Reykjavík Grapevine - 15.08.2014, Blaðsíða 16

dinner bowl sitting on the stone that she
didn’t recognize. She asked her maid-
servant about the bowl, but the woman
didn’t know anything about it. So the
wife poured some milk into the bowl, set
it back on top of the stone, took the key
with her, and went back into her home.
The next morning, she came out to the
pantry, looked in the bowl and found it
empty. So it went all winter: the wife fi-
lled the bowl with milk every night, no
matter what, and every morning the
milk had disappeared.
Then, on the eve of the first night of
summer, the wife dreamt that a strange
wo-man came to her and said: “You’ve
done very well to give me milk all this
winter when I’ve depended on you.
Tomorrow morning, you’ll find some-
thing I’ve left for you.” And with that,
she disappeared. The next morning, the
wife went out to the pantry and found
a splendid dapple-grey calf that she’d
never seen before. The wife was now
sure that it had been a Hidden Woman
who had given her the calf as thanks for
the milk. The calf remained at the farm
and grew into a fantastic milk cow.
(Translated and adapted by La-
rissa Kyzer from the collection of
Jón Árnason)
A natural religion
Christianity became the predominant
religion in Iceland as early as the year
1000, and to this day, Iceland has a
state-sponsored church, to which the
vast majority of Icelanders belong.
And yet, as a rule, Icelanders have no
particular difficulty reconciling folk
beliefs with modern religious beliefs,
allowing Biblical scripture and folk-
tales to coexist in the national imagi-
nation.
In his memoir 'Faðir og móðir og
dulmagn bernskunnar' ("Father And
Mother And The Mysteries Of Child-
hood"), author Guðberger Bergsson
writes that in his family, a belief in
Hidden People was in no way at odds
with a belief in a Christian god. For
instance, “In [my grandmother’s] eyes,
god was distant and impersonal, but
supernatural beings were everywhere;
it was the Hidden Women who played
various little tricks on her and did her
great favours, rather than god.”
This passage is quoted by author
Unnur Jökulsdóttir in her own 2007
book, ‘Hefurðu séð Huldufólk?’ ('Have
you seen Hidden People?'), in which
she sets out around Iceland collect-
ing real-life anecdotes from peo-
ple who claim to have seen and inter-
acted with Hidden People. She notes
that Guðbergur’s grandmother is
“just like my gr-andmother, and ma-
ybe many of our grandmothers.” Be-
cause, as she explained to me later
in an interview, “Icelanders take be-
lief in their own way—many don’t go
to church very often. They
are not ‘extreme’ Christi-
ans.” And so, one belief need not ne-
gate another.
It seems, however, that there is
easily more to it than that, particularly
given that increasingly, Hidden People
and their stories have—as Terry Gun-
nell wri-tes—“come to represent the
old rural world, with its values and
close connections to nature.” A re-
spect of nature verging on awe is eas-
ily a religion in and of itself in Iceland,
where surviving the elements was, for
centuries, basically a matter of luck.
And then here are these beings who
literally live in nature, who dwell and
flourish in the rocks and hillsides and
barren landscapes where, to this day,
people get lost and die. It makes a lot of
sense that the mythology behind them
still resonates.
“I have become very aware of the
landscape,” Unnur confirmed, when
discussing this. She told a story of a
woman she met who had tried, unsuc-
cessfully, to help her see Hidden Peo-
ple. Although she never was able to see
Hidden People herself, Unnur explains
that she now “looks at the land in a dif-
ferent way. The woman told me that
Hidden People don’t like new lava, just
old lava. I went recently to the coun-
try around Mývatn and I thought, ‘Oh,
they won’t like this lava—this isn’t a
Hidden People place.'”
The Pastor’s Daughter
There once lived a pastor named Einar at the rectory at Síða in the district of Skaftafell. He
was very rich and had many children.
He did not believe that Hidden People
existed, and spoke very ill of them. He
said that elves had never existed or else
dared them to show themselves if they
could. He often bragged that the Hidden
People wouldn’t dare to attack him.
One night, he dreamed of a man who
came to him and said: “Here you can see
a Hidden Man, as you have long desired
to. You have often spoken badly of we
elves and dared us to find you. You fool,
you pretend to know about things that
you do not possess faculties to fathom,
and you deny the existence of elves.
Now you shall never deny us hereafter,
because here you are seeing a Hidden
Man, and as proof, I have taken your
oldest daughter far away and you shall
never see her from this day forward.”
When the man finished saying this,
he disappeared. The pastor awoke,
feeling as though the Hidden Man was
fading from above his bed. He jumped
out of bed and found that his twelve-
year-old daughter had disappeared. He
searched for her for a very long time, but
she couldn’t be found.
Time passed, and until the next New
Year’s night the pastor often lamented
his ignorance and the events that fol-
lowed. But, that night, he dreamed that
his daughter came to him. She seemed
happy and satisfied, and said she was
faring well. She told him that she would
be allowed to come to him every New
Year’s night in a dream, although she
couldn’t tell him anything further of her
circumstances. She said that everything
she had seen and heard was mysterious
and strange.
After this dream, the pastor saw
his daughter every New Year’s night.
Once, she told him that her foster-father
had died. Later, she told her father that
she was to be married in the morning,
wedding the son of the elves’ pastor. Af-
ter this, Einar never saw his daughter
again.
(Translated and adapted by La-
rissa Kyzer from the collection of
Jón Árnason)
Don’t piss off the
Joneses
When Icelandic
sceptics—or “elf-
agnostics,” as Kári
Tulinius has char-
acterized them in
this magazine—are
questioned by for-
eigners about Ice-
landic society’s will-
ingness to humour
believers’ demands
that roads be re-
routed or construc-
tion projects halted,
the answer gener-
ally comes down to
the fact that Iceland
is a small place, and
it’s better to make
peace where you
can.
Take for exa-
mple when Viktor
Arnar Ingólfsson,
who is chief of Ice-
land’s Public Roads
A d m i n i s t r a t i o n
(and also a success-
ful crime novelist),
was put on the spot
about the Public
Roads Administra-
tion’s “concessions”
to Hidden People
believers. He told the American radio
program 'This American Life' that in
Iceland, “You really have to listen to
everyone because you are probably
going to meet them at a party after
awhile. You know, when you scream
at someone in traffic in New York,
you know you're probably not going to
meet them again, so you do it. But not
so much here.”
As it turns out, the necessity to
make peace, to coexist with neigh-
bours with whom you don’t always
get on or agree, is also quite prevalent
in folktales about the Hidden People
themselves. “[T]here is need for co-
operation,” Terry Gunnell writes. “As
the legends demonstrate, such coop-
eration (generally following condi-
tions set by the Huldufólk) can bring
great reward [...] Failure to cooperate
or help, however, can bring about trag-
edy.”
And, yes, throughout the Hidden
People tales, there are plenty of in-
stances where people’s kindnesses—
especially those of children—are re-
paid with great gifts. Interestingly, on
more than one occasion, the Hidden
People say that they are “too poor” to
pay a monetary reward, but offer valu-
able talents and skills, instead. For in-
stance, in ”The Hidden Fisherman,"
a man helps a Hidden Person pull his
horse out of a bog. In exchange, his
neighbour shows him the best and saf-
est times to go out and fish. In ”
Dr. Skapti Sæmundsson,” a young boy
helps a Hidden Woman who is experi-
encing a painful and difficult labour
by simply laying his
hands on her stom-
ach. He is blessed
by the Hidden
Woman’s mother to
“have good luck as a
healer,” and grows
up to be a talented
doctor “who never
failed to find a way
to help” a woman in
childbirth.
And yet, it is dif-
ficult to really feel a
kinship with these
beings, as they are
frequently mischie-
vous, often violent
and regularly bring
harm to people for
no discernible rea-
son. They steal chil-
dren and replace
them with change-
lings or senile old
Hidden Men whom
they’ve disguised as
babies (See ”Father
of 18 in Elfland,”
www.grapevine.is).
People who show
themselves to be
too curious about
the Hidden People,
or who can’t resist the temptation of
offered gifts (such as a “slab of fat”—
hey, it was a different time!) are often
struck with madness and lose their
minds.
Stay at home on Christmas or New
Year’s night and if you’re not careful,
you’ll be killed just for hanging about
where the Hidden People want to hold
their party. (A particularly depressing
instance of this can be found in ”The
Elves’ Dance on New Year’s Eve,” in
which a man, hidden behind a wall,
observes as his dog is “picked up and
flung down so hard that every bone
in its body is broken,” after which the
Hidden People proceed to set their
table for a feast.)
All things considered, it doesn’t
seem strange at all that Iceland-
ers familiar with these tales would
have “ambiguous” attitudes toward
their Hidden neighbours, as Jacque-
line Simpson remarks. They can be
changeable and petty, ill tempered and
vengeful.
Just like people, come to think of it.
“Put A Gift In The Old
Man’s Hand”
Once it happened that three chil-dren—two boys and a little girl who was younger than them—
went to play by a knoll near their farm.
They saw a little hole there and so the
girl, as a joke, decided to put her hand
inside and recite a lyric from a game the
children liked to play:
”Put a gift in the old man’s hand, the
old man’s hand. The old man can’t see a
thing!"
All of a sudden, a golden apron but-
ton was placed in the girl’s hand. The
boys saw this happen and were jealous,
so the older boy put his hand in the hole
as well and recited the same rhyme. But
rather than receive a fine gift of his own,
the boy got nothing at all. Moreover,
when he took his hand out of the hole, it
had withered and so it remained for the
rest of his life.
(Translated and adapted by La-
rissa Kyzer from the collection of
Jón Árnason)
Although Jón Árnason’s six-volume
“Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og ævintýri”
(“Icelandic folktales and fairy
tales”) collection has yet to be trans-
lated into English in its entirety, a
number of good excerpted works
are available. For further Huldufólk
reading, see ‘Icelandic Folktales
and Legends,’ by Jacqueline Simp-
son, ‘Hildur, Queen of the Elves, and
Other Icelandic Legends,’ by J.M.
Bedell, and ‘Icelandic Folktales,’ by
Alan Boucher, all of which are refer-
enced in the accompanying article.
Further
Reading
16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 12 — 2014
Iceland | Culture
“And yet, it is difficult
to really feel a kinship
with these beings, as
they are frequently
mischievous, often vio-
lent and regularly bring
harm to people for no
discernible reason.”
A lot of Hidden People stories make them out to be total assholes. But, be hon-
est. Given the powers of invisibility, you'd probably get up to a lot of assholery
too, right?
Continues From P.14