Read Icelandic Magic for Free Online Page B

this crime, but whose sentences were short of death, were flogged or outlawed. Outlawry meant that they were in effect banished from the country and sent into exile abroad.
    Clearly the period of the most intensive witchcraft persecutions was between the first execution in 1625 and the last in 1685. However, it is worth noting that during this time Iceland suffered under a moral code of extremely harsh laws. These provided for capital punishment for a wide variety of crimes—murder, incest, adultery, theft—as well as witchcraft. Even finding rune staves carved on a stick or written on parchment was evidence sufficient to convict someone of witchcraft. This is a far cry from the saga age when great men knew the runes and the Althing could not impose the death penalty! It is also worth pointing out that although it was not necessarily the poorest or most ignorant people who were accused of sorcery, the rich and powerful or the scholarly (who were the chief practitioners, historically) were, for the most part, immune from prosecution.
    In the period between 1550 and 1680 Iceland developed a form of magic that was practiced by members of the highest levels of its society. The fact that this synthesis survived as long as it did, however, is perhaps due to the relative lack of a strict set of socioeconomic and educational class distinctions in Iceland. Even today Icelanders are noted for their strong beliefs in occult matters and their general pride in their pagan past.

3
    Icelandic Books of Magic
    Other than the collection that came to be called the Galdrabók, the once rich tradition of Icelandic magical books of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries survives only in a fragmentary state. Icelandic folktales report on the existence of famous occult books owned by notorious historical magicians. These kinds of books were also referred to in more reliable historical sources, some of which even contain summaries of their contents. Otherwise we are dependent on later collections, which seem to have carried on the tradition in a living way, and on stray references in manuscripts whose contents generally consist of something other than galdur.
    According to legend the earliest of the famous Icelandic magicians of the Christian period, Bishop Sæmundur the Wise, is said to have learned the arts of magic at a mysterious “Black School” somewhere in Europe. In later times the two cathedral schools in Iceland, one at Hólar (in the north) and one at Skálholt (in the southwest), were the chief hotbeds of magical activity. As noted before, the legendary material often divides the master magicians into two main types: beneficent and malificent. While Sæmundur the Wise is the model of goodness and Gottskálk the Cruel the archetype of evil, the sources of magical lore are the same (as often from Satan or Óðinn as from the Christian God). In the books and fragments that have survived, all kinds of magic are merrily mixed together. To the magician himself—although not necessarily to the nonmagicians who might sit in judgment of him—magic is a neutral thing that can be used in causes that are either just or unjust, good or evil.
    LEGENDARY BLACK BOOKS
    There are two main texts that have assumed mythic importance in the history of Icelandic black books. It is impossible to tell where legend ends and history begins with these accounts, but one thing that is borne out by hard evidence is the importance of such books and the overall nature of their contents.
    The most famous and sinister of all these books was Rauðskinna (Red-Skin). This was said to have been compiled by the most evil of all magicians, Bishop Gottskálk Niklásson the Cruel, the bishop of Hólar who died in 1520. Rauðskinna is said to be a book of the blackest magic, drawn from the Heathen Age. It was supposed to have been inscribed with golden letters and runes on red parchment. This is why the book was called