Sorcerer's Screed - Remake of the first published book on Icelandic runes and sorcery.
The Sorcerer‘s Screed (Galdraskræða) was first published in 1940 in the annual but limited publication. The author himself, Skuggi (Shadow), had handwritten the text and drawn the diagrams.
Skuggi‘s actual name was Jochum Magnús Eggertsson (1896-1966) and he was a jack-of-all-trades and prolific polymath. Jochum studied agriculture and struggled as a writer. He left behind a vast collection of books, journals and articles about his variegated and unique fields of interest. Skuggi became notorious for his original theories about an exotic but flourishing culture in Iceland long before the Nordic settlement.
Skuggi was known to be boisterous and his criticism of Christianity in the foreword and afterword of The Sorcerer‘s Screed seem to indicate a strong but bitter character. The Screed is a sort of “clef d‘oeuvre” or key to his entire body of work and view of life, even though (and perhaps mainly because) it is an amalgamation of ideas from past centuries and different times. In this sense, the book could be regarded as radical dissident writing against the prescriptivism and coercion of the political and religious authority in Iceland.
