Nancy Marie Brown - Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Icelands Elves Can Save the Earth

Looking for the Hidden Folk

How Icelands Elves Can Save the Earth

Brown shows how mere humans shape myths that resonate for centuries.

Jeff Sypeck, author of Becoming Charlemagne

Nancy Marie Brown

Nancy Marie Brown reveals to us skeptics how rocks and hills are the mansions of elves, or at least what it takes to believe so. Looking for the Hidden Folk evocatively animates the Icelandic landscape through Browns past and present travels and busts some prevalent clichs and myths along the waythis book is my reply to the next foreign reporter asking about that Elf Lobby.

Egill Bjarnason, author of How Iceland Changed the World: The Big History of a Small Island

Using ideas and stories about the hidden folk in Iceland as a stepping stone into the human perception of our homes in the world where stories and memories breathe life into places, be it through the vocabulary of quantum physics or folklore, Nancy Marie Brown makes us realize that there is always more to the world than meets the eye. And that world is not there for us to conquer and exploit but to walk into and sense the dew with our bare feet on the soft moss, beside breathing horses and mighty glaciers in the drifting fog that often blocks our view.

Gsli Sigursson, Research Professor, The rni Magnsson Institute, University of Iceland

Nancy Marie Brown is a scholar and a pilgrim, and Iceland (plus much more) is illuminated here through her knowledge and passion.

Thomas Swick, author of The Joys of Travel

This is a sweeping and moving journey across time and spacethrough myth and theory, language, and literatureinto the world of wonder and enchantment. Beautifully written, Looking for the Hidden Folk offers a compelling and surprising case for the recognition of forces and beings not necessarily seen in everyday life but nevertheless somehow sensed, exploring their complexity and why they matter.

Gsli Plsson, Professor of Anthropology, University of Iceland

Astonishing, lyrical, and thought-provoking. Yes, I am a scientist, but this book makes me consider a new reality. I am captivated.

Pat Shipman, author of Our Oldest Companions

A love song to the living landscape of Iceland and the cultural history in which it is clothed, inspired by the authors numerous encounters with the country and its people over the last decades.

Terry Gunnell, Professor of Folkloristics, University of Iceland

Nancy Marie Browns Looking for the Hidden Folk is an elegantly written and wonderfully individualistic exploration of Icelandic culture through the ages, combining a shrewd appraisal of traditions with an acute interest in the modern world and all its intellectual quirks.

rmann Jakobsson, author and scholar

In this fascinating book Nancy Marie Brown shows how the stories of Icelands hidden people are a natural human response to the islands extraordinary landscape, and makes the reader question whether dismissing such beliefs as irrational is itself irrational.

Michael Ridpath, author of the Magnus Iceland Mysteries

The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women

Ivory Vikings: The Mystery of the Most Famous Chessmen in the World and the Woman Who Made Them

The Saga of Gudrid the Far-Traveler

Song of the Vikings: Snorri and the Making of Norse Myths

The Far Traveler: Voyages of a Viking Woman

A Good Horse Has No Color: Searching Iceland for the Perfect Horse

LOOKING FOR THE HIDDEN FOLK

Pegasus Books, Ltd.

148 West 37th Street, 13th Floor

New York, NY 10018

Copyright 2022 by Nancy Marie Brown

All photographs by the author, except as noted.

First Pegasus Books hardcover edition October 2022

Interior design by Maria Fernandez

Cover design: Faceout Studio, Lindy Kasler

Imagery: Stocksy and Shutterstock

Author photo: Bjarney Lvksdttir, Eyjafilm

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from the publisher, except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review in a newspaper, magazine, or electronic publication; nor may any part of this book be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or other, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

ISBN: 978-1-63936-228-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63936-229-5

Distributed by Simon & Schuster

www.pegasusbooks.com

For the family at Helgafell and all the other Icelanders who have shared stories with me.

Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.

Mary Oliver

A Note on Language

I n this book, I have anglicized the spellings of most Icelandic words and names, changing the letters (eth) to d, (thorn) to th, and (ash) to ae, and omitting all accents. I have retained the nominative endings (as in Hjortur) for most modern Icelandic names; for saga characters, I have dropped the endings (turning Gudridur into Gudrid) to be consistent with most saga translations. Icelandic words in italics are correctly spelled. Since an Icelanders last name is generally their fathers name plus son or daughter (spelled dttir) and not a family name, I follow Icelandic style, using first names for all Icelanders. Some of our conversations were conducted in Icelandic, although my notes were taken in English. Such quotations, therefore, are both translations and reconstructions. I apologize to any Icelanders whose words I might have misunderstood.

Pay attention to what they tell you to forget.

Muriel Rukeyser

Galgahraun

The Elf Lobby

O n the outskirts of Icelands capital lies a lava field called Galgahraun. The name comes from a large basalt feature like a sleeping giants open maw: two opposing lava waves that crested and froze into peaks or, more likely, a single lava bubble that domed, cracked, and collapsed when the volcano Burfell, some seven miles distant, erupted eight thousand years ago. A wooden beam was balanced from one peak of this feature to the other, from the giants upper jaw to his lower; affixed at the midpoint was a noose from which outlaws were hanged, as if to plummet in death down the giants gullet.