Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft by Anna Björg Þórarinsdóttir

The Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft is located in the Westfjords of Iceland, in a small town called Holmavik. This lecture by the director of the museum,

Anna Björg Þórarinsdóttir, will introduce you to the museum and the exhibitions. The European Witch-craze swept across Iceland in the seventeenth century, with over 200 cases and 21 executions. The Museum combines the history of magic with knowledge of magic in Iceland and how it appears in folklore. Join Anna as she talks about the Museum and the spells and objects that are on display. At the Museum, the downstairs gallery represents how magic arts lived in folklore and what people imagined could be achieved with the help of supernatural powers; the upstairs gallery shows who prosecuted and judged the witchcraft cases in Iceland. Also, hear about Jón lærði who is now considered the most significant folklorist of the 17th Century, he left behind a number of publications and drawings that shed light on the spirit of the times. Join us for an evening of Icelandic Magic.

Bio

Anna Björg Þórarinsdóttir has been the manager of the NPO Strandagaldur which runs the Museum of Icelandic Sorcery and Witchcraft. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Tourism from the University of Iceland where she wrote her final thesis about rural development and how tourism can create new opportunities and researched how the case was for the Museum of Sorcery and Witchcraft. After that she worked for two summers at the museum and then stepped in when the former manager and one of the founders passed away at the end of 2018.

don’t worry if you miss it – we will send you a recording valid for two weeks the next day