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An eight-armed Icelandic stave, each arm ending in a different device.
Also known as: Icelandic magical stave
Sometimes confused with: Viking compass, Runic compass
Eight ornamented arms radiating from a centre. Sold worldwide as a Viking compass, and attested only in nineteenth-century Icelandic manuscripts — roughly eight hundred years after the Viking Age ended. The record is unusually clear and unusually widely ignored.
An eight-armed stave from the Icelandic galdrastafir tradition, each arm terminating in a different arrangement of strokes, hooks and crossbars.
Iceland
Attested in the Huld manuscript, compiled in 1860, with a note that one who carries it will not lose their way in bad weather even on unfamiliar roads. That manuscript and a small number of contemporaries are the whole of the evidence.
Iceland · Attested from 1860
Not a Viking symbol. There is no attestation in the Viking Age, in the sagas, in archaeology, or in any source earlier than the nineteenth century, and the tradition it belongs to is post-medieval Icelandic manuscript magic.
Recorded because the Viking attribution is nearly universal in commercial and tattoo contexts. The manuscript date is not in scholarly dispute.
Eight straight arms radiating evenly from a central point, each arm ending in a different arrangement of short crossing lines, hooks and forks.
Both are eight-armed radiating staves and are routinely swapped for one another in commercial use.
Both are Icelandic magical staves attested in post-medieval manuscripts, and both are widely and wrongly sold as Viking symbols.