Huldufolk

A study from Valdimar Hafstein called “The Elves’ Point of View” cites a survey from 1998 which asked a single question. The interviewees were Icelanders. Typical, blue-eyed, light-haired urbanite Icelanders were asked: “Do you believe in elves?” The survey reported a 54.4% positive rate: yes, we believe in elves. Since then the number has grown. A 2007 survey reported on by the BBC had 62% agreeing that elves exist.

Icelandic elves, the huldufolk, or “hidden people”, don’t look so different from the average Icelander. Many of them are farmers. Their clothing is old-fashioned, reflecting earlier times when humans were more connected with the earth and the wildness of nature. There are good stories about them and bad, of lifelong curses but also elf-doctors appearing in the night to huddle over a cancer-stricken grandmother, saying “Well I think this is going to be OK.” They’re decidedly anti-modern, fey NIMBYs who will cause your car to break down and traffic to weave for miles behind you on a road paved over their traditional home. And they’re religious too. They have their own churches, some of them invisible to the human eye but otherwise perceivable by those properly attuned.

As with most beliefs, this one has its own cultural momentum. The story from the BBC quotes an everyday Icelander saying that if you want a hot tub in your back yard but an elf rock is blocking the area, “I’ll forgo my hot tub for my elf rock.” Many more in Iceland take up the cause of the huldufolk to intervene in development projects over elf-claimed land. Indeed, the issue is significant enough that The Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration has a pre-packaged media response to elven inquiries. It includes the line, “[we] will not answer the question of whether [our] employees do or do not believe in elves and ‘hidden people’ because opinion differs greatly on this and it tends to be a rather personal matter”.

In the suburb of Gardabaer, just south of Reykjavik, in Iceland, there’s a greyish-black lava rock rising 12 feet or so from the ground. Sporadically at its peak are dangling tufts of hardy grass, and at its base yellow flowers grow in the summertime.

In the 1970s city officials at Reykjavik had planned a highway that would connect the city with the Icelandic towns to the west, and in the way of progress stood this rock. As an engineering feat, drilling a thoroughfare through ancient volcanic stone, it was a simple matter. But as it turned out, it was much more than a question of engineering, for there were rumours surrounding this particular rock, namely that it was a home for elves.

The Hafstein study reports that as the rumour spread some of the workers began to grow agitated, attributing “minor mishaps and accidents” to the elves. As the rumours grew louder, the superintendent took it upon himself to resolve the matter, simply and practically. He engaged an elf consultant.

The consultant was a clairvoyant named Zophanias Petursson. This elf consultant was brought in with a single duty: to communicate with the elves, the idea being that he’d determine whether the rock was actually inhabited by these creatures. If indeed this was a dwelling for huldufolk, he would then negotiate with them on behalf of the road workers.

After completing the prescribed ritual, which involves circling about the elf rock and other forms of elvish communication, Petursson told the superintendent the disappointing truth. The rock was, indeed, a home for elves. But there was an option, he said. It turned out he’d obtained permission from the elves to move their home. Which, as soon as possible, the workers attempted to do.

After preparations were made to move the Gardabaer rock, the project began. But perhaps the elf consultant misunderstood the elves, because immediately the plan unraveled when the bulldozer operator in charge of moving the rock—whether cursed or incompetent we don’t know—ended up cracking the rock in half upon setting it down.

This upset the elves. Later that same night they caused an altogether different bulldozer to cut open a water pipe to a nearby fish farm resulting in the death of tens of thousands of trout hatchlings. Other accidents arose subsequent to this, most of these with bulldozers, which are, it seems, acutely susceptible to elvish magic. Eventually the circumstances were such that an implacable sense of doom hung over the project. One particular bulldozer operator had stark words with respect to his own involvement. He told Hafstein, decades later, that his life “had been marred by bad fortune ever since”.

A recent YouGov poll has 45% of Americans believing in ghosts (13% believe in vampires). People Magazine reports that 39% of Americans believe in aliens, and 27% in Bigfoot. Hidden people aren’t unique to Iceland. The huldufolk are everywhere. The things we’ve abandoned, the mystical and magical, still speak even as the world crowds into brimming cities, trims wild forest to stubble and paves over ancient volcanite with highway.

And so it is also with the elves: showing their faces in dreams and visions, in hot tub rocks and bulldozer accidents, rushing in, for good or ill, to the empty spaces we’ve left behind.

A note from the author:

Hi! If we haven’t met, I’m Jonathan Wright. I’m a writer and lawyer from Vancouver, in Canada. I’ve a small request for you: if you enjoyed this article, please share it! Thanks for stopping by.

Photo credit to Louise Swindells: https://www.instagram.com/louiseswindells_art/

Selected bibliography:

“The Elves Point of View”, by Valdimar Hafstein: https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/fabl.2000.41.1-2.87/html

“Why Icelanders are wary of elves living beneath the rocks”, by Emma Jane Kirby: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27907358

“Why So Many Icelanders Still Believe In Invisible Elves”, by Ryan Jacobs: https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/why-so-many-icelanders-still-believe-in-invisible-elves/280783/