The Icelandic Magic Company Blog

Modern times can be awfully busy and cluttered. Now and then it's important to find a quiet place where your thoughts can be gathered and you can rest and reset your body and soul.

Icelandic magic staves look extremely beautiful on human skin and have therefore become quite popular as tattoos. Two of the editors at Lesstofan Publishing House recently had their favorite staves done (see photos).

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.

Winters in Iceland are made from dark matter. It surrounds us islanders when we head out for work in the morning and welcomes us in the afternoon. In other words, the very limited amount of daylight the geographical position of this island in the North is able to squeeze out of the sun come wintertime is cast astray due to hectic work hours Icelanders are accustomed to endure.

Gunnar Nelson is an Icelandic mixed martial artist currently competing in the Welterweight divsion of the Ultimate Fighting Championship. Gunnar is without a doubt Iceland’s best UFC fighter and is known for his calm and laid back attitude.

Dear friends 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.

A young and exciting graphic designer named Siggi Odds caught our eye recently with an exhilarating exhibition on a project of his involving the Fuþark rune alphabet.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.

It is a fact that tattooing has grown in popularity in the west in recent years, but most people do not take time to learn of the origins of the artform.

Hávamál, The Words of Óðinn, is an Old Norse poem where Óðinn, The high one (‘hinn hávi’) shares both practical and philosophical advices about communications, reputation, friendship and a general better life.

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.

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.

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.

We can't wait to get our hands on Runes: The Icelandic Book of Fuþark, a book we are extremely proud of. We have been looking for the perfect way to present the runic systems in a book, since we published Sorcerer's Screed in 2015. We agreed that the book would have to stand firmly on academic grounds as well as being extremely accessible, enlightening and not the least: a beautiful object.

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.

Our latest release, Runes: The Icelandic Book of Fuþark is off to a great start and copies are flying around the globe every hour. We are incredibly grateful for the outstanding reaction from our readers and overwhelming reviews.

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.

Sorcerer’s Screed, called Galdraskræða in Icelandic, was originally published in the annual magazine, Jólagjöfin (e. Yule Present) in 1940. The magazine was written and edited by the Jochum Magnús Eggertsson, a-jack-of-all-trades who wrote poetry, prose and non-fiction going by the eerie pseudonym of Skuggi (e. Shadow).