The verb most commonly used to describe the scribing of the staves is að rista, to carve, even when the context shows that literal carving cannot be intended. Other verbs used are að skrifa, to write, and að gjöra / að gera, to make.
‘Carve’ is therefore intended here to denote all methods of tracing a stave, even when a pen or a finger was used.
In most cases where a stave or image was to be made, the carving instrument is not specified; fewer than 25% of such spells make any clear stipulation.
Fingers
Quite often, one of the sorcerer’s fingers would suffice, either dry, or wetted with blood or saliva (we will return to the matter of body fluids later).
A finger was often used when the surface to be ‘carved’ was the magician’s own skin, or in circumstances where instant magic was required – and the urgency therefore took precedence over the availability of tools – or where secrecy was a necessity, so no visible mark was to be left.
The symbol above is to protect the magician himself against his enemy. The stave was traced with saliva on his own forehead using the index finger.
The criterion ‘while fasting’ would most likely indicate that it was to be performed at the start of the day, before breakfast, and from this we may infer that the magician had at least some time to prepare in advance.
Two factors are therefore important in the choice of a finger for carving:
a) the surface is the magician’s own skin
b) it is possible that he would not want a visible mark to show when meeting his enemy.
Knives, awls and scissors
Where literal carving is required, a knife is commonly specified. This is usually one’s mathníf (literally ‘food-knife’) – the knife that one customarily uses when eating. It may have also been used for other things, and most people probably carried a general-purpose knife with them at all times. By virtue of daily use, this would have a strong psychic link with the owner. This is extremely different from witchcraft and ceremonial magic, where the ritual knife is only used specifically for the purposes of magic.
A higher than normal proportion of spells involving use of one’s eating-knife are of malign or neutral intent, i.e. designed to harm, to affect a person’s free will or to gain an advantage over others.
On occasions, the spell instructions call for something more specialised: a thief-finding spell in the Stockholm MS calls for the stave to be carved on the bottom of the scrying-bowl with a knife with a wooden handle; two of the workings in Lbs 2413 8vo require that the runes or stave should be carved with an unused knife; and a talisman (probably apotropaic) described in the same book is to be carved on oak using a copper knife.
The last three, especially, are among the few spells to be found that require something out of the ordinary in the way of physical equipment. Most people in early modern Iceland were very poor by today’s standards, and they could ill afford to have unused tools lying around. Tools were used again and again until utterly worn out, and only then replaced. Unless a knife happened to have been purchased for normal purposes and not yet used, a new one would have to be specially procured, perhaps made by a local blacksmith, for the express purpose of performing the spell. It would therefore have been a luxury, diverting funds from the small amount of available income.
A copper knife would have been even more unusual; copper does not hold an edge well, and a copper knife would have been almost useless for anything other than magical purposes. These cases tell us that, on rare occasions, Icelandic magical practice was similar to that of other traditions in specifying the use of ‘virgin’ implements that are untainted by everyday use.
Instead of a knife, some spells stipulate the use of a needle or an awl. Like eating-knives, awls would have been fairly commonplace items in any toolbox, used for marking wood or making holes in leather. As with knives, however, the spells occasionally specify an awl made of some unusual material.
Human Bones
Human bones could also be used for carving, and they were presumably whittled to a point for this purpose. Three spells specify human bones as the carving instrument, or suggest them as one of the options, and all three are of malign (or a fairly suspect ‘neutral’) intent.
A human finger bone could be used as an alternative to an unused knife in the previously mentioned fart-rune spell; in fact, this option is mentioned first and may have been the preferred one.
Another spell, for trading, also prescribes that the stave should be carved with a human finger bone; the stave was to be traced in your own blood on the skin of a cow’s first calf, and then the sign was to be held as you made the sign of the cross ‘backwards’ over the person you were trading with while uttering an incantation (presumably at a distance and without the knowledge of the trading partner).
A third, for victory in wrestling (glíma), instructs:
“Carve these staves on your shoe with human bone or a toe-bone from the foot that you wrestle with, and say ‘I send the Devil himself into the breast and bone of the one who wrestles with me, in your names, Thor and Odin’, and turn your face to the north-west.”
The idea of carving with a toe-bone from one’s favoured foot is even more intriguing than the use of a bone from a dead man, as this would be potentially crippling! However, there is nothing in the text to suggest that it first had to be detached from the foot; perhaps it was sufficient to prick a toe to draw blood and then trace the staves with the toe.
Pens, pencils and chalk
Given that many birds have esoteric associations (for example, the heron is associated with Frigg and the hawk with Freya), it may be that there is more to the use of quill pens than meets the eye.
One talismanic spell for luck in gaming specifies that the stave should be written with a raven’s feather, which may possibly indicate a connection with Odin. Quills from a number of bird species would have been readily available to Icelanders, as they are discarded naturally and can also be gained from hunted birds or carrion.
In two cases, blood is prescribed for writing with, but by the seventeenth century, local recipes for ink had been developed, and one of these has been described as follows:
“Bearberry was used for making ink. It was boiled in an iron pot with sticks of unbudded willow, undoubtedly to extract some kind of tannin or resin. A black dye made from humus was added to darken the ink. This was otherwise used for dying clothes and derived its black colour from the presence of iron sulphate. Its surface properties were ideal when a drop placed on the fingernail held its form; this meant it would not spread on the vellum but penetrate well into it.”