Building in Iceland? Better clear it with the Elves first

[helen99]

You know, they have the RIGHT idea. We could take a big lesson here.

Published: July 13, 2005

HAFNARFJORDUR, Iceland - Do elves exist? Like many Icelanders, Hildur Hakonardottir considers the question to be more complicated than it
appears. 'This is a very, very, very delicate question,' Ms. Hakonardottir, a
retired museum director, said. 'If you ask people if they believe in
elves, they will say yes and no. If they say yes, maybe they don't, and
if they say no, maybe they do.'

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[helen99.livejournal.com]

Here's the article in case they take it down at some point:

Building in Iceland? Better Clear It With the Elves First
By SARAH LYALL
Published: July 13, 2005
HAFNARFJORDUR, Iceland

"Do elves exist? Like many Icelanders, Hildur Hakonardottir considers the question to be more complicated than it appears.

"This is a very, very, very delicate question," Ms. Hakonardottir, a retired museum director, said. "If you ask people if they believe in elves, they will say yes and no. If they say yes, maybe they don't, and if they say no, maybe they do."

Residents of Hafnarfjordur sometimes dress up as elves to amuse themselves and tourists. The Elf Question is a delicate one in Iceland.

In Kopavogur, a section of road was narrowed to accommodate elves thought to live in the nearby rock.

Hypothetically speaking, what does she think elves look like?

"Well, my next-door neighbor is an elf woman," she declared suddenly. "She lives in a cliff in a rock in my garden."

Despite having seen the elf only once in 15 years - enough time to determine that she was "bigger than life and dressed like my grandmother, in a 1930's national costume" - Ms. Hakonardottir, 67, has no doubt of her existence. "My daughter once asked me, 'How do you know where elves live?' " she said. "I told her you just know. It's just a feeling."

It is a feeling that many people in Iceland apparently share. Polls consistently show that the majority of the population either believes in elves - generally described as humanlike creatures who are fiercely protective of their rocky homes - or is not willing to rule out their existence. But while believing in elves is rooted in Iceland's culture, it remains a touchy subject.

"You have to watch out for the Nordic cliché," the Icelandic singer Bjork told The New Yorker magazine several years ago. "A friend of mine says that when record-company executives come to Iceland, they ask the bands if they believe in elves, and whoever says yes gets signed up."

Yet even Bjork cannot say no for sure. "We think nature is a lot stronger than man," she said in another interview, when the Elf Question came up. "A relationship with things spiritual has not gone away."

A belief not just in elves but also in the predictive power of dreams, in the potency of dead spirits and in other supernatural phenomena, is closely linked to Iceland's Celtic traditions and punishing, powerful landscape - especially the harsh weather and the rocks that appear everywhere.

"If there was a large stone in the garden, and somebody said to an Icelander, 'That's an elf stone,' would they blow it up? They wouldn't," said Terry Gunnell, head of the folkloristic department at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik."