Eiríkur of Vogsós — Iceland's Greatest Sorcerer-Priest

Vogsós, Árnessýsla, South Iceland

The reverend Eiríkur Magnússon was a country priest who walked on water, bound a demon into the service of his parish, rode a devil transformed into a grey horse, and never lost a magical duel. He is the closest Iceland has to a folk saint.

Eiríkur Magnússon — known simply as Eiríkur of Vogsós — served as a priest in the south of Iceland in the 18th century and became, after his death, the most celebrated figure in Icelandic folk magic tradition. He is to Iceland what Merlin is to Britain: the canonical wise man who bends the rules of reality in service of the good. The stories about Eiríkur are numerous and consistent in shape. He walked across a fjord to reach a dying parishioner and arrived with dry feet. He summoned a sending — a spirit servant — and set it to work protecting the farms of his parish. When the Devil challenged him to a horse race across the highlands, Eiríkur accepted; the Devil had disguised himself as a man with a grey horse, but Eiríkur already knew, and the horse he borrowed for the race crossed the lava fields so fast the Devil was left behind on the plain. He was, by all accounts, also an effective priest. He buried the dead properly. He kept his church. He was liked. The magical stories gathered around him because Iceland needed a specific type of hero: not a warrior, not a chieftain, but someone who understood both the visible and invisible worlds and moved between them with ease. Eiríkur's grave at Vogsós became a place of quiet pilgrimage in the 19th century. Farmers who needed the weather to change, or who suspected a neighbour of sending something unpleasant, came to the grave and asked. They left satisfied, or said they did. No one inherited his particular knowledge. He remains singular.