawn into the widening explanation. Magnús Bjarnason and Lassi Diðriksson were executed in 1675. Lassi denied the charges and was reportedly believed innocent by many. Jón Helgason and his mother, Þuríður Ólafsdóttir, followed in 1678. In 1683, Sveinn Árnason was accused of causing illness in a daughter of the same household and became the last person executed for witchcraft in Iceland.

The Selárdalur cases reveal the self-perpetuating logic of a witch-hunt. If an accused person died and the illness continued, the failed cure did not necessarily disprove the magical explanation. It could instead suggest that another hidden attacker remained. Each execution prepared the ground for a new suspect.

Páll Björnsson was not an uneducated villager grasping blindly for explanations. He was one of Iceland’s learned clergymen and had written against witchcraft. Education did not automatically weaken belief in supernatural harm; in some cases it provided the theological language and institutional influence that made prosecution more powerful.

Þuríður Ólafsdóttir: The Only Woman on the Confirmed List

Þuríður Ólafsdóttir and her son Jón Helgason arrived in the Westfjords from Skagafjörður as poor newcomers. According to later accounts, Jón had boasted that his mother possessed the magical ability to cross rivers or waterfalls without getting wet. What may have begun as foolish bragging became deadly when the two were connected to Helga’s continuing illness at Selárdalur.

They were burned in 1678. Þuríður is the only woman whose execution for witchcraft in Iceland is securely documented and included without reservation on the standard list.

Her gender makes her exceptional within Icelandic statistics, but her social vulnerability makes her painfully familiar within the history of persecution. She was poor, recently arrived and lacked the protection of deep local standing. Her supposed power was known largely through another person’s words. Once accused by an influential household, she had little power with which to build a competing version of events.

Þuríður should not be remembered merely as “Iceland’s only female witch.” That label repeats the court’s category as if it were her identity. She was a woman who migrated in poverty with her son and was killed because their neighbours and authorities accepted a story of magical harm.

Páll Oddsson and Lassi Diðriksson: The Fatal Weight of Reputation

Not everyone on the execution list confessed to the act for which they died. Páll Oddsson, burned at Þingvellir in 1674, denied knowledge of magic. The case against him rested heavily on rumour and reputation.

Lassi Diðriksson, executed the following year in connection with the Selárdalur accusations, also denied the charges. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft notes that he was generally thought innocent.

Their cases reveal why the familiar question “Did they really practise magic?” is too narrow. A person did not need to identify as a magician, possess a coherent grimoire or confess to cursing anyone. In a legal culture that treated reputation as meaningful evidence, what a community had repeatedly said about someone could help determine whether that person lived or died.

Rumour was not trivial in a small society. It shaped who could find neighbours willing to defend them, whose denials sounded believable and which unexplained misfortunes could be attached to their name.

Sveinn Árnason: The Last Execution

Sveinn Árnason was burned at Arngerðareyri in Ísafjarðardjúp in 1683. He had been accused of causing illness in the daughter of Páll Björnsson and Helga Halldórsdóttir of Selárdalur.

His death closed the period of confirmed Icelandic witchcraft executions, although accusations did not disappear immediately. Klemus Bjarnason received a death sentence for sorcery in 1690, but the sentence was referred to authorities in Copenhagen and was not carried out. He died there in 1692.

Central review of capital sentences helped weaken the ability of local courts to turn a witchcraft accusation directly into an execution. Cases gradually diminished. In 1719, the Alþingi reprimanded a sheriff for wasting the court’s time with a magical accusation—a remarkable reversal from the era when similar claims had sent people to the fire.

Belief in magic survived. What changed was the willingness of the legal system to kill for it.

The Officials and Clergymen Behind the Trials

Witch trials require more than frightened accusers. They require institutions willing to convert fear into legal punishment.

The most important official in the central decades was Þorleifur Kortsson, who served as sheriff in Strandasýsla and Ísafjarðarsýsla and later as lawman at the Alþingi. Historian Már Jónsson has shown that Þorleifur took part in every serious Icelandic witchcraft case between 1654 and 1678.

Þorleifur did not personally originate every accusation, and surviving records suggest that he could examine evidence methodically by the standards of his time. Yet he also believed that convicted sorcerers deserved whipping or death. Calling him either a mindless fanatic or a blameless administrator is too easy. He was an effective official inside a lethal system and used his authority to keep that system working.

Clergymen also shaped prosecutions. Jón Magnússon transformed his illness into the Kirkjuból case and a written spiritual narrative. Páll Björnsson’s learned demonology helped frame repeated sickness at Selárdalur as magical attack. Clerics could be accusers, interpreters and respected witnesses, while sheriffs and lawmen controlled arrest, evidence and punishment.

Social rank mattered. The museum’s research notes that most defendants were from the lower classes, even though clergymen and sheriffs were sometimes accused as well. Elite suspects did not receive the same physical punishments. The burning times were therefore not only about belief. They were also about whose account carried authority and whose body the legal system was willing to destroy.

People Who Escaped the Fire

Death sentences are the most visible outcome, but survival also reveals how the system worked.

Þuríður Jónsdóttir, accused after the deaths of her father and brother in the Kirkjuból case, was not condemned when the Reverend Jón Magnússon attempted to continue the prosecution against her. The authorities’ refusal shows that an influential accuser was not always able to secure another conviction.

Jón lærði Guðmundsson, or Jón the Learned, was a self-educated writer, healer and natural historian with a formidable magical reputation. He faced accusations and legal action in the 1630s but avoided execution. His learning made him suspicious to some authorities, yet he was also valued by powerful scholars. His life suggests that magical reputation did not operate alone: education, connections and social usefulness could all influence an accused person’s fate.

Many less famous defendants were acquitted, whipped, exiled or able to flee. A verdict of survival did not erase the damage. Public accusation could destroy a livelihood, separate families and leave a name attached to sorcery for generations.

What the Records Can—and Cannot—Tell Us

Iceland’s witchcraft history survives in court books, verdicts, annals, letters, manuscript collections and personal narratives. One especially important source is Thott 2110 I 4to, a collection of legal material assembled by or for Þorleifur Kortsson and now held by the National Archives of Iceland. Without it, far less would be known about the main period of persecution.

These sources are invaluable, but none is transparent.

• A court verdict tells us what officials decided was legally meaningful.
• A confession tells us what an accused person said under confinement and mortal danger.
• An annal may preserve a valuable contemporary report, but usually in compressed form.
• An accuser’s narrative, such as Jón Magnússon’s Píslarsaga, preserves experience through the accuser’s own beliefs and interests.
• A later folktale shows how communities remembered an event, not necessarily exactly how it happened.

Responsible history keeps these differences visible. We can say that a person was accused of raising a ghost. We cannot report the ghost as a verified cause. We can say that magical signs were found. We cannot assume they proved murder, illness or demonic allegiance. We can describe a confession without pretending that fear and confinement had no effect on it.

Remembering the People, Not the Crime

The people executed during the Icelandic burning times were not a secret coven, nor did they share one magical tradition. Some may have copied charms, owned grimoires, healed with signs or believed sincerely in their own abilities. Some denied any knowledge of magic. Others confessed to practices that sound bizarre, frightening or impossible to modern readers.

What united them was not a proven supernatural crime. It was that courts with the power to kill accepted magical harm as a legal explanation.

Their history is therefore not evidence that Iceland was once filled with powerful witches. It is evidence of what can happen when illness, grief, social conflict, religious certainty and unequal authority are allowed to reinforce one another. The fire was real even when the alleged magic was not.

Remembering the accused responsibly means resisting two temptations. The first is to repeat the courts’ accusations as fact. The second is to turn the dead into decorative gothic characters. Their stories are darker and more human than either version. They were people caught inside explanations they could not safely escape.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many people were executed in the Icelandic witch trials?

The standard list maintained by the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft contains twenty-one people burned between 1625 and 1683. A few ambiguous cases are sometimes added to wider lists, which is why readers may encounter slightly different totals.

Were most accused witches in Iceland men?

Yes. Approximately ninety percent of the accused were men, and twenty of the twenty-one people on the confirmed execution list were male. Written magical knowledge and the social role of the magician were more strongly associated with men in early modern Iceland than in many other European societies.

Who was the only woman executed for witchcraft in Iceland?

Þuríður Ólafsdóttir was burned with her son, Jón Helgason, in 1678. She is the only woman securely documented on the standard execution list. Earlier or legendary claims about other women are historically uncertain or involve crimes not clearly recorded as witchcraft.

Were the accused burned alive?

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft describes the twenty-one confirmed victims as having been burned alive. Several executions took place at Þingvellir, while others occurred in the regions where the cases were tried.

Was torture used during the Icelandic witch trials?

There is no surviving evidence that physical torture was formally used in Iceland to obtain witchcraft confessions. This does not mean defendants were treated gently. Imprisonment, shackling, repeated questioning, spiritual pressure, whipping and the threat of burning were severe forms of coercion and punishment.

Why did so many cases occur in the Westfjords?

The region combined strong traditions of magical reputation with a network of influential clergymen, sheriffs and lawmen willing to prosecute sorcery severely. Several major accusations also produced chains in which one suspect named another, especially around Strandir, Ísafjarðardjúp and Selárdalur.

Who was the last person executed for witchcraft in Iceland?

Sveinn Árnason was burned in 1683. Klemus Bjarnason was sentenced to death in 1690, but the sentence was reviewed in Copenhagen and never carried out.

Were the executed people really practising witchcraft?

The evidence varies. Some acknowledged owning magical books, drawing signs, attempting healing or learning charms. Others denied the charges, and supernatural claims such as causing illness or raising ghosts cannot be treated as proven. Practising a charm and committing the harmful act alleged by a court are not the same thing.

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
• Icelandic Grimoires: Magic Preserved in Handwritten Books
• Magic in Strandir: Iceland’s Land of Sorcerers and Folklore (future article)
• Seiðr, Galdur and Fjölkynngi: Understanding Icelandic Magical Traditions (future article)

Historical Sources and Further Reading

• Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, “The Witch-hunts in Iceland”.
• Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, “The Executed”.
• Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, “Famous Cases”.
• Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, “Sorcery Cases and Burnings”.
• Már Jónsson, “A Witch Finder’s Archive in 17th-Century Iceland”, in Paper Stories: Paper and Book History in Early Modern Europe (2023).
• Jón Magnússon, Píslarsaga séra Jóns Magnússonar; English translation published as And Though This World with Devils Filled: A Story of Sufferings.
• Ruth C. Ellison, “The Kirkjuból Affair: A Seventeenth-Century Icelandic Witchcraft Case Analysed,” The Seventeenth Century 8, no. 2 (1993): 217–243.
• Ólína Þorvarðardóttir, Brennuöldin: Galdur og galdratrú í málskjölum og munnmælum (Reykjavík: Háskólaútgáfan, 2000).