In all her finery!
Hellissandur, Christmas Day, 2019
Queen of the Sea
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Category Archives: Huldúfolk
The Four Eyed Raven of Hellissandur
In Indigenous traditions on the North Eastern Pacific shore, Raven steals the light. In Ísland, he collects eyes. The more, obviously, the better.
Old Red Nose, a North Icelandic Tale
In the North East of Iceland, there is a cape with Eidars and puffins, called Raudanes, or Red Cape. “Nes” is an old term for a nes, or nose, of land, in the same way that mountains have shoulders, backs and arms, continents have icecaps, mountains have jökulls, as the Icelanders say, little jackets of ice, little land-based icebergs, or glaciers, and seacoasts, like mountains, have caps, or heads. On the coast, these caps are capes, in English, and they often have noses.
This is the nose of Red Nose itself. One notes that it is a dragon. Now, how fine is that!
Spot the Gull! A Fine Icelandic Tourist Game
Up here in North Iceland, with the cities far away, one makes one’s own fun. When you tire of the Spot the Gull game, you can start in on the spot the troll nest game, which is just as much fun.
After all, Gunnar Gunnarsson moved to Denmark and became a writer, not precisely in that order, because he was given a walnut for Christmas, and raced its shell down the parsonage stream, imagining it was a big sailing ship. So, if little Gunnar could do it, we can look more closely, too.
I wouldn’t play this game in Reykjavik, though. They might think it kind of country bumpkinish. As they thought Gunnar was.
A Troll Finds its Lost Sheep
Hvallág
As the sheep is stonier, I think it can wait the little earth-and-grass guy out.
Troll House in Kopasker
North Iceland is so underpopulated, that in Kopasker one farmer has built a house for trolls.
Better the troll you know and feed than the wild one that comes in from the crowded South and feeds on you.
The Naustá Enters the Greenland Sea So Sneakily
It’s a mysterious little river in North East Iceland, appearing and disappearing, like it’s playing tag.
And then it’s gone.
Wait, there’s an encore:
Look at that: tiny river, huge falls. Now, that’s a great trick!
A Dragon Takes Wing to Warn the Humans
Well, Grótfjall is a handsome mountain, to be sure. Viewing it from the Njardvik Beach, its easy enough to see that some of it is down here, making the valley floor, rather than up in the sky, making its hat.
But what’s that on the mountain? A dragon? And isn’t the sod collapsing over the cliff into sea, its wings? And aren’t there dragon shapes a-plenty, in the wet-dry patterning of the cliff? You tell me. I just know that walking through this fjord as a dragon story makes every relationship significant, in the way every word and sound in poetry means more than the poem’s sense.
If nothing else, it reveals the more of the mountains lies on the shore than in the air. A flat mountain. That’s a fine experience in climbing! But, wait, isn’t that a troll peeking out from the bottom of the cliff on the left? What’s his story?
It is good to remember that humans are prey. It keeps us on our toes.
City of Elves
70 metres north of the old island, Petersey, one of Iceland’s main elf cities faces the old sea coast on the South Iceland shore. The elves aren’t shy. Interestingly enough, though, Highway 1 runs north of the city, and no road signs point the way. Fair enough. They are the hidden people, after all.
Spiritual Petersey
It’s so easy to drive past the elf city to get to the Black Sand Beach.
It’s also so easy to stop by.
A Farm in Iceland 