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Galdraskræða

Manuscript. Iceland. Landsbókasafn Íslands Háskólabókasafn, Reykjavík, Lbs 2413 8vo. Photo: CC unknown.

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Lbs 2413 8vo

Findspot: Iceland.

Size: c. L 100 × W 80 mm.

Pages: 148.

Dating: 1780-1820.

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Galdraskræða (Lbs 2413 8vo) — the most extensive surviving collection of Icelandic galdrastafir, a small leather-stitched book of 74 leaves measuring 10 × 8 cm, written in an unknown hand around 1800 and of unknown provenance.

Some 200 spells and protective texts are set out across its pages, each bound to a galdramynd such that text and image together produce the working sign — the meaning, and the power, residing in their combination.

The manuscript opens with what appears to be a systematic arrangement (staves for preventing theft and identifying thieves, followed by love magic), but the order loosens further in, giving way to protective staves and sigils, divinatory charms, and a substantial group of invocations against ghosts and evil spirits.

The eight-armed radial form commonly identified today as the ægishjálmur appears on f. 28r, though it is neither named nor described as such.