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girdles that could be bound to the body were popular aids for pregnancy
and childbirth and could be widely rented from religious houses in the late
medieval period.18
No such birthing rolls have survived in Iceland, but the use of kveisu-
blöð (‘ailment-leaves’) is indirectly documented in warnings from the late
sixteenth century against these and other magical practices.19 One man was
executed for sorcery in 1667 for binding an inscribed roll to the body of a
sick woman, and another was executed in 1677 for possession of magical
writings that included a similar roll.20 The only known roll of this type
to survive is Lbs fragm 14, which is a narrow strip of parchment (10.8 cm
wide and 58.4 cm long) dating from c. 1600. The roll surfaced in a col-
lection of historical documents from the diocese of Hólar and has been
interpreted as a prayer roll to be tied onto the body for healing; it was
presumably discovered and sent to Hólar in the early seventeenth century
for investigation, where it found a practical use as a wrapper for an official
document.21
The association of Margrétar saga with magic during the seventeenth
century rests mainly on a passage in the vehemently anti-witchcraft and
anti-Catholic Hugrás, written in 1627 by the Rev. Guðmundur Einarsson
of Staðarstaður (c. 1568–1647), who was provost for Snæfellsnes from
1624. In Hugrás, the provost rails against the use of Latin incantations,
prayers and readings of Margrétar saga during childbirth. According to
Hugrás, which should be interpreted cautiously due to the nature of the
work, Icelandic practitioners of sorcery received “schooling” from their
masters in subjects that included the safe delivery of children:
18 Sarah Fiddyment et al., “Girding the Loins? Direct Evidence of the Use of a Medieval
English Parchment Birthing Girdle from Biomolecular Analysis,” Royal Society Open Science
8 (2021): 202055; Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,
c. 1400–1580, 2nd edition (New Haven: Yale, 2005).
19 AÍ 2: 255; Su rietta Confirmatio (Hólar, 1596), [95].
20 Magnús Már Lárusson, “Eitt gamalt kveisublað,” Árbók Hins íslenzka fornleifafélags 51
(1951–52): 81–90.
21 Magnús Már Lárusson, “Eitt gamalt kveisublað,” 81–90. Whoever repurposed the prayer
roll must not have been particularly afraid of physical contact with the object. Magnús Már
Lárusson observes that the Latin text copied onto the prayer roll comes from the humanist
Erasmus of Rotterdam’s Latin New Testament and that the accuracy of the copying points
to an educated scribe with a good knowledge of Latin.
MAGIC, M A R G R É T A R S A G A