Galdrastafir
The vegvísir and the ægishjálmur are the two best-known "Viking symbols" in the world, and both come from Icelandic grimoires written centuries after the Viking Age ended. This is the tradition they actually belong to.
A galdrastafur (plural galdrastafir) is a drawn sign from the Icelandic magical tradition: a diagram with a stated purpose, recorded in a manuscript alongside an instruction for making and using it. They are the source of several of the designs now sold everywhere as Viking symbols, including the vegvísir and the ægishjálmur.
Vegvísir1860
ÆgishjálmurWord 13th century; the drawn stave 17th century
SvefnþornWord 13th century; the drawn staves post-medievalTwo things about them are consistently got wrong, and they are worth stating before anything else. They are not runes: they are drawn devices, not letters, and they do not spell anything. And they are not Viking-Age: the tradition is recorded from roughly the seventeenth century onward, centuries after Iceland converted to Christianity and several hundred years after runic writing had given way to the Latin alphabet.
The gap is the whole point. The Viking Age ends around AD 1100. The earliest manuscript to record the vegvísir is dated 1860. That is roughly 800 years, and no amount of stylistic resemblance to runes closes it.
The manuscripts
What we know about the staves comes from grimoires: handwritten books of charms, alphabets and staves, copied and recopied by individual owners. Two matter most for the designs in circulation today.
Galdrakver (Lbs 143 8vo), dated 1670, is among the earlier collections and is where the familiar eight-armed form of the ægishjálmur is best attested. The Huld Manuscript (ÍB 383 4to) was compiled by Geir Vigfússon at Akureyri in 1860 and contains alphabets together with thirty magical staves; it is the earliest known source for the vegvísir, and page 55 carries the four-staved svefnþorn this site draws.
These are personal compilations rather than editions of a fixed canon, which has a consequence people rarely allow for: the manuscripts disagree with each other. There is no single correct drawing of most staves. Where this site shows one, it is showing one attested form, not the canonical version.
How they were meant to be used
The manuscripts are specific in a way the modern market is not. A stave is drawn on a particular material, sometimes in blood or in a named substance, and it is for a stated and usually mundane purpose: not losing your way in bad weather, winning a court case, keeping a thief from your property. The Huld Manuscript's note on the vegvísir is of exactly this kind, and it says nothing about navigation or about the sea.
A medieval word does not mean a medieval picture
Why this matters if you are getting one tattooed
Nothing here is an argument against using these designs. They are a real tradition with real manuscripts behind them, and being early modern rather than Viking-Age does not make them fake. It makes them Icelandic, Christian-era and documented, which is a more interesting thing to be than a vague antiquity.
What is worth knowing is what you are actually wearing, because the description attached to these designs in shops and tattoo catalogues is usually wrong in specific ways. See rune tattoos for the checks worth making, and runes, extremism and context on the ægishjálmur in particular, which some far-right groups have adopted.
The staves on this site
Three galdrastafir have entries here, each with the earliest date the design can actually be traced to: the vegvísir, the ægishjálmur and the svefnþorn. The troll cross is often filed with them and does not belong: it is Swedish, not Icelandic, and it is later still.
Questions this guide answers
- Are galdrastafir runes?
- No. They are drawn signs, not letters, and they do not spell anything. Some incorporate shapes that resemble runes, and the manuscripts that record them often record runic alphabets too, which is probably where the confusion comes from.
- How old are the Icelandic magical staves?
- The tradition is recorded from roughly the seventeenth century onward. The best-known individual staves are younger: the earliest manuscript containing the vegvísir dates from 1860. None of them is Viking-Age.
- Is there a correct way to draw a galdrastafur?
- Usually not. The manuscripts are personal compilations and they disagree with one another, so most staves survive in several forms. Any single drawing is one attested version rather than a canonical one.
- Why is the vegvísir called a Viking compass?
- Because it sells. The name has no historical basis: the 1860 manuscript that first records the design describes it as a charm against getting lost in bad weather, which is not navigation, and the design is some 800 years younger than the Viking Age.
Sources
Full references on the sources page. Our methodology explains the evidence labels used throughout.