Sorcerer's Screed by Skuggi was first released in 2015. Since then we have shipped thousands of copies to readers all over the globe.
We can not begin to describe how grateful we are for comments and reviews from our readers, along with inspiring conversations about sorcery, Icelandic literature and subculture.
The book has a rating of 4.32 on Goodreads and we are extremely proud of the outstanding reviews by our readers.
“A real gamut of spells, charms and curses"
- Anna, Goodreads
“A very pretty book”
- Alyssa, Goodreads
“This is a daring book with an important sense of criticism and analysis”
- Pedro Costa, Goodreads
“A really beautiful, fascinating read”
- Cameron, Goodreads
“Savored every minute of this amazing historical gem”
- Kim, Goodreads
Thank you all for being a part of bringing the magic of the past back to life. We are looking forward to making more history with you guys in the near future! ✨
]]>"[T]his compilation of runic alphabets and explanations is the best I have ever seen.There is no fluff or riff-raff, it's the runes, their meanings. The information is accurate, concise and to the point while providing a generous amount of information. If you’re looking for a book on the three systems presented, (Elder Futhark, Younger Futhark, Icelandic Futhark) then search no farther for this compilation will be hard to beat!"
]]>We celebrated the publication of Runes: The Icelandic Book of Fuþark with an exhibition of the artwork from the book in the Culture House, Reykjavík.
Sigurður Oddsson the graphic designer who created Runes' timeless and tasteful look, also designed posters, cards and an example of how Icelandic street signs could look when using runes.
]]>Sigurður Oddsson the graphic designer who created Runes' timeless and tasteful look, also designed posters, cards and an example of how Icelandic street signs could look when using runes.
Ingólfsstræti is a street in the city center of Reykjavík. This is what it would look like in runes as well. That's an idea for the city council.
Cards with runes from the book were popular among guests, who wrote their names, words or poems (and some even felt the need to experiment with cursing in runes ...)
Sigurður Oddsson, the artist and Teresa Dröfn Freysdóttir Njarðvík, the wordsmith. A true dream team.
People tend to forget that runes were used for reading and writing up until the nineteenth century here in Iceland. We are hoping to contribute to the revival of that lost knowledge. The children at the exhibition were incredibly enthusiastic, perhaps runic reading and writing might become a common knowledge sooner rather than later.
Interested guests discussing Siggi's beautiful posters.
]]>Last year we finally found and assembled our dream team:
Teresa Dröfn Freysdóttir Njarðvík, who despite of her young age is an experienced scholar, specialising in Icelandic medieval manuscripts and runes. She collected information about the three runic systems, edited and wrote the text.
Siggi Odds is a young and exciting graphic designer who has received numerous awards for his work. Siggi caught our eye with an exhilarating exhibition on a project of his involving the Fuþark rune alphabet.
We are extremely proud of the book and find that Teresa's and Siggi's passion for runes is the absolute key ingredient.
Runes: The Icelandic Book of Fuþark introduces three different but related forms of runic systems in a chronological order:
The Elder Fuþark, the Younger Fuþark and the Icelandic Fuþark.
By presenting the three runic systems readers will be able to delve deeper into the meaning of each individual rune as well as gaining a better understanding of how the runic systems have evolved.
Runes: The Icelandic Book of Fuþark will be released on March 25, 2018 and is available for pre-order.
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The concept of "witch-hunting" is well known. During a 300 year period, 15th-18th century, about 40-60 thousand people were executed in Europe for some sort of sorcery or witchcraft. During these times the fear for magic was great in the whole continent and Iceland was no exception.
]]>The so-called Burning-Age started in Iceland the year 1654 when three men were burnt in Trékyllisvík, a small town in the North-West of Iceland. The first burning, though, took place 29 years earlier when Jón Rögnvaldsson from Svarfaðardalur was executed for sorcery. The last burning in Iceland was in the Western fjords (Arngerðareyrarskógur) the year 1683 and that burning marks the end of the Burning-Age, even though a man was burnt in Althing two years later but that was for blasphemy.
In other European contries, mainly women were accused of sorcery and put in flames. Witch-huntings were frequent and magic was mostly linked to women. The opposite was true in Iceland. In total, 20 men were burnt – but only one woman! Her name was Þuríður Ólafsdóttir and she was put in flames, as well as her son, Jón Þórðarson, in 1678 after being accused for (there were no tenable evidence) being responsible for the illness of the pious Helga Halldórsdóttir in Selárdalur.
In Iceland, about 170 people were accused of sorcery and magic but contrary to the lawsuits in Europe, only about 10% of them were against women. What might the reason be?
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By Stephanie Lee
We all know what a witch looks like. Hat, cat, broom, maybe a few warts, a predilection for black clothes and a habit of cackling: the witch is iconic and instantly recognisable. The most recognisable thing, however, is something so deeply ingrained in our pop culture imagery that most of us never give it a second thought. The witch you’re picturing in the above sentence is almost certainly a woman.
]]>We all know what a witch looks like. Hat, cat, broom, maybe a few warts, a predilection for black clothes and a habit of cackling: the witch is iconic and instantly recognisable. The most recognisable thing, however, is something so deeply ingrained in our pop culture imagery that most of us never give it a second thought. The witch you’re picturing in the above sentence is almost certainly a woman.
As Annie Theriault wrote last year for The Establishment, ‘witch is a highly gendered term, and like most such terms, its masculine counterparts — terms like wizard, warlock, sorcerer, or mage — do not quite mean exactly the same thing.’1 Witches have a whiff of brimstone about them, whether they’re wrinkled and hunched, or young and beautiful, but still somehow off-putting: perhaps lascivious, fuelled by sexual appetite and jealousy of other women. The witch is both sides of the coin represented by the evil queen in Snow White; she is both Dahl’s Grand High Witch and Miller’s Abigail Williams. At best, witches are batty spinsters who tend herbs and don’t mean any harm, and at worst they’re literally green thanks to MGM Studios.
Wizards, however, seem to have come out of the past few centuries relatively unscathed: they are old, certainly, but that’s only because they are wise and learned; they read ancient and interesting books full of knowledge; they have long beards and impressive robes; they are perhaps mercurial at times, but their authority is never in question. They’re Gandalf the Grey, Professor Dumbledore, or Merlin. To call someone a wizard is not particularly insulting – quite the opposite,
unlike calling a woman ‘witch,’ which still holds some venom even now the accusation carries no threat of execution in most parts of the world. As Anita Anand recently pointed out at a British Library lecture on witch hunting, opinionated and ‘uppity’ 2 women in politics are still called witches today, even in print newspapers.
Of course, for all the benign and stereotypical images of the witch that surface every October and appear in children’s fairy tales, the other thing everyone knows about witches is that we in Western Europe and North America used to hunt them down and kill them (we are less aware in the western world that witch hunting is still alive and well across other parts of the globe)3 . There may be a difference between male and female magicians in our cultural stereotypes, but wizards have got a better deal in the stakes of life and death, too. For women, historically, using magic has been a very risky business. Witches are not only old, ugly, and isolated, but in danger of being examined, dunked underwater, hanged, or even burned as a part of what we now call ‘the witch hunts.’ Modern culture frames the ‘burning times’ as an attack against women who dared to be different, carried out by a maliciously misogynistic authority such as the church or Inquisition.
But our image of the wizard must have come from somewhere, and if wizards were around at the same time as witches were being hunted, why weren’t they persecuted, too? Here’s the thing: they were. In fact, in Scandinavia more men were killed as part of the witch trials, and historically, many men have been persecuted, arrested, and executed for owning magical manuscripts. Owen Davies’ book Grimoires contains scores of men from antiquity to the turn of the nineteenth century who were condemned, even killed, for using magical texts. 4 Although countries that executed more men than women were anomalies, the hunting was never exclusively reserved for women: as the historian Malcolm Gaskill says, the male witch was both thinkable and prosecutable.5 Despite this, women were still the majority of the victims, and form the dominant image of witches we have today.
The witch trials came after a crucial shift in the theology of magic. From ancient times to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, magic was something you learned from a book, so using magic depended on a very important thing: literacy rates. Only people who could read were able to learn and share the secret words, spells, and symbols which made up magical rituals. Since men in medieval Europe had higher literacy rates than women, they were actually the more likely culprits for using magic – in fact, monks and other men of the church were the most likely to have spell books, since they were also the mostly likely to read and write! The church banned certain texts, but a lot of people (including clergy members) saw the study of magic as a science, or even something that could be used to summon angels, making it an expression of their piety and devotion.
However, Owen Davies points out that ‘while for some the attraction of magic held out the possibility of such lofty aims as learning languages and the secrets of nature, many owners of grimoires…had much baser motives on their minds, mostly concerning money and sex.’6 Even monks were not above having a go at love magic, with one imprisoned for trying to control women ‘by offering to the Devil wax puppets containing his saliva and the blood of toads.’ 7 This was obviously frowned upon, and yet lecherous monks have not made their way into the mainstream image of the persecuted witch. Generally, they got away with it.
During the Reformation, however, things changed. Protestantism became focused on the inherent evil in all humanity, and how the Devil could take advantage of it. The idea of the ‘Satanic Pact’ then came about – this was when a person made a promise to the Devil in order to gain demonic power. Whilst the most famous depiction of such a pact might be Marlowe’s Faustus, in actual fact, the figure most associated with the satanic pact was the woman we have come to know as a witch. Whereas before using magic involved learning elaborate rituals from manuscripts, now one could wield the power of the devil just by shaking his hand (or entering into rather more lewd behaviours with him). This meant that despite their lower literacy rates, women were now under just as much suspicion as men – in fact, even more. The same perceived weakness which meant women were thought unable to read or conjure demons in writing now worked to a new disadvantage: if women were so weak, surely they were more easily tricked, manipulated, and seduced by demons into making satanic pacts. Magic no longer required books, literacy, concentration, or study, but simply a weak will - and a pinch of lust. Women – particularly those who showed signs of independent thought or sexual agency – were public enemy number one, and so we arrive at the root of our modern witch.
But of course, it wasn’t that simple. As mentioned above, in parts of Scandinavia men made up a huge majority of tried and executed witches. Owen Davies writes that ‘the distinctive aspect of the Icelandic experience is that only ten of the people known to have been tried by the island’s highest court were women. This is extraordinary considering that in Denmark and Norway, and in Iceland’s southern neighbour, Scotland, the vast majority were female.’8 Davies’ theory is that with an impressive literacy rate and a small population educated by the Lutheran church, books were a greater part of ordinary life for Icelandic people than for many of their contemporaries in other countries. ‘Iceland’s magic was based much more on literary magic’ 9 than other cultures, sometimes taking inspiration from the indigenous sagas and runes. No wonder, then, that its people feared written magic more than the herbs, charms, and demonic pacts associated with women.
To summarise, when men used magic, they used spell books, written rituals, and were generally allowed to carry on in the name of scientific interest, except in the cases of Iceland and Finland. Women were more often associated with natural magic and maleficence: herbs and lore, poisoning crops and turning milk with just a glance, killing newborn babies with a touch. Put simply, the sort of thing that gets one killed. Perhaps this explains why Queen Elizabeth I was able to keep Dr John Dee, an astrologer who purportedly communed with angels, at her court whilst two hundred and forty seven women were tried for witchcraft during her reign. If our modern stereotypes of witches and wizards are anything to go by, we still haven’t moved past this gendered view of magic-wielders – or have we? After all, arguably the most famous witch of all these days is J.K. Rowling’s Hermione Granger, a bibliophile whose aptitude for magic comes from academic study and intensive reading. With any luck, the next generation will allow witches down from the pyre and into the library, and perhaps spare a thought for the male witches whose deaths have been largely forgotten.
References:
1 Anne Theriault 'The Real Reason Women Love Witches' https://theestablishment.co/the-real- reason-women- love-witches-
647d48517f66 [accessed 25/11/2017]
2 Anita Anand, Women, Witches and Witch Trials, The British Library, 05/12/2017
3 For example, http://www.hindustantimes.com/ranchi/jharkhand-tops- in-witch- hunt-murders- 523-women- lynched-
between-2001- 16-ncrb/story- oNIPZYiPrnzOrwGS6EKvEP.html [accessed 10/12/2017]
4 Davies, Owen, Grimoires, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009
5 Malcolm Gaskill, Women, Witches and Witch Trials, The British Library, 05/12/2017
6 Grimoires p.39
7 Grimoires p.40
Runes were in use in many germanic languages from the 2nd century until they, little by little, gave way for the latin alphabet. Though in some areas they were still in use as late as the early 20th century and in a way one could say that people around the world are still using runes as a form of expression or communication. The Scandinavian variants of runes are also known as fuþark, the name being derived from their first six letters of the alphabet: F U Þ A R K. It consists of 24 runic symbols.
Runes written on a margin of an Icelandic manuscript
Magical use
The oldest runic system is often referred to as The Elder Fuþark and is easily the most recognizable runic system. The Elder Fuþark was used for mystical purposes as well as for writing and recording. The stanza 157 of Hávamál attribute to runes the power to bring that which is dead back to life. In this stanza, Óðinn recounts a spell:
Icelandic Þat kann ek it tolfta, |
English translation
I know a twelfth one |
Runic inscriptions found on artifacts indicate the possibility that the early runes were mostly used as magical signs, intended for charms. The name rune itself, taken to mean "secret, something hidden", seems to indicate that knowledge of the runes was originally considered esoteric, or restricted to an elite.
The oldest Icelandic artifact inscribed with runes is from the 12th century.
A book on runes coming out this fall
We at the Icelandic Magic Company are proud to announce that we are publishing a new book on runes later this year. Stay tuned for more updates in the next few weeks.
]]>The sole surviving source of the poem is in the Icelandic manuscript Codex Regius, a collection of Old Norse poems, from mid 13th century. Individual verses or stanzas from Hávamál nevertheless certainly date to as early as the 10th, or even the 9th century.
Codex Regius
Stanza number 77 is possibly the most known section of the poem as most Icelanders know it’s first lines by heart. Below is the Icelandic version as portrayed in the manuscript and the English translation by Carolyne Larrington.
Icelandic Deyr fé, |
English translation Cattle die, |
This 800 years old manuscript has had great influence on Icelandic culture and is even still a source of inspiration to some modern authors and artists. As a result Codex Regius was recently added to Iceland’s national list of documentary heritage inscribed to the Memory of the World Register. Among those who have been influenced by the poetry of Codex Regius is our designer at The Icelandic Magic Company, who has been working on a line of T-shirts inspired by the words of Óðinn.
"Talk sense or be silent" "Wits must he have who wanders wide"
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An interesting question for those of us in the Nordic world is what role did tattoos have to play for our Viking ancestors? Of course they had no electric tattoo machines to work with, so what did they do exactly? Their skill of tool-making, fine jewellery, wood carvings and ship-building serves as proof that they took pride in their creations. Tattooing would be no exception. They would tattoo themselves with a simple hand tool and poke the ink into the skin, the same way I tattoo my clients. I tattoo people without the aid of an electric tattoo machine, and instead I insert the ink with a sterilized tattoo needle attached to a stick.
A tattoo by Habba Nero
When I first started I didn't really think of my ancestors doing the same thing. Of course the Icelandic magical staves weren't created until the 16th century and tattooing had fallen out of practice by then due to Christians seeing it as a fundamentally pagan practice. Since starting work at Íslenzka Húðflúrstofan (the Icelandic Tattoo Corp.) I have really sunk myself into the Sorcerer's Screed. Reading about all the crazy spells that Icelanders in the 16th century thought would aid them in their harsh living conditions is interesting and I find that I see or read something new every time I open up the book.
A tattoo by Habba Nero
Habba Nero. A tattoo by Boff Konkerz
After going through the book again and again, I decided to pick a stave to get as a tattoo. I picked "Veldismagn" which is supposed to keep you safe and get you home unharmed after travels and it certainly seems to be working. Nothing bad has happened so far and I have traveled far and wide since receiving it. When Boff Konkerz (who also works at Íslenzka Húðflúrstofan) tattooed my stave I got instantly hooked. I started telling our clients about other staves and that generated a lot of interest. We started offering a range of staves as tattoos at the Icelandic Tattoo Expo and the attention it got was astounding. Icelanders and other nationalities seem just as hooked on receiving a part of our Icelandic culture permanently on their skin as I am giving it to them. The most popular one is without a doubt 'Vegvísir', also known as 'Waymark' or 'the Viking compass', possibly because our nations icon, Björk, had one tattooed on her upper arm years ago.
Tattoos by Habba Nero
Since the Sorcerer's Screed was released there has been an increase in the variety of Icelandic magical staves decorating people's skin worldwide. It is getting more and more popular for tourists to have a permanent momentum from Iceland, and more and more people are becoming aware of the handpoking technique, and it intrigues them to have their stave tattoos done the 'old fashioned way' just like the Vikings did all those centuries ago.
Tattoo by Habba Nero
Of course the people in Iceland in the 16th century didn't even know anything about tattooing, and if they practiced it they would have been burned for witchcraft anyway, so why even bother?
Frederick IX of Denmark
That's why I celebrate the increased interest in stave tattoos and respect that there were people who risked their own lives to create and use them. And who doesn't need a stave against dizziness or tummy ache, or to see who has stolen from you, or even a stave to see a ghost?
– Article by Habba Nero
www.habbanerotattoo.com
Hrafnhildur, better known as Habba Nero, is an Icelandic machine-free tattooist who has worked in the UK, Ireland, France, the US, Austria and other places, and is now based at Íslenzka Húðflúrstofan in Reykjavík. She has had a life long interest in Icelandic magical staves, runes and symbols. Here she shares some of her thoughts on the connection of tattooing and these symbols.
Habba Nero, photo taken at MINK Viking Portrait Studio
We published this blog post previously on our former website: www.sorcerersscreed.com.
]]>The exhibition consists of household logos in Icelandic cultural and commercial history reshaped with Fuþark runes instead of the Roman alphabet. Siggi selected various logos ranging everything from a leading car retailer to delicious licorice sweets.
Together, Siggi's works not only offer us with an uncanny view towards our every day surroundings, they also leave us with the alluring question wether we would still use the Fuþark runes if we hadn't taken up the Roman alphabet centuries ago. And there is maybe even a bigger question hidden underneath; would we still be writing in Fuþark if we hadn't converted to Christianity roughly a millennium ago?
Even though Siggi says his project was simply made for fun, it inspired us at the Icelandic Magic Company. His reshaped logos are perfectly in tune with what we think is essential for our cultural heritage to thrive in our modern way of thinking. In other words, we truly believe that in order to stay in touch with our cultural and historical traditions, we need to find them a dynamic context in what we can relate to at all times. This is for example true to ancient Icelandic literature, the Sagas, that people from all centuries have copied, processed, even distorted. That is one of the key reasons why the sagas are still being read here in Iceland. They have been kept alive.
This way of thinking resulted for example in our publication of the book Icelandic Magic for Modern Living.
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April 13: Closed
April 14: Closed
April 15: Closed
April 16: Closed
April 17: Closed
All orders received during these days will be shipped on April 18!
April 20: Closed
Happy easter!
]]>We are delighted with the interest shown in our publication of the Sorcerer’s Screed. We are currently working on more books akin to the screed and the cultural heritage it derives from. We’ve therefore launched the imprint The Icelandic Magic Company to expand our brand and to create a venue for our future publications.
]]>We are delighted with the interest shown in our publication of the Sorcerer’s Screed. We are currently working on more books akin to the screed and the cultural heritage it derives from. We’ve therefore launched the imprint The Icelandic Magic Company to expand our brand and to create a venue for our future publications.
We’ve launched this website, www.icelandicmagic.com, where we will continue to sell Sorcerer’s Screed along with selected merchandise associated with our books, and hopefully very soon other publications. This brings about further but minor changes to our brand, first and foremost name-changes to our social media accounts.
What’s more, we want to use this as an opportunity to provide our visitors with a broader glance into our world with articles on whatever comes to the mind of a person from Reykjavik.
We’re looking forward sharing Icelandic magic with you in the future!
Yours sincerely,
The editors of The Icelandic Magic Company
]]>On Saturday the mixed martial artist returned to the octagon from nearly a year long layoff and defeated Alan Jouban in the UFC Fight Night 107. Gunnar opted to go for his nasty submission moves to put an end to the fight with a guillotine instead of proceeding to ground and-pound his opponent, according to Gunni that was the more “tactical” move available.
The ancient Icelandic magic stave, Veldismagn (or Power Amplifier) has followed Gunnar into most of his UFC fights, and is believed to increase power and provide protection. One is supposed to paint it with ones blood and carry it close to ones body at all times. Then nothing evil will harm you, and you will be healthy and free of sickness when travelling.
Find out more about the Power Amplifier in Sorcerer's Screed.
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Not to worry! A political party gleefully named Bright Future has proposed a bill in the Icelandic parliament for the clock to be delayed an hour in order for us to get to know the sun a bit better during winter.
The Party’s argument is that we Icelanders have been biologically discomposed in regard to daylight hours ever since the clock in Iceland was set to summertime hours all year round in the hippie year of 1968. This discreptancy between our bodily or biologal functions and how we’ve managed to structure our society trickles down to how we essentially function in our daily lives.
If approved, we Icelanders would for example get more mornings whereas we wake up around and after sunrise instead of basically pitch black night, thus experiencing more time in daylight than otherwise. Maybe not a big deal at first sight. However, researches show that the current condition maintains somewhat a continual social jetlag (yes, this seems to be a real scientific term) which increases the chances of lifestyle diseases such as obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, et cetera. Also, a kind of seasonal depression here in Iceland, hence winter, has been linked to the amount of time we Icelanders are exposed to darkness in during daytime. So guess what, it turns out that natural everyday daylight is quite essential for us to sustain positive public health!
It’s obvious that being an Icelander can be quite problematic. Summers have no nights and winters are without days. The dusk could nonetheless use an opposing perspective more in its favour in this scripple. Darkness is known to us Northlings to be a prolific creative force for vivid imaginations to act on their subjects; mainly us humans to be exact. Just try turning off the light for a bit. You’ll start seeing all kinds of strange things.
]]>Pink pillows&blankets are essentials when distributing yellow books
Finished circulating through and between bookstores, we met with Boff Konkerz, the author of the book and a machine-free tattooist at the Icelandic Tattoo Corp. Actually, a tattoo sparked the origin of this book when one of my co-editors got Boff to tattoo a magic stave from the Sorcerer's Screed, the book in which this site is dedicated to. Well, somehow along the way, I ended up with one too!
Two editors and a tattooist. Guess who's who!
A tattoo of a Nordic magic stave on an Icelander shouldn't though come as a surprise to anyone. They're however not only highly popular amongst natives, since the steadily growing tourist bubble keeps on giving us ever more diverse range of visitors, and some of them simply want to drop in a tattoo shop to get some middle age sorcery ink.
A chuckle over a new tattoo idea?
Whilst the Sorcerer's Screed has proven to be a reliable source for those looking for their first or next tattoo of a traditional Nordic magic stave, the Icelandic Magic for Modern Living offers a much needed humorous take on this quirky nook of our nation's heritage we Icelanders boast about on every occasion. I'll leave you with a very important modern example:
]]>(Click on the images for a higher resolution)
Which stave would you choose?
]]>Though it's beautiful to look at on screen, it's even more beautiful to touch in your hands.
]]>Recently our editors stayed at a cottage in Flatey, a magical Icelandic island in the fjord Breiðarfjörður. The island is rather small, only two kilometers long and about one kilometer wide, of which most is flat land (hence its name, meaning "flat island" in Icelandic). Most houses in Flatey are occupied only during summer but during winter, the island's total population is six people.
The natural life in Flatey is amazing; you can wake up and find a curious sheep peeking through your bedroom window and lie around at the cliffs looking at the puffins fly (remember to bring a helmet, a pot or a long stick if it is during the arctic terns' nesting season).
If you are planning a trip to Iceland, you should seriously consider visiting Flatey.
You have to take the ferry Baldur from the town Stykkishólmur to get to Flatey.
The watchtower.
Sheep outside the bedroom window of our cottage.
The church on the right and the yellow library behind it. It is said to be the oldest library in Iceland.
We paid it a visit and left a copy of Sorcerer's Screed on the shelf. Can you spot it?
"Downtown" Flatey where most of the houses are.
All photos by © Þorsteinn Surmeli
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