A SPELL AGAINST MISOGYNY:

Masculinity and Magic in Early Modern Iceland

Christopher Morris

University College London, March 2014

The overwhelming majority of those accused of witchcraft during the early modern European

witch-hunt were women. 80-percent of the accused were female with some regions seeing figures as

high as 96 percent. The stereotype of the witch as a woman therefore has statistical merit, but this was

not the case in all regions. The most remarkable contrary example was in Iceland where between the

years 1625 and 1685 only ten of the recorded 120 witch-trials targeted a woman while only two, with

one in debate, of the 22 known executions were of women.1 With the witch-hunt coming to Iceland via

Denmark where 90-percent of the accused witches were women, why Iceland was immune to the

European witch-hunt's misogyny is a lingering question.2

I argue that masculinity held its prominence in Icelandic magic and refuted continental

influence for two reasons. The first is the entrenchment of masculinity in the Icelandic magical world

view dating to the Viking Age and evidenced in the language, literature, and mythology of Old Norse

culture. The second reason is the absence of a relationship between magic, sexuality, and the demonic.

In the rest of Europe, the engine of the witch-hunt's misogyny was the painting of women as sexual

deviants and temptations to evil. With the Devil less of a marquee name in Iceland and a lack of interest

in demonology among Icelanders, re-contextualizing women within a world of masculine magic was

not possible.

The dates used for this study to bookend the hunt in Iceland are 1625 and 1685. 1625 is the first

year in which the influence of the Malleus Maleficarum, the influential fifteenth century handbook for

1 Brian Levack, The Witch-hunt in Early Modern Europe, 3rd ed. (London: Routledge, 2006), 141-142.
2 William E. Burns, Witch Hunts in Europe and America: An Encyclopedia (Westport: Greenwood Press, 2003), 64.
hunting and punishing witches, can be seen in Icelandic witch-trials thus linking the region's trials with

the European witch-hunting philosophy. A new district sheriff in the region of Eyjafjörður, Magnus

Björnsson, had learned of the theory and mechanics of witch-hunting from the Maleficarum during his

studies in Copenhagen and Hamburg bringing the book and its ideas with him to the island upon

appointment. His 1625 case against Jón Rögnvaldsson then lead to the first burning.3 There were trails

of those accused of using magic to bring harm on others dating long before the early modern period,

but magic itself was not on trial, just the intent. Because 'traditional' uses of magic were common, trials

before the European flavored notions of what constituted witchcraft should then not be included as part

of the great hunt.

1685 saw the last witch execution in Iceland by burning at the stake. Historian Þorkell

Bjarnason wrote in his 1878 book Um siðbótina á Í slandi (On the Reformation in Iceland), that there

was a 1690 death sentence conviction in a case of witchcraft though the sentence was quickly

reconsidered resulting in a pardon.4 This was the final death sentence handed down for witchcraft in

Iceland and combined with the pardon represents the transition from a witch-craze to a less zealous

position. Additionally, the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft mentions a case from 1719 in

which a man was accused of casting illness spells yet was forced to simply make economic restitution.5

The lenient sentence bearing no adherence to the Maleficarum philosophy and the fact that it was 34

years from the last execution, detaches the case from the European hunt. The final following through of

a death sentence conviction in 1685 is then the tidiest option for an end date.

For the purposes of this study, the word magic refers to the general act of attempting to

manipulate events by use of supernatural forces outside of the accepted Christian faith of Danish

authority at the time. When used here, the word witchcraft and the label of witch will be referring to the

3 Gunnar Karlsson, The History of Iceland (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), 145.
4 Þorkell Bjarnason, Um siðbótina á Í slandi (Reykjavik: isafoldar-prentsmidju, 1878), 166.
5 Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcrfat website. http://www.galdrasyning.is, (accessed 16/03/2014).
Christian constructions of the period and will be used to reference how magic was viewed by the

accusers rather than within the Icelandic magical tradition. Within that tradition the Old Norse word for

magic was galdr. Just as with magic in the rest of Europe, misfortune was everywhere and belief in the

reality of galdr provided a sense of control over seemingly uncontrollable circumstances.6 In pre-

Reformation Iceland, malicious intent was legal cause for concern rather than the use of galdr in

general. Using incantations to do harm to persons or property were likely to be prosecuted as opposed

to instances attempting to improve the results of a fishing trip or keep livestock healthy. In its original

Old Norse context, galdr specifically refers to a song as an incantation of either good or bad intention,

but during the early modern period it became congruous with the Latin maleficium (malicious

wrongdoing).7 This also came to include necromancy, the raising of the dead or the spirits of the dead,

which is an important and frequent element in the Icelandic magical tradition.

Terminology is where the first clues emerge as to how deep the roots of masculinity in this

magical tradition really were. The word for the practitioner of galdr was galdramaður which

specifically refers to a male and is the term used to reference the accused and convicted in the early

modern sources.8 The female form galdrakona does not appear. In the rare instance a woman was

under arrest, a combination of the charge and the name of the woman on trial was used. This was the

case with Margrét Þórðardóttir, referred to as Galdra-Manga, who was smothered in 1662.9 Even this

use is still debated and the use of Galdra is only a clue leading to educated guesses regarding the true

nature of the trial. The records of this case are incomplete and the sentence of smothering is

inconsistent with witch-trial convictions of the period. The exclusivity of a single masculine term for a

witch and the cobbled together reference for a woman only possibly associated with magic indicates

6 Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, 4th ed. (London: Penguin Books, 1991), 20.
7 Kirsten Hastrup, Nature and Policy in Iceland 1400-1800: An Anthropological Analysis of History and Mentality
(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 228.
8 Hastrup, 227.
9 Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri. 2nd ed, ed Árni Böðvarsson and Bjarni Vilhjálmsson (Reykjavik:
Bókautgáfan Þjóðsaga, 1954), 517-20.
that galdr was generally perceived as a male endeavor at the time.

Females were not wholly excluded from earlier magical traditions. Magic was a shared ability

in the Old Norse literature and at times even appeared to be leaning towards a female-centric discipline.

In the Viking Age, the term vǫlva (or less often as heiðr) was used to denote a “seeress” capable of

delivering prophecy and the occasional casting of spells. She is depicted in the sagas as an elderly

woman who roamed the countryside and was paid to council, prophesize, and sometimes heal.10 A

vǫlva was summoned in the Saga of Erik the Red as the Greenland settlers were under threat of

starvation.11 In the Ynglinga Saga it is even said that the Æsir, one of the branches of the gods in the

Old Norse pantheon, were taught the art of “seeing” by a female god, likely Freyja.12 The most

prominent example would be in Vǫluspá (Prophecy of the Seeress), the first poem of the Poetic Edda

and part of the Hauksbók (Book of Haukr), as a vǫlva is summoned from the dead and reveals a

creation story to Odin.13 It is here with Odin where Norse magic sees the beginning of a gender divide.

Odin's omnipresence in the texts and his embodiment of seemingly all magical powers seat him at the

head of the table and provides a firm masculine root for Icelandic magical practice.

The vastness of Odin's magical abilities set him apart from other magic-wielding figures of the

literature to the point that he is referred to as galdrs fǫður (magic's father) in the eddic poem Baldrs

Draumar (Balder's Dreams).14 He was a prolific caster of spells running the gamut from causing and

curing illness to battlefield courage, female seduction, and shape-shifting.15 The literature also cements

him as the foremost necromancer of Norse myth. The seeress in Vǫluspá who speaks to Odin is

10 Gro Steinsland, Meulengracht Sørensen Preben, Anders Hultgård, and Hans O. Sjöström, Människor och makter I
vikingarnas värld (Stockholm: Ordfront, 1998), 61.
11 Icelandic Saga Database, The Saga of Erik the Red, transl. J. Sephton, 1880, http://sagadb.org/eiriks_saga_rauda.en
(accessed 21/04/2014).
12 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, transl. Douglas B. Killings, and David Widger http://www.gutenberg.org/files/
598/598-h/598-h.htm (accessed 21/4/2014).
13 Snorri Sturluson, “Hauksbók”, The Poetic Edda, transl. Henry Bellows, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/
poe03.htm (accessed 21/04/2014).
14 Snorri Sturluson, “Baldrs Draumar”, The Poetic Edda, transl. Henry Bellows http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/
poe13.htm (accessed 21/04/2014).
15 Stephan A. Mitchell, Witchcraft and Magic in the Nordic Middle Ages (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press,
2011), 79-80.
summoned from the dead by Odin himself and this was by no means his only dalliance with the dead.

Lord of ghosts, lord of the hanged, and lord of the dead were all used in reference to Odin in

Heimskringla (Sagas of the Norwegian Kings) and in perhaps the most well-known connection of Odin

to the dead, it was he who brought forth the Valkyries to escort the spirits of fallen Viking warriors to

Valhalla.16

Odin's strongest association and longest lasting contribution to the Norse magical tradition is

that of runic magic. Runes were the letters of an alphabet used to write Germanic languages prior to

Latin influence. In the Nordic region, the runes were used in a linguistic variation called fuþark, the

first written language of the Norse. In the Hávamál, a poem within the Poetic Edda, Odin discovers the

runes during a sacrifice of himself to himself, and hanging on the world tree, Yggdrasil, he discovers

the secrets of power within all nine worlds of the cosmology. Among this knowledge were eighteen

magical runes.17 The texts are liberal with the added powers these runes provided starting with wisdom

and fertility yet eventually covering control of the weather and the seas.18 This association brought the

perceived power of magic from speech to writing as an understanding of how to read and write the

runes were required for a galdramaður's mastery of the art.

Runic magic does not appear often in the primary sources as a female endeavor and is the first

convention in galdr which becomes more closely associated with men than with women going forward.

This is likely because of Odin's preeminence and the lack of literacy among women of the period.19

This is largely conjecture, but literacy played a key role in magic moving into later periods and with the

Viking era sources placing runic power in the hands of men in a vast majority of instances, this

explanation stands to reason. Runes then remained potent symbols in Iceland throughout the centuries

16 Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla,transl. Samual Laing, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/heim/index.htm

(accessed 21/4/2014).
17 Snorri Sturluson, Hávamál, transl. Henry Bellows, http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/poe/poe04.htm (accessed
21/04/2014).
18 Mitchell, 80.
19 Hastrup, 227-8
including the Christian era where they appeared often on gravestones signaling there was still a

spiritual component connecting them with the dead.20

Use of runes in connection to magic continued well into the early modern period and became

one of two pieces of written evidence used in the witch-trails to prove that galdr was at the heart of the

crime. If runes were found to be used by the man in question, the case was as good as closed and the

conviction assured. The first burning of an accused witch in 1625 was the result of just such evidence.

Jón Rögnvaldsson had been arrested under suspicion of causing damage to livestock and the spreading

of plague after he was accused of harmful galdr by a sick boy. The reason Jón was singled out is

unknown, but his reputation in the region was one of being a “man of knowledge.”21 The court

accepted a sheet of runes found in Jón's home as all the evidence needed for conviction. In 1653,

Grimur Jonsson had been accused of sorcery by another man put to death in the same year, despite

Danish law prohibiting such testimony. Grimur confessed to using runic inscriptions to ward off foxes

from attacking his sheep. He was eventually found guilty and sentenced to the stake.22

In 1678, the only known case to feature a relationship between a woman and runic magic sent

Þuríður Ólafsdóttir to her death, but it was a male association which sealed her fate. Her young son,

also executed, claimed it was runes which made possible his mother's ability to cross waterways

“without horse or ferry”. They both denied having magical ability but their status as newcomers, with

Þuríður newly widowed, cast them in a suspicious light. When the local vicar’s wife took seriously ill

the pair was blamed and the son's runic claims were at the center of the controversy. There was no

evidence of runic script among her possessions. Þuríður was likely executed because of her association

with a male speaking of runic magic rather than belief she was a woman of runic knowledge. This must

be considered as this was the only female trial involving accusations of runic literacy and was centered

20 Hastrup, 204.
21 Jón Espolin, Árbækur (Reykjavik: Lithoprint, 1943), 27-28.
22 Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcrfat website. http://www.galdrasyning.is/index.phpoption=com_
content&view=article&id=192%3Agrimur-jonsson-brenndur1654&catid=27&Itemid=67&lang=en (accessed
16/03/2014).
on the boy's comments resulting in his execution as well. His death signifies a belief that a male was

ultimately responsible.23

The second piece of written evidence was a magical symbol called galdrastafir or “stave”.

Staves were intricate symbols drawn or etched onto paper, into wood, or in stone to accompany spells

completing a formula for casting. The staves and their formulas were preserved in books called

grimoires and possession of these books often resulted in a verdict of guilty. Just as with Grimur

Jonsson a few years earlier, in 1656 a father and son both named Jón Jónsson were burned at the stake

after confessing ownership of two grimoires. The books were originally confessed to being used to

seduce women and attempt healing before a pressured confession stated use for causing illness to a

local reverend who had accused them of working galdr against him.24

The emergence of magic's relationship with these literary conventions was then the divergence

in male and female magical associations with men becoming the practitioners in the Odinist tradition

while women were left to history with the medieval vǫlva. What became of female magical practice

receives no attention in the early modern sources as there are no references to healers or to the seeress

of the Old Norse tradition. This is not to say it was not practiced at all, but because accusations were

few, involved a male when they were so rarely made, and there was a lack of learning among women in

areas which early modern galdr seemed to require, it seems improbable.

It is also unlikely women were practicing much magic based on the folklore traditions which

surrounded many of the formulas. Most of these tales dealt with necromancy and using the power of

the dead to “send” illness, harm, or death and necromancers are referred to exclusively in the

masculine.25 Not only are the practitioners referred to as male but the one rising from the dead is also

presumed a man (“When the dead man says who he is...”). There are also incantations intended to

23 Mælifellsannáll (1723): Annales Islandici 1400-1800, Posteriorum saeculorum (Reykjavik: Hið islenzka
bókmenntafélag, 1942), 550.
24 Alþingisbækur Islands, vi (Reykjavik: Sögufelagið, 1912-1982).384.
25 Jacqueline Simpson, Icelandic Folktales & Legends, 2nd ed. (Gloucestershire: Tempus, 2004), 166.
question the dead calling to mind Odin and the seeress in Vǫluspá, which use phrases such as “as soon

as the magician had arranged himself, he would begin reciting the formulas and spells.”26 Taking into

consideration the masculine domain of both necromancy and literacy, the use of masculine pronouns

was surely not intended for unisex application.

One formula and related artifact took the masculine necessity to an extreme. The “Lappish

Breeches,” named after the Lappland Shamans, were trousers made from the flayed skin of a man's

lower half, complete from waist to the soles of the foot including his penis and scrotum. A man, never

a woman mentioned, would wear the skin and a coin would be placed into an incision in the scrotal

sack insuring the man's family would then never want for money.27 So entrenched had masculinity

become in magical practice that not only must one have been male to read the runes and staves but in

this instance one had to wear the very essence of manhood over his own to cast such a spell. A

complete specimen dated to the early modern period and now more entertainingly referred to as

“necropants”, is on display at the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft, complete with an

example of the stave (Nábrókarstafur) used in casting.

This rich tradition predisposed Icelanders to point their fingers at men once the hunt reached

their shores. Even had authorities managed to overcome this tradition in order to target women,

evidence which Icelanders would buy as credible proof was unlikely to be found. Even an attempted

re-contextualization of women within the new European notion of witchcraft would have failed. This is

because Icelandic society had little regard for a major factor of the European hunt — demonology and

the way in which female sexuality played into the European satanic-panic.

Across most of Europe, the ruling elite and literate upper class (magistrates, sheriffs, judges)

were convinced by theologians, clerics, and other groups responsible for the manufacturing and

dissemination of spiritual ideas, of a relationship between witches and Satan. The diabolical aspects of

26 Simpson, 164
27 Simpson, 181-183
witchcraft were what frightened the upper classes and with a fear of magic doing harm already playing

on the insecurities of the populace, fear of a Devil in which they already believed fanned the flames. In

order for the Christian judicial machine to conduct such a widespread purge, the people needed to

believe there was not just a threat of maleficium against them and their families, but that Christ had

been rejected, Christian civilization was in danger, and it was all from an organized conspiracy in the

name of a common spiritual enemy.28

The witches' sabbath became the vehicle for just such a danger. It was said that the Devil would

show himself to prospective witches and lure them into a pact to do his bidding with promises of sexual

pleasure, wealth, or influence. They were then to gather and celebrate their evil by dancing naked,

participating in orgies including sexual acts with Satan himself. Historian Brian Levack has correctly

called the heavy emphasis placed on the sabbath by the Church a “precondition of the great witch-

hunt.”29 While the pact with Satan was sold as the central idea undermining Christian belief, the

sabbath allowed for the fear of organized conspiracy rather than disjointed and nebulous evil. It

contextualized fears of blasphemy, sexual deviancy, and gave authorities an opportunity to hunt down

more than one witch at a time.

The eroticism of the sabbath was triggered by the Church's medieval attitudes towards female

sexuality, which was pervasive well into the eighteenth century.30 Demonological works from the

medieval through early modern periods propagated a fiercely negative view of women based on sexual

reputation and behavior. The recurring theme in these treatises was that women were easily tempted by

Satan into sexual congress due to their naturally weak moral constitution. The most important example

of this comes from the Maleficarum which addresses women as intellectually inferior, highly

superstitious, and infected with insatiable carnal lust.31 This was evident in most trials such as when a

28 Levack, 32.
29 Levack, 41.
30 Levack, 145.
31 Heinrich Kramer and James Sprenger., The Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and transl. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2007), 73-78.
jurist in a French case in 1580 wrote that a woman's sexual appetite was nothing short of “bestial”32

and Nicolas Rémy, a lawyer in the duchy of Lorraine in 1608, claimed that a witch loved to feel the

cold phallus of the Devil.33 In his 1612 demonological treatise, Pierre de Lancre wrote more about sex

than other topic in regards to the sabbath even claiming how the Devil liked to perform – from the front

with the beautiful but from behind with the ugly.34

Accusations of sexual debauchery were not just a fantasy of the male clergy and often went

beyond the sabbath. Women had a role to play in exacerbating the situation by voicing delusions, or

perhaps better understood as fantasies, about their sexual relationship with the Devil. A great many

claims of demonic sex came to light outside of trials as confessions, some without coercion, or even

before being taken into custody. These fantasies gave vent to a woman's social and cultural frustration

via a repressed sexuality. Lyndal Roper, in Oedipus & the Devil: Witchcraft, sexuality and religion in

early modern Europe (1994), argues that witchcraft gives us the opportunity to see how some women

“used the elements of their culture to create narratives which made sense of their lives: of their

unbearable hatreds, agonies, jealousies.” The Devil, a character so culturally familiar, was believed to

be as real as any other man they could meet, and with the power to choose the form they found most

pleasing or most freeing. This allowed for the expression of life experience by giving voice to

previously voiceless thoughts and emotions.35

In a late case from 1738, Maria Caterina Salinaro claimed the Devil appeared to her as a

dashing young man and she willingly had sex with him for hours even “through the posterior.”36 The

32 Jean Bodin, On the Demon-Mania of Witches, Renaissance and Reformation Texts in Translation, No. 7, transl. Randy
A. Scott (Toronto: Centre for Reformation and Renaissance Studies, 1995), 110.
33 Nicolas Rémy, Demonaltry: An Account of the Historical Practice of Witchcraft, transl. E.A. Ashwin (New York: Dover
Publishing, 2008) 14.
34 Pierre de Lancre, Tableau de l'Iconstance des Mauvais Anges et Démons, transl. Harriet Stone, ed. Gerald Sholtz
Williams (Tempe, AZ: ACMRS Publications, 2006), 190.
35 Lyndal Roper, Oedipus and the Devil: witchcraft, sexuality, and religion in early modern Europe (London:
Routledge, 1994) 20.
36 David Gentilcore, “Witchcraft Narratives and Folklore Motifs”, in The Witchcraft Reader, ed. Darren Oldridge (London:
Routledge, 2002), 103.
1578 trial of Jeanne Harvillier claims that instead of receiving confirmation in the church at age 12, she

was presented by her mother to the Devil who appeared before her tall, dark, handsome, and dressed in

boots with spurs with a sword at his side. The Devil would come to her for decades to make love, even

when she slept beside her husband.37 Another case saw the widowed Antonia Donatino claiming the

Devil had sex with her for so long and so often she was left exhausted.38 With most of the women in

question widowed, neglected, repressed, poor, and helpless within their social caste, such fantasies take

on the role of escapism or even reflect sincere beliefs about what their dreams and imaginations were

communicating. These expressions then took the form of demonic manifestations as their religious and

cultural conditioning had them believe that the Devil was in the business of granting all too human

desires of which they should be ashamed.

Female sexuality was also under attack within the framework of demonic possession. No case

better illustrates this than that of Nicole Obry (France, 1565). Nicole was 16 years old, recently married

to one of her uncles, who one day said she encountered a spirit at a nearby church. Following the

encounter she suffered seizures and after interrogation from a priest it was determined she was

possessed. Exorcisms were performed during which much was gleaned by the clergy regarding the

nature of the possession. After signs of sickness soon after the sighting of the cemetery spirit, her

parents assumed she was pregnant but the local diocese believed that Satan had “entered her womb”

causing the swelling, and thus the illusion, of pregnancy. The Devil then called the girl, in the throes of

possession, a prostitute and whore. She later began lactating and complained of sore breasts. Most of

the cases of possession around this time were of young women who were menstruating for the first

time, recently married (most arranged), or recently lost their virginity around the first claims of

“possessed” behavior. Nicole's mother had told the exorcist that the girl's first menstruation was a

month prior to her first vision. This is a typical case of the period highlighting the way female sexual

37 Gary K. Waite, Heresy, Magic, and Witchcraft in early Modern Europe (New York : Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 131.
38 Waite, 132.
anxieties were fundamental to constructions of demonic theory. As Moshe Sluhovski, Professor of

European Studies at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, so well phrased it, “possessed women (often)

projected their unvoiced sexual anxieties and equated their personal notions of sexual impurity with

parallel familial and/or communal dangers.”39

Denmark, from which Iceland was ruled from 1523, was no stranger to this relationship

between gender and the demonic, but such attitudes were late in coming. Records are scant but we

know that there was less of a misogynistic approach to witchcraft in the years before the Reformation.

Before his denouncement at the end of the Kalmar Union, King Christian II passed laws with two

articles on witchcraft both referring to witches as being of either gender and using gender neutral

pronouns such as “they” or “those people.”40 Southern European influence came a few years later in

1544 when Bishop Peder Palladius lead a purge of suspected witches resulting in 50 lives lost.

Palladius claimed that scores of witches were being found and as one after another gave up their

associates the hunt would only grow larger. His plans came to an end in 1547 when the government

established two important restrictions on how witches could be hunted. The new laws stated that

testimony from those convicted could never be used as evidence to convict another and no torture was

permissible until after a death sentence verdict had been handed down. The reasoning for this appears

to be the lack of a distinction between what the rest of Europe was calling witchcraft and the more

traditional 'secret arts' of divination and white magic which Palladius wished to include as demonic

practices.41

The Danish witch-hunting law of 1617 then brought diabolism back into the picture by clearly

defining witches as having made a pact with Satan and that all should be burned upon conviction.42

39 Moshe Sluhovsky, “A Divine Apparition or Demonic Possession?” in The Witchcraft Reader, ed. Darren Oldridge
(London: Routledge, 2002), 261.
40 Louise Nyhoim Kallestrup, “The Devil's Milkmaid: The witch as a woman in reformation Denmark” in Women's
History Magazine , 66 (2011), 26.
41 Louise Nyholm Kallestrup, “Lay and Inquisitorial Witchcraft Prosecutions in Early Modern Italy and Denmark”,
Scandinavian Journal of History (36:3, 2011), 267-268.
42 Levack, 224.
This then became the legal basis for the Icelandic hunt. After 1617, belief about satanic pacts was on

the rise in Denmark as references in the trial records increased. The sabbath is largely absent in Danish

accounts, likely due to the testimony laws removing incentive to believe in large gatherings, but this

did not rid the trials of sexual content. Sex was just not as crudely discussed as elsewhere in Europe as

women were referred to more politely as “betrothed” to a demon and that she would “service him” and

be “served” in return. The woman as temptress to evil was still very much part of the Danish religious

culture, and just as her European neighbors, it was the continuation of medieval ideas. Medieval church

murals often show women being the first to succumb to temptation and therefore were the first to enter

Hell as a warning to men not to be lured by their charms.43 The arrival of a legal demonic framework

was then likely the reason gender distribution in trials took a sharp turn from a century earlier. Of the

known 2000 witch-trails in Denmark between 1600 and 1800, 90-percent of those brought to trial were

women.

This was the complexion of witch-hunting in Denmark when officials were sent to Iceland. To

stamp out heresy, local sheriffs were appointed from Copenhagen rather than being chosen locally. 44

The Christianization of Iceland was rather late (999 CE) and the new religion had not done away with

folk magic tradition nor was Christianity accepted wholeheartedly. For centuries Christianity had been

an institution forced into the culture by the elite and slowly incorporated by the people. The desire to

have agency over the things which brought harm was motivation enough to maintain belief in galdr

with no consequence on testing the waters of Christianity. Many magical formulas preserved from the

sixteenth and seventeenth centuries included 'updated' traditions with Christian elements such as adding

prayers, mentions of “Our Father,” or even addressing the risen dead in a manner so as not to have

them frightened back into the grave by the power of the Trinity.45

43 Kallestrup, “The Devil's Milkmaid”, 26.

44 Hastrup, 214.
45 Simpson, 164-165.
 Though Danish officials attempted to insert diabolism into the charges of maleficium, it was

rare that claims of satanic involvement came from Icelanders. Diabolism did gain some popularity in

the 1630s thanks to the first Icelandic treatise, Reflections on Deceit of the Devil (English used for

brevity) in 1627 and Character Bestiae by Pall Björnsson around 1630. The latter borrowed heavily

from the Maleficarum and declared traditional galdr was born from the Devil, but the Devil as a major

influence never caught on.46 The concept of Satan simply did not have a history in Iceland for Danish

authority to exploit. The simplicity of the limited satanic statements in accusations is best exemplified

by the case brought against Jón Mágnusson in 1655. A priest in Kirkjuból had said he was haunted by

the Devil who overtook his mind and then took over his home by causing general mischief. Claiming to

see the Devil at the Mágnusson farmstead, the two male members of the family who were also the

plaintiff's parishioners were taken to trial.47 There were no demonic possessions, no sabbath, no orgies.

This was the most the Devil was ever mentioned in a trial by locals.

In the rest of Europe, diabolism was a necessary agent through which attitudes towards women,

justified via their sexuality, could be propagated and used to enact a female-centric witch-hunt. A

demonizing of women was then not possible in Iceland with such a cold reception to diabolism and all

of the sexual baggage which would have accompanied it. An attempted re-contextualization of women

would not have stood a chance from the outset as the Danish approach to witch-hunting acted as an

unintentional filter, watering down the European misogyny by enacting laws which reduced the

importance of the sabbath, and therefore the setting for many sexual dalliances and theories of

conspiracy. Danish medieval ideas of women may have helped its own hunt maintain misogynistic

tendencies, but the concept of female corruptibility had no means of transmission in the previous

centuries with Iceland alone for so long as a pagan outpost. Additionally, while early modern Iceland

was not perfectly egalitarian, there is no indication that women were repressed in the same fashion as in

46 Hastrup, 218.
47 Pislarsaga sira Jóns Magnússonar, ed. Sigurður Nordal (Reykjavik: Almenna bókafélagið, 1967), also see Hastrup, 223.
other regions. The demonic had little chance of penetrating a culture not suffering from such deep

gendered sexual anxieties.

Diabolism and sexuality were then able to stay disassociated during the heights of the hunt in

Iceland. Considering this along with the masculine magical traditions so intricately woven throughout

Icelandic cultural history, it is not then surprising that more men than women were accused of

witchcraft and the culture was immune to Europe's attitude of magic and misogyny. Iceland was

unfortunately not immune to the hunt in general and some scholars look at Iceland's witch-hunt as a

threat to the Icelandic culture of the time thanks to the long arm of Danish law and religious fervor.

Anthropologist Kirsten Hastrup wrote that because galdr was so easily appropriated by the authorities

as witchcraft, Icelanders lost their control over tradition and were in danger of accusations coming at

anyone at any time as “the powers of definition slipped out of the Icelander's hands.”48 This might be

true as seen from the Icelander's early modern point of view but from a historical perspective the details

tell a different story. In a European context, Icelanders were able to prevent submission to a southern

European notion of witchcraft. A cultural imperturbability assured Icelanders remained rooted in their

own traditions and peculiarities despite the best efforts of Danish appointed sheriffs. Perhaps it was less

a willingly stubborn hold on tradition and more a tale of isolation defusing the ripple effect of a

European panic, but either way Icelanders remained Icelanders and the “powers of definition” stayed

within their grasp. Galdr remained magic and magic remained masculine.

48 Hastrup, 228.
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