Category Archives: Huldúfolk

Iceland’s Elves Are Scarcely Hiding at Midsummer

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It’s one of the things about the height of summer in Iceland: everything comes alive. Lichens give elvish faces to every rock, water moves more mysteriously, and the faces that peer from nearly every rock are more intense. You should have no difficulty spotting many faces in the rocks round this little waterfall on the Stapavík Trail.

Thing is, some of them are more intense than others and hit somewhere very deep inside one’s spirit.

See that yet? maybe? Maybe not? Let’s look again, then:

The elves are never far.

It Might Rain Cats and Dogs But it Shines Ogres

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Ogres are a bit like weather. When the sun shines, you see them. “Ah, the ogre is here,” you say.

Borgarfjörður eystri

When the sun doesn’t shine on them, you don’t see them. Then you say, “there’s no ogre.” Either way, though, just imagine getting up every day and checking the ogre weather!

Fortune Telling in Iceland with a Natural Chalice

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If you’re looking to scry the future from a pool of rain in Iceland, you might want to be quick. The basalt breaks into natural chalices, but it’s also porous and soaks the rain up like a sponge.

If you’re going to be a prophet in Iceland, you need to be quick if you’re using rain, but if you’re using air, well, you have lots of time. Basalt also breaks off into patterns that our minds recognize as faces. These prophecies are prophecies of our moods, but are good for reading what we have noticed on the edge of perception but haven’t consciously formulated yet. The reading helps. This little chalice in Ásbyrgi holds a laughing sheep. It’s faint, but it’s there. It could be a donkey, though. That’s the thing. Prophecies of this kind are never exact! You discover them in the world, when they arrive.

Bakkagerðiskirkja in Black and White and Green

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In 1914, local boy Johannes Kjarval was starving. Ladies in town asked him to paint an altar for the Bakkagerðiskirkja, the Bakkagerthi Church. He’d spent his childhood herding sheep on the mountain and dreaming of elves, so he painted Christ giving the Sermon on the Mount on the Alfaborg, the elf city behind the church, with all the townsfolk listening, elves and humans.

It has yet to be consecrated by any bishop! But if you go to visit it today, you can see his Iceland still. The elves have been replaced by tourists in campers, and the church remains in darkness, as all good Icelandic interiors are, with 1,000 years of turf houses in their memory.

The Icelandic subconscious lives in a darkness warmed by human presence and looks out through small windows into the light, which is the Earth and not the sun. It’s simply the way it is.

The Wyrm Watching Me on the Lagarfljót

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While driving on the north shore of the Lagarfljót east of Gunnar’s house, I was keeping an eye out for the Wyrm who lives there. At first, I was convinced that the river of cloud holding above the lake was Wyrm enough for me.

I presume that the Wyrm is projecting this magical eye into the sky above the lake. I guess I might be looking for dragons, but that’s not to say they aren’t keeping an eye out for me.

Stopping an Ogre in Its Tracks at Landsendi

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For four hundred years an ogre threw travellers over the cliff trail between Bakkagerði and Njarðvík. It was awfully steep and in the fog, dark, rain, snow and whatever else the East Fjords undoubtedly threw at them. It was terrifying and very dangerous.

A bit of Christian-Norse magic took care of that, though. The rocks at the cross’s base are funereal stones, left by travellers. The road was fixed up in 2019.

What to Wear When Hunting Trolls and Ogres

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If you’re hunting for ogres and trolls, pick your rock carefully, seek around waterfalls, and come in winter, when the world approaches their state. They’re shy. They won’t come all at once. Bring warm gloves and boots. Those are the first parts of your body to leave you for their world.

A rich narrative of non human life forms at Sheep’s Falls. December 24, 2019.