Come beneath the nine-fold haze, seeker…
I, Brynhildr of Birka-dóttir, shall open the blackest book that was ever bound in mare-skin and stitched with sinew from hanged men.
Here is the complete, unsoftened guide to Trolldómr, the mountain-rooted, iron-hard witchcraft of the North that even the gods fear to name aloud.
I. What Trolldómr Truly Is
Trolldómr is the craft of “troll-strength”: raw, ugly, effective magic that bends nature by force, not by pretty song.
Where seidhr persuades with desire and galdr commands with voice, trolldómr threatens, bribes, and wounds the world until it obeys.
It is the magic of the giant-born, the outlaws, the black volvas, and the cunning farmer who will not starve.
II. The Three Laws of Trolldómr
1. Everything has a price, and the price is always collects twice.
2. Never work trolldómr inside a house where children sleep.
3. Blood, spit, or seed must seal every working; words alone are wind.
III. The Tools of the Troll-Witch
- Black knife of meteoric iron (never whetted on Sunday)
- Skull-cup from a suicide or murderer
- Rope from a gallows
- Nine black hen feathers
- Red wool thread spun left-handed
- A living toad kept in a box
- Grave-soil from nine mounds
- A human finger-bone whistle
- The Black Book (hand-copied, never printed)
IV. The Nine Great Branches of Trolldómr
1. Varnar-troll (wards & curses against theft or attack)
2. Fjölkynngi (shape-changing & sending the gandr)
3. Álag (land-curses & blessings on fields, wells, livestock)
4. Lækning (black healing: removing curses, pulling sickness into a toad)
5. Fjandr (enemy-work: wasting, madness, death)
6. Nátt-troll (night-riding & mare-dreams)
7. Veiðar-troll (hunting & fishing magic)
8. Kjærlighets-troll (love-binding & breaking)
9. Galdra-bók (the spoken death-songs)
V. Complete Spell Reference – The Thirteen Black Verses
Each is sung in the old metre, nine beats, ending in the same rhyme of doom.
1. The Toad-Sickness Sending
Take a black toad at new moon,
whisper the foe’s name thrice into its mouth,
bind its legs with red wool left-spun,
bury it alive beneath his doorstep at dawn.
“Toad take sickness, toad take breath,
toad drag NAME down into death.”
2. The Nightmare Mare-Ride
At midnight ride a fence-rail backwards,
naked, hair loose, chanting left-wise:
“I ride the night-mare, I ride the black,
NAME shall wake but never wake back.”
3. The Milk-Stealing Spell
Walk the boundary of thy neighbour’s pasture
carrying a dead man’s hand;
milk the air into a skull-cup, singing:
“Cow give milk to bone and grave,
give no drop to living knave.”
4. The Arrow-That-Always-Hits
Carve the rune ᚦ nine times on an arrowhead
with a nail from a coffin;
spit on it, name the target, loose it skyward:
“Thurs fly straight, thurs fly true,
heart of NAME is pierced by you.”
5. The Love-Binding of Nine Knots
Take hair from the lover, hair from thyself,
braid with red wool and a lock from a corpse;
tie nine knots while singing:
“Knot one bind heart, knot two bind breath,
until my name is his only death.”
6. The Storm-Raising
Stand on a hill in thunder-weather,
stab the earth nine times with a black knife:
“Giants wake, giants roar,
tear the sky and drown the shore.”
7. The Grave-Wight Warding
Walk the farm sunwise with a dead man’s jawbone,
strike each corner-post, chanting:
“Bone to bone and dust to dust,
no dead shall cross this line of rust.”
8. The Black Healing
Draw sickness into a toad with these words over the toad:
“Sickness leave flesh, enter toad,
toad carry woe down the black road.”
9. The Wealth-Drawing
Bury a silver coin in a crossroads at midnight,
piss on it, spit on it, sing:
“Silver come, silver stay,
silver breed more every day.”
10. The Sending of Madness
Carve the foe’s name backwards on a human finger-bone,
burn it in mare-dung fire:
“Name burn backwards, mind unwind,
leave him mad and never kind.”
11. The Fishing Spell
Throw a stone with ᚢ carved on it into the sea,
sing:
“Sea give fish, sea give store,
fill my boat from brim to floor.”
12. The Breaking of Bonds
Cut nine locks of your own hair at full moon,
burn them while chanting:
“Hair burn, bond burn, freedom return.”
13. The Final Death-Song (never sung lightly)
Stand over the dying foe, whisper:
“Road open, Hel wait,
take this soul before the gate.
No Valkyrie come, no light above,
only cold and the Lady’s love.”
VI. Components & Substitutions
- Blood: always best; spit if desperate
- Grave-soil: from murderer’s mound strongest
- Toad: black or fire-bellied
- Red wool: spun by a widow or left-handed woman
- Iron: meteoric or coffin-nail
- Bone: human preferred, wolf second
- Names: full name spoken backwards triples power
VII. The Price
Every troll-witch bears the mark: black tongue, cold hands, or dreams of giants chasing them across ice.
The craft works, but the world remembers who used it.
Guard this book as you would guard your own death.
Speak these verses only when the moon is dark and the wind howls from the north.
Thus ends the Black Book of Trolldómr,
signed with my own blood and a single raven feather from Odin’s raven.
May the giants spare thee.
Or may they not.
Either way, the spell is cast.