The Merseburg Spells: Germanic Paganism

The Merseburg Charms are among the most precious surviving artifacts of pre-Christian Germanic religion — two alliterative spells recorded in Old High German that offer a rare window into the mythology, magic, and religious worldview of the Germanic peoples before the conversion to Christianity.

The first charm involves binding and unbinding, with connections to the idisi (a female collective linked to fate and death) and parallels to Old Norse figures including the dísir, valkyries, and norns. The second charm features Wuotan/Óðinn in an explicit healing role — an aspect of the god rarely seen in surviving Norse sources. Together they corroborate, problematize, and expand our understanding of Germanic myth and religion.

Introduced by scholar John Lindow and presented with original illustrations, this edition makes these improbably small but tremendously significant texts accessible to modern readers of folklore, Norse paganism, and Germanic tradition.

Publisher: Hyldyr
Format: Paperback