Conference turris::scandia

405.0. "Nordic folklore" by COPCLU::GEOFFREY (RUMMEL - The Forgotten American) Wed Jul 18 1990 08:29

     
          Iceland Has Elves, Who Live in Rocks, Nowhere to Be Seen
             
          Roads Are Diverted to Avoid Disturbing Elf Dwellings;
                     'Odd Shapes in the Stone'
     
                         By Tony Horwitz
                         Staff Reporter of 
                         The Wall Street Journal   [WSJ 13 July 1990]
     
     EGILSSTATHIR, Iceland -- It is a mile between farms in this bleak
     outpost of fog and stone, but just a few paces to the nearest hidden
     home.
     
     "A family moved in here years ago," says Helgi Hallgrimsson, tapping a
     large boulder. "They raise cows, I think." A family down the road
     herds sheep. They live in a tree trunk. Generally, though elves prefer
     stones. "It is easier to find such housing," Mr. Hallgrimsson says,
     standing on a hill that is bare except for a few Siberian pines.
     
     Returning to his own simple farmhouse, Mr. Hallgrimsson dines on bread
     made with sheep's blood, and curdled milk mixed with moss. Asked if
     the rock dwellers eat similar fare, he responds: "Probably so. But you
     know, they have never invited me to visit."
     
     Making Way
     
     Mr. Hallgrimsson's neighbors are _huldufolk_, a word meaning "hidden
     people." They also are know as _alfar_, or elves. While Iceland isn't
     the only country with elves -- Ireland and Sweden have them, too --
     few are so accommodating to unseen citizens. Icelandic highways dogleg
     to skirt large rocks, lest engineers dislodge the occupants of
     "enchanted spots." Farmers politely leave fields unplowed because
     hidden people need hay for their hidden cows. Huldufolk homes appear
     on environmental-impact statements, and factory construction can
     sometimes halt while elves find someplace else to live.
     
     "The only thing we haven't done is give huldufolk the vote," says
     Stefan Stefansson, a fisherman in Reykjavik, the nation's capital.
     Like many Icelanders, he is slippery on the subject of elves. "Do I
     believe in huldufolk?" he asks, staring into his beer. "I am one."
     
     When more than 900 people were asked the question in a University of
     Iceland survey, 55% said the existence of huldufolk (and fairies) is
     possible, probable or certain. Only 10% answered, "impossible."
     Erlendur Haraldsson, the psychologist who conduct the survey, wasn't
     surprised. Nor does he think Icelanders are particularly
     superstitious. "This isn't America," he says. "We have very few UFOs."
     
     Elfin Mischief
     
     If aliens ever should land here, they would no doubt feel at home. When
     work began last year on an asphalt path in Reykjavik, surveyors'
     instruments vanished and computers developed glitches. The landscape
     architect directing the project suspected supernatural mischief. She
     called in a well-known psychic, Erla Stefansdottir, to investigate.
     
     Visiting the site, the 53-year-old piano teacher pats the top of a rock
     mottled with lichen. "Just knocking to see if anyone is home," she
     says. Thereupon a man with a long beard and breeches emerges from the
     rock -- visible to her though not to this reporter. "He's laughing at
     us," she says. "He thinks we're crazy to be standing here staring at
     him."
     
     On her advice, the city rerouted the path to skirt this and another
     inhabited rock. In the nearby town of Kopavogur, "Elf Hill Road"
     narrows to one lane as it passes a rocky outcropping. An attempt last
     year to widen the road ended abruptly when a new jackhammer broke on
     the first day of work. Town officials refer to the unseen rock dweller
     on an adjoining lot as "the old man at No. 102."
     
     Elves in Iceland are as old as the hills. According to Nordic lore,
     some of them _are_ hills. Elves arrived in Iceland with the Vikings
     and Celtic slaves who settled here 1,000 years ago. Extreme isolation,
     and Iceland's sagas and oral lore, kept supernatural beliefs alive. So
     did Iceland's weird landscape. Bubbling with volcanoes, geysers and
     boiling mud pits, Iceland is so lunar in parts that it has been used
     to train astronauts.
     
     Iceland also is sparsely populated, with just 250,000 people occupying
     an area the size of Ohio. "In such a lonely place, it is natural to
     fill out the landscape with elves," says Hallfredur Eiriksson, a
     leading Icelandic folklorist.
     
     Perhaps it is only natural that Icelandic elves resemble humans,
     rather than the dwarfish, often malevolent goblins of Scandinavian
     legend. Country huldufolk fish for herring, raise sheep and attend
     church, just like other folk. And in a society so peaceful that it has
     no army and few police stations open on weekends, humans and huldufolk
     usually get on well. Midwives have told Mr. Eiriksson about delivering
     elf babies. Farmers say they have milked elf cows. Sometimes, the two
     people fall in love, though affairs of the heart often end badly.
     
     "It should be nice to have invisible inlaws, but really it can create
     problems," says Mr. Eiriksson
     
     A Ticklish Matter
     
     Icelanders who are skeptical about elves treat the issue delicately,
     as an American parent might field a child's questions about Santa
     Claus. Haukur Gudmasson, a Shell Oil salesman, is that rare Icelander
     who openly declares: "This talk of huldufolk is nonsense." But, later
     in the conversation, he recalls his 16 years in the merchant marine:
     "Whenever I worked in the engine room," he says, "there was another
     man -- not a real person -- there at my side." The fellow was blond,
     wore a wool sweater and helped Mr. Gudmasson with his work. Could he
     have been an elf? The salesman bristles. "A ghost, maybe," he says.
     "But I certainly don't go around seeing people in stones."
     
     Very few Icelanders do, but almost everyone can tell when elves are
     about. Guthmunder Svafarsson, a veteran road engineer, remembers the
     time he tried to blast through a ridge while building a highway in the
     north. Bulldozers broke down, and residents had nightmares. Normally,
     he says, a simple elf-diversion would have done the trick. But this
     was a major project, with an added complication: The rock wasn't
     merely occupied, it was cursed.
     
     Idled for Three Weeks
     
     "We had discussion," the engineer says, by which he means that a
     medium contacted both the elves and the deceased woman who had hexed
     the rock. They were of one mind: Build over, rather than through, the
     ridge. "I was furious," says Mr. Svafarsson, who has encountered
     elf-delays on other occasions. "But what could I do? Everyone except
     me believed in elves."
     
     Work on a fish-meal factory in nearby Akureyri also ceased when elves
     sabotaged machines. In that case, however, talks proved fruitful. The
     elves said construction could resume, but that they first needed three
     weeks to vacate. Workmen obliged.
     
     Through one man's efforts, elf advocacy is becoming a sophisticated
     science. Mr. Hallgrimsson, the farmer in stony Egilsstathir, began his
     career as a botanist, specializing in mushrooms. While gathering
     fungi, he collected folk tales as well. Drawing on oral testimony and
     written records he now is mapping Iceland's supernatural population.
     
     He presented road builders in Akureyri with a detailed map of the elf
     harbor and metropolis their highway would bisect (they built it
     anyway). When plans were drawn up for an aluminum smelter, which has
     yet to be built, he inserted a map with a legend that includes:
     "Huldufolk Dwellings, Other Spirits, Odd Shapes in the Stone." In
     Egilsstathir, he has also gathered data on dwarfs, trolls and a humped
     serpent, called "the Worm," that lives in a lake.
     
     Mr. Hallgrimsson, a 55-year-old with merry blue eyes and a pointy gray
     beard, looks rather like a storybook elf himself. Oddly, given all his
     research, he remains an agnostic on the question of whether huldufolk
     truly exist. As a scientist, he is most comfortable with empirical
     evidence, and so far all his information is secondhand.
     
     "It would be enough," he says wistfully, "to see one elf."
 

    From: [email protected] (Rastewa)
    Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
    Subject: Re: Nordic Folktales
    Date: 29 Nov 1994 18:26:41 -0500
    Organization: America Online, Inc. (1-800-827-6364)
    Sender: [email protected]
 
    In English, there's a collection called Scandinavian Folk and Fairy
    Tales, ed. Claire Booss, Avenel Books/Crown Publishers, New York, 1984,
    ISBN 0-517-43620-5. 
 
    P.S. About the translations into English: there are some by H.L.
    Braekstad in 1881, and more by Sir George Dasent (Tales from the Fjeld)
    in 1908. Try also Jonas Lie (transl. by Bain), Wierd Tales From
    Northern Seas (1893).