The Galdrabók
The Galdrabók: Forbidden Icelandic Folk Magic
By Kári Pálsson
“Write these letters on white vellum with your blood.”
Once forbidden by the church on penalty of severe punishment and even death, Iceland’s occult symbols have been subject to a remarkable transformation over the past few decades: They can now commonly be seen used as tattoos, in media such as video games, and even as components of business logos. Most books containing these symbols, known as grimoires, were confiscated and destroyed. However, a small number survived, most famously the Galdrabók. In this new and approachable edition of the Galdrabók, folklorist Kári Pálsson presents his original English translation and an edition of the grimoire’s original Icelandic text beside another grimoire never before published: the unique and quite mysterious Jarðskinna manuscript.
The Galdrabók: Forbidden Icelandic Folk Magic
By Kári Pálsson
“Write these letters on white vellum with your blood.”
Once forbidden by the church on penalty of severe punishment and even death, Iceland’s occult symbols have been subject to a remarkable transformation over the past few decades: They can now commonly be seen used as tattoos, in media such as video games, and even as components of business logos. Most books containing these symbols, known as grimoires, were confiscated and destroyed. However, a small number survived, most famously the Galdrabók. In this new and approachable edition of the Galdrabók, folklorist Kári Pálsson presents his original English translation and an edition of the grimoire’s original Icelandic text beside another grimoire never before published: the unique and quite mysterious Jarðskinna manuscript.
The Galdrabók: Forbidden Icelandic Folk Magic
By Kári Pálsson
“Write these letters on white vellum with your blood.”
Once forbidden by the church on penalty of severe punishment and even death, Iceland’s occult symbols have been subject to a remarkable transformation over the past few decades: They can now commonly be seen used as tattoos, in media such as video games, and even as components of business logos. Most books containing these symbols, known as grimoires, were confiscated and destroyed. However, a small number survived, most famously the Galdrabók. In this new and approachable edition of the Galdrabók, folklorist Kári Pálsson presents his original English translation and an edition of the grimoire’s original Icelandic text beside another grimoire never before published: the unique and quite mysterious Jarðskinna manuscript.
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Hyldyr
230 pages. 5x7. Perfect binding. Printed in the USA and/or Canada.ISBN-13: 978-1-966041-03-0
From the publisher:
"Hyldyr is an independent and experimental publishing house based in Olympia, Washington state, USA. We combine the efforts of academics and artists to produce unique, beautiful, and scholarship-grounded publications.
There’s nothing else like us—by design. Founded in late 2021 with our first publications arriving the summer of 2023, we designed Hyldyr to produce high-quality and extremely unique editions built to withstand scholastic scrutiny, to function as art objects, and to provide our readers with keys to hidden worlds.
We are heavily inspired by the works of English polymath William Morris, do-it-yourself movements, and our evergreen mountainous surroundings. We place a particular emphasis on historical linguistics and folklore studies and all of our publications in some way or another fall within the triangle of art, ecology, and folklore. We believe the world is a vast place full of wonders.
While we design our publications to be as approachable as possible, Hyldyr’s roots are academic: Hyldyr developed out of the web-based resource project Mimisbrunnr.info, itself an evolution of a student-led reading circle originally sponsored by the Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies at the University of Georgia for several years in the 2010s.
Quality and humanity come first at Hyldyr: We never use print-on-demand services, we explicitly forbid the use of generative AI in our publications, we sell our books only to independent bookstores and educational institutions (like museums), and we always aim to go a step beyond traditional publishing houses in everything we do."
