Photo: Aftenposten/Scanpix
A "black book" - svartebok in Norwegian - is a handwritten magical-medical manual similar both to the classical grimoire and to the more recent neo-pagan "Book of Shadows", but not to be confused with either. The "black books" constitute their own distinct tradition, and are surrounded by their own particular mythos. In the Scandinavian context, the term "black book" (Dan. and Norw.) or "black arts book" (Swed.) refers to "black magic" or "black arts", that is, to maleficia. They do contain other types of magic as well, but also beneficia was regarded as witchcraft, and repeated acts of "white arts" such as blessing and healing through magic, put you in the same dire straits as any other witch until the repealment of the witchcraft laws in the mid-19th century.
Although the content can vary greatly from book to book, they nearly always contain charms, herbal recipes, spells, and rituals for curing sick or bewitched livestock and humans. They can also contain spells and rituals for causing sickness and bewitchment, and you can usually find formulas for protection and for luck in love and hunting and such in them, as well. Other things that occur often are instructions for various divination- and scrying methods, instructions for finding treasures and catching thieves through magic, and occasionally also non-magical medical and practical advice and recipes. Many authors and compilers use runes as secret writing.
Several of the old books that we can find in museums and other collections also contain bits of warped and distorted solomonic magic, cabbalistic or hermetic formulas, sometimes written in something that used to be Latin several copies previously. A rare few books contain such kind of magic exclusively. The mangling of the text is caused by the unwritten rule that says to copy exactly what the book you are copying says, so, if there is an error there, it will be included in any copies made, and in copies of the copies, and in copies of the copies of the copies, and so on - and, since most of us do make errors, what we end up with several generations later is often pure nonsense. I myself, word nerd as I am, have "sacrilegiously" corrected spelling errors when copying, without this affecting my work (actually, I have made one true and one corrected copy of all the books I have been passed). I know of others who have tried doing the same and found that the corrected versions don't work for them.
Some books also contain Christian hymns and prayers, and one can also occasionally find instructions on how to renounce the Christian faith and make a pact with the devil. Almost a tradition of their own are the "black books" of the soldiers, which usually contain spells for things like how to become invincible, how to dull enemy swords or make enemy bullets miss the target, how to win at gambling, and how to make a girl willing. Not surprisingly, it is among soldiers and younger sons with no income or inheritance to speak of in sight, one can find contracts made with the Christian devil or some other helpful entity.
The number of pages can run from one or two - that is, one single sheet - to over a hundred. A few of the older books are so alike in contents that it is fair to assume that they have a common origin, or that one is copied from the other, but most of them are unique compilations of charms and spells that often seem to have been written down one by one as they were encountered. The oldest known "black book" is the so-called Vinjeboka, which dates back to 1480-90 - that's her in the top picture.
The "black book" magic is not the same as traditional folk practice even though there is an extensive overlap between the two. This becomes clear when one compares the "black book" material with the material collected directly from the practitioners. Both various types of wise folks as well as regular farmers could own a "black book" back in the day, but it seems to have been most used by people of a certain social standing, such as teachers, clerics, clergy and soldiers. From the folkloric material it can be guesstimated that during the 18th and 19th centuries, one could find several such books in every village, and some of these are now to be found in both private and public collections. The University of Oslo has made available online facsimiles of over 100 books from their collections, and 44 of them are (as I write this) fully transcribed, along with other material in connection to witchcraft and to the witchhunts of the 16th and 17th centuries (see links below).
From around the middle of the 19th century one could buy printed collections of "black book" material in bookstores, discretely wrapped in brown paper, but traditional cunning people are still copying their teachers' books and/or compiling their own books by hand or on their computers, although I'm unsure whether anybody call them "black books" except in jest. The contents is very much the same eclectic mixture as before, occasionally with the addition of more recently developed ideas and methods, like the use of semi-precious stones and neo-pagan-style interpretation and use of the runes of the futharks.
The main part of my own "black book" is virtual and arranged like a website. It covers Scandinavian folk tradition only, and contains a thirty-odd folders, one for each main subject (tools, plants, methods, etc.), currently with a total of 1262 files, mostly html pages, each of which covers one particular subject (each problem got its own page, each implement, each plant, etc.). On each page there is an evergrowing collection of traditional charms, formulas, instructions, and so on directly related to the subject of the page. These pages are interlinked, so that any page that mentions a subject that has its own page is linked to that page. Included in this part of my "black book" are also some illustrations, both "inherited" and by me, and a few dozen reference articles. It is a very practical "book", and I use it almost every day. The non-virtual part of it is rather meager compared, and consists mainly of a handful of reference books, some treasured old paper scraps with charms or such on them, and a couple of "black books" handcopied the traditional way.
I also have digital facsimiles or facsimiles of copies of ca. 30 older Norwegian, Icelandic, and Swedish "black books" (whole or fragments) and a collection of a few hundred Scandinavian charms, spells, recipes, and instructions of various kinds that have no clear origin, or that for some other reason haven't made it to my own "black book". A charm's history is important to me. I like to be able to say that I got this and this from such and such, who in turn got it from such and such and so on. There is power in that.
Apart from all this, I have an even bigger - I believe - collection of articles and such covering folk magic and magical medicine etc. etc. from other cultures' traditions, such as South-American curanderismo, Italian segnatura, Afro-American conjure, and others. Lately I have been looking a bit into both Finnish and Philippine tradition. I prefer learning directly from other practitioners, be that in person or through what they share of their knowledge online, in folkloric archives, and, on a few rare occasions, in books. I have read very few "learned" works, since they in my experience, unless written by actual practitioners, have a tendency to build partly on misconceptions.
There is also the mythical or folkloric "black book", the so-called Cyprianus, after which several real "black books" have been named and which they are claimed to be copies of. More about the Cyprianus mythos or folklore in English here.
The Witchcraft Archive including facsimiles of "black books" at the site of the University of Oslo (in Norwegian)
Vinjeboka (the "Vinje book" or "book from Vinje") - the link takes you to a pdf facsimile Link updated!
Some relevant books in English
Mary Rustad, The Black Books of Elverum, Galde Press, 1999
Kathleen Stokker, Remedies and rituals: folk medicine in Norway and the New Land, Minnesota Historical Society, 2007; particularly chapter 4 "The Black Book"
Owen Davies, Grimoires, A History of Magic Books, Oxford University Press, 2009, chapter "Black books in the North", p. 123, ff
