Photo from Wikimedia, Creative Commons, by Jónína K.
Viking magick chants pdf free#
On the farm Heimabær in Arnardalur valley, guests are free to participate in pagan ceremonies during summer and some ancient pagan festivals, such as the Þorrablót are modern day traditions that are celebrated annually in each Icelandic household. To this day, Iceland is home to an active pagan religious congregation which subscribes to the ancient Icelandic mythology of Ásatrú, and pagan rituals are still practised by many modern Icelanders, although only a handful remain faithful to the original sorcery of antiquity. The year 1654 marks the beginning of the Icelandic persecution with three people being burnt at the stake, but the last burning took place on the alluvial plain Arngerðareyri on the bay of Ísafjarðardjúp in 1683.ĭuring the Icelandic age of fire, 20 people, the majority of them men, were sentenced to death and burned at the stake. Should magical artefacts, such as oddly shaped pebbles, runic booklets, suspiciously inscribed pieces of wood or raven feathers be found in his possession, the case was promptly closed and an anointed man of God would have a pyre lit on which the heretic was carefully burnt ‘ad majorem glorium Dei’. The predominant theme of the Icelandic persecutions is that when someone fell ill or was involved in an accident, he would simply blame his misfortune on a particular person he did not like, who consequently had to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was not a sorcerer. Sorcery, black and white, was commonly practised in Iceland up until the 17th century, when what is known as the Icelandic Brennuöld (The Age of Fire) took place, during which well over 200 people were officially charged for either practicing sorcery or for being in possession of dangerous magical artefacts. Photo from Wikimedia, Creative Commons, by R. Needless to say, he was neither seen or heard from ever again. Somehow Loftur managed to escape out to sea where a furry black claw emerged from the waters and dragged him into the black abyss below.
The failed project rendered Loftur a halfwit and subsequently he was placed in the care of a senile gray priest in the one horse province of Staðarstaður. The ordeal drove the woman mad and left her bedridden for the rest of her days, but she could not speak of her torment, so long as Loftur was alive.Īs Loftur's magical potency and ambition grew, so did his insanity and eventually he descended into complete psychosis after failing to obtain the legendary grimoire Rauðskinna-a book of black spells used to control Satan-from the grave of the long dead bishop Gottskálk grimmi Nikulásson. One day, when Loftur was to travel home for Christmas, he decided to try out his magical abilities by ironing the hands and feet of his chambermaid before putting her in harness and riding her home through thin air. The most famous sorcerer ever to practice dark magic in Iceland was Galdra Loftur, an ever diligent but somewhat psychotic student of the Hólar Latin school of priests.įor nine summers and nine winters, Loftur feverishly studied the black arts by day and by night, and at the end of that time, he could recite every banned verse of every forbidden book in the library. In pre-Christian Icelandic Mythology, seiður was associated with Oðinn, the god of war, poetry and sorcery, and Freyja, the goddess of fertility, magic and death and during the days of first settlement, Icelandic sorcerers called upon these deities through spells and sacred poetry, asking to be granted the power to heal the sick, ward off enemies or simply ease the everyday toils of their fellow men and women.Īlthough in most cases, Icelandic sorcerers of Viking times used white magic for their personal benefit or to aid others in times of need, the dark years of the middle ages would come to provide quite a few exceptions to Iceland's lineage of white magicians. Photo from WIkimedia, Creative Commons, by Lorenz Frölich. Numerous ancient literary sources, including the Sagas, suggest that the Seiður was a shamanic ceremony, involving altered states of consciousness and cross-dimensional journeys, wherein sorcerers would gain secret knowledge and accumulate great power which was handed to them by the gods themselves.
The female practitioners were called "vísendakona", or woman of science, and the men were called "seið-menn", or the men of magic ritual. "Seiður" is the Icelandic word which is used to describe the magic rituals that were practiced in Iceland during the Viking age.