Þjófastafur
Þjófastafur, the 'thief stave', is an Icelandic magical sign recorded in the Huld manuscript, compiled by Geir Vigfússon at Akureyri in 1860, and drawn to guard livestock and goods against theft. The name literally means 'thief-stave', and the sign was meant to make a thief unable to take what belonged to the bearer, or to bring him back to face the community. It answered a real fear on isolated farmsteads, where herds and household goods had no other defence against thieves and wanderers. It belongs to the protective family of galdrastafir, and like most of the staves it is known from a 19th-