The Binding Stave of Hólmavík — Ástin's Love Magic and Its Consequences

Museum of Icelandic Sorcery, Hólmavík, Westfjords

Among the Galdrabók's most-used staves was a love-binding inscribed on skin and placed beneath a beloved's pillow. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery at Hólmavík sells reproductions today. They cannot be responsible for the consequences of purchase.

The Galdrabók — the Book of Magic, compiled in Iceland in the late 17th century — contains sixty-four staves, charms, and procedures. Of these, the love-binding staves are among the most practically attested: they appear not only in the manuscript itself but in multiple witchcraft trial records from the same period, where their use was cited as evidence of criminal sorcery. The primary love-binding stave — associated in the tradition with a woman named Ástin, though this may be a generic name rather than a historical individual — required the following procedure: the stave was carved or written onto a piece of skin (vellum or prepared hide), folded to a specific shape, and placed beneath the pillow of the intended person. This had to be done while they slept. The stave then worked through the night, embedding itself in the person's sleeping mind. The effect was not instantaneous. The tradition describes a gradual process: the person became increasingly unable to think of anyone else with the same vividness with which they thought of the stave's creator. Other attractions faded in comparison. Over three months, the binding was complete. What the trials record that the Galdrabók does not: the binding had no mechanism for release. Several of the 17th-century cases involved men or women who had used the stave on a person who subsequently died or became unavailable for other reasons. The bereaved stave-user found that the binding continued to operate — that they could not form new attachments with the same intensity, for the rest of their lives, as the one the stave had fixed into the dead. The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft in Hólmavík sells exact reproductions of the stave, printed on quality paper. A small sign near the display case notes: 'The Museum cannot be responsible for consequences arising from use of the reproduction stave.' Museum staff report that the sign was added after a specific incident in 2009, the details of which they prefer not to discuss.