From Kolugljúfur we continued north on Route 68, arriving in Hólmavík in the early evening. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft — Galdrasyning á Ströndum — occupies a single building in the town centre. It is a small museum. The entire visit takes 60 to 90 minutes. The curation is good and the content is specific enough and we encountered things we had no previous knowledge of.

The subject is Icelandic folk magic — galdur — as it was practised from the medieval period through the 17th century, with particular focus on the Strandir coast where Hólmavík sits. This stretch of the Westfjords has been associated with sorcery in Icelandic tradition since the earliest settlement period, a reputation documented in the sagas and reinforced by the witch trials that concentrated here in the 1600s.

The primary tool of Icelandic sorcery was the galdrastafir — magical staves. These were symbols, visually complex arrangements of lines, curves, and rune-derived forms, each designed to produce a specific effect. The spells conducted with these symbols were known as seiður, and the practitioners were called seidmenn if male and seidkona if female. Most runic staves were to be carved on specific surfaces — particular metals or woods — and after carving the spells usually required the anointing of the symbols with blood, typically from the little finger of the right hand.

The staves were not decorative. Each had a documented function, specific and practical. Some examples from the historical grimoires: Vegvisir — a compass stave, said to prevent the bearer from getting lost in storms at sea or on land. Ægishjálmur — the Helm of Awe, for protection and to paralyse enemies with fear. Lásabrjótur — to open a lock without a key. Draumstafir — to influence dreams, inscribed on wood and placed under a pillow. Kaupaloki — to prosper in trade. Dreprún — to kill an enemy’s livestock. Skelkunarstafur — to make your enemies afraid. Smjörhnútur — to detect if butter was made from milk stolen by a Tilberi, a magical creature created from a rib bone and fed on a woman’s blood to steal dairy from neighbouring farms.

The symbols began as runic characters that make up words or names in Old Norse, but the original rune meanings became deliberately concealed as the creator often wanted to hide their work. Galdur magic was a secretive practice, in large part because it was illegal in many areas after the introduction of Christianity. The staves in the museum collection come from surviving grimoires — manuscript books of magic compiled in Iceland from the 16th century onward — and from objects recovered from archaeological sites and private collections.

Between 1604 and 1720, roughly 120 witch trials were held in Iceland. Of the 22 Icelanders executed for witchcraft, all but one were men. This is the inverse of the pattern almost everywhere else in Europe, where the vast majority of those accused and killed were women. The explanation lies in the specific nature of Icelandic folk magic.

In pre-Christian Norse society, magic was divided into two gendered spheres — the vísendakona, women of science, and the seidmenn, men of magical ritual. What made Icelandic sorcery unique was the requirement that the individual casting the runes be able to read and write. Few men and even fewer women had literary proficiency, which made Iceland’s primary form of magic the exclusive domain of literate men. When the Danish-influenced witch trials arrived in Iceland in the early 1600s, they found a magical tradition that was overwhelmingly male. The accused were men found with rune staves, grimoires, or objects inscribed with symbols. Iceland’s physical isolation meant there were few large villages where a lone woman could be scapegoated. Instead, people scratched out a harsh existence in tiny pockets of civilization, relying entirely on the land, the sea, and the weather. Magic and religion were close cousins — prayers for good harvests were common, but so were spells and charms against ill fortune.

The accused were burned on pyres made from their own goods and possessions — trees were too scarce and valuable in Iceland to waste on funeral pyres. The trials were driven by a combination of Danish Lutheran pressure, local power disputes, and fear. The Strandir coast produced a disproportionate number of cases relative to its population, a pattern the museum addresses directly.

The museum’s most discussed exhibit is a replica of nábrók — necropants — an object documented in the Icelandic folk magic tradition. The practice, recorded in the grimoires, worked as follows. A sorcerer would obtain permission during the lifetime of a male acquaintance to use his skin after death. When the man died, the sorcerer would dig up the body, flay it from the waist down in a single piece, and step into the resulting skin as a pair of trousers, worn directly against the body. A specific magical coin, the nábrókarstafur stave inscribed on it, was stolen from a widow and placed into the scrotum of the skin garment. The belief was that the coin would multiply continuously, generating a steady supply of money, as long as the coin remained in place and the original man’s skin was maintained. To end the practice, the sorcerer had to pass the nábrók to another person before death — otherwise the arrangement transferred with it.

The museum replica is anatomically accurate and displayed without euphemism, accompanied by the full written description from the grimoire. It is presented as a documented historical belief recorded in primary sources, practised in a cultural context where the boundary between magic, religion, and practical problem-solving was not where a modern visitor expects to find it.

The museum is small but covers ground that is genuinely outside the standard travel experience. Allow 90 minutes.