Hólmavík — the Strandir witch trials

OVERVIEW

Hólmavík is a small town on the eastern shore of Steingrímsfjörður in the Westfjords. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery & Witchcraft — Strandagaldur, the Galdrasýning á Ströndum — opened here in June 2000 and is a privately run museum of the history and folklore of Icelandic magic. Its permanent exhibitions cover the seventeenth-century trials, the Icelandic magical staves, the tilberi, the grimoires, and the nábrók or necropants.

HISTORY

In 1654, at Trékyllisvík on the Strandir coast north of Hólmavík, three men were burned at the stake for sorcery. What followed is called Brennuöldin, the century of burnings: between 1654 and 1690 a further sixteen men and one woman were burned, the last in 1683. Iceland's witch-hunt is distinctive in Europe in that almost all of those killed were men, and the charges turned on galdur — written and spoken magic, staves and chants — rather than on the pact-with-the-devil pattern of the continental trials. Around 170 witch trials are recorded in Iceland in total, as the Lutheran church moved against what remained of older practice.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

This is a legal and historical record, not a haunting. It is on the map because it is the single most important site of documented magical practice and its punishment in the North Atlantic, because the museum works from the trial records, and because the objects it displays — grimoires, staves, the reconstruction of the necropants — are the material culture of what those men were killed for.

VISITING

The museum is on the harbour front at Hólmavík, open seasonally with a café; it also maintains the Sorcerer's Cottage at Bjarnarfjörður. Route 61 in the Westfjords.