Ah, Iceland! Home of hot springs, fermented cod, hard-to-pronounce names, and…invisible people?
LITTLE COUNTRY, LITTLE PEOPLE
Magnus Skarphedinsson believes in fairies—and dwarves, gnomes, pixies, and trolls. Just about anywhere else in the world, he’d be considered a bit crazy. But not in Iceland. In fact, more than half the country’s nearly 300,000 citizens say they also believe in fairies and other mythical creatures. That statistic may seem at odds with the global perception of Iceland as a hip, techno-savvy Nordic country—until you consider that modernization came to Iceland only recently.
For most of its 1,000-year history, the island was a frigid, isolated outpost of European civilization. Stuck in the Dark Ages long after the rest of the continent had been “enlightened,” Iceland didn’t even have a major city until 200 years ago. And though most Icelanders have embraced the modern world, they continue to cling to the old ways—including, for many, a guarded belief in mythical creatures. Says Olafur Stephensen, former editor of Morgunbladid, Iceland’s principal newspaper, “Many Icelanders say they don’t believe in elves, but often consider it safer to behave as if they might exist. That way they don’t risk offending them.”
That was Skarphedinsson’s thinking in 1991 when he opened an Álfaskólinn, or “Icelandic Elf School,” to educate the world about his country’s unique heritage. A tall, paunchy man in his 50s with short white hair and a well-trimmed beard, Skarphedinsson teaches classes and leads tours to sites where elves or other strange creatures have reportedly been sighted. According to Arni Bjornsson, head of the Ethnology Department at the National Museum of Iceland, Icelandic folklore contains tales of more than 500 supernatural beings.
Although some scholars come to the Elf School to study Icelandic legends in depth, most students are tourists. For about $60 U.S., you can attend a lecture given by Skarphedinsson and then ride along with him on a tour of local elf sites. You’ll receive a diploma, which states (in Icelandic) that you now know more than most people about Iceland’s “other” inhabitants. To date, more than 9,000 people have graduated from the Elf School.
Oxford Dictionary’s 2009 word of the year: “unfriend” to take someone off your Facebook friends list.
According to the school’s textbook, Iceland is home to 25 different varieties of elves, gnomes, trolls, fairies, and the curiously named huldüfolk, or “Hidden People.” According to the Elf School, the huldüfolk were once human, the descendants of Celtic settlers who were already in Iceland when the Vikings arrived in the 9th century. Rather than be enslaved by the Norse invaders, the huldüfolk slipped away into a shadow world, a sort of parallel universe, where they remain today. According to Skarphedinsson, as many as 20,000 huldüfolk may still exist. A few Icelanders, mainly children, claim to be able to see and talk with them, and report that the huldüfolk look pretty much like us, except for their old-fashioned, traditional clothes. (One branch of the huldüfolk is notable for their blue skin.)
Although Skarphedinsson himself has never encountered the huldüfolk, he remains a true believer. “I have spoken with over 500 people who say they have seen them,” he says. “Many swear that the huldüfolk cured illnesses and saved their lives.” A trade union leader, Tryggvi Emilsson, insists that when he was a young man, he was saved by a beautiful huldüfolk girl when he fell off a cliff. There are even rare stories of people who fell in love with huldüfolk and vanished with them into the shadow world. These tales have inspired more than a few single women to enroll in Elf School in the hopes of a romantic encounter with a “shadow man.”
For the most part, folklore enthusiasts say, Icelanders got along well with the elves, dwarfs, fairies, gnomes, trolls, and huldüfolk—until humans started building roads, neighborhoods, and Taco Bells in the forests and lava fields where the creatures live. Result: They’ve fought back. Mysterious equipment failures, strange accidents, bizarre illnesses—there have been so many worksite mishaps in recent years that the Icelandic Public Works administration has resorted to some drastic measures. “Our basic approach is not to deny this phenomenon,” explains Birgir Gudmundsson, an engineer with the Iceland Road Authority. “Fortunately, there are people who can negotiate with the elves, and we make use of that.”
These negotiators are known as “elf-spotters.” Their job: to ensure that the land is clear of the creatures before any work begins. One of the most respected elf-spotters, Erla Stefansdottir, has drawn up several maps charting known locations of Hidden People for Reykjavik’s Planning Department (as well as for the tourist authorities). That’s not all elf-spotters do.
• Developers building Iceland’s first shopping mall utilized a folklorist’s knowledge to make sure that electrical cables and other underground equipment was placed far away from suspected elf homes.
• An elf-spotter halted construction of a highway to relocate a boulder called the Graustein, purported to be a dwarf home.
• When a crew building a golf course outside Reykjavik moved a rock, their bulldozers stopped running and a rash of injuries disabled the workforce. Finally, on the advice of the local elf-spotter (who had already told them the rock was home to some elves), the chief engineer returned the rock to the field and apologized out loud. He swore that his crew would not bother them anymore. The bulldozers started up again, and there were no more accidents. The course was completed on schedule.
Stories like these make Magnus Skarphedinsson proud. “My mission,” he declares, “is to get the elves and Hidden People the respect they deserve.”
Another curious attraction in Iceland is the Icelandic Phallological Museum in Husavik, more commonly referred to as the “Penis Museum.” The institution’s mission is to catalog and display penises from every mammalian species, living or extinct, native to Iceland—272 specimens, representing 92 species. In between displays of mummified horse and polar bear members sits a small jar filled with murky embalming fluid. It is labeled “Elf’s Penis.” Its contents are, of course, invisible.
To graduate from high school, Icelanders must speak 3 languages: Danish, English, and Icelandic.