Iceland Elves Quotes

Lovers have lived so long with giants and elves, they won't believe again in their own size.

Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called hidden people—or, to put it more plainly, elves—in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free, but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.

Not to be undone, the Icelanders adopted a different strategy: freezing the sea water. They would take it, leave it to freeze, scrape the ice off the top, thaw it, freeze it again, scrape the ice off the top ... until eventually, like maybe ten years down the road, they had about a half a cup of salt to show for their efforts. And who the hell wants to wait that long to put salt on their food? Not me - and not the Icelanders. Which is why they ended by taking some seaweed, drying it, burning it, and then sprinkling the ash on their dinner. So the next time you grind some of that premium coarse sea salt onto your filet mignon with your fancy salt dispenser, spare a thought for the poor Icelanders. With grey ash all over their food. 

And we just drive around the fucking island,” said Trin. “We go see some Icelandic motherfuckers doing Icelandic things. Talk to some elves. See some geysers. Real Icelandic shit.

Before traveling to Iceland, I made a vow to myself that there were two subjects that I would not mention: Björk and elves.

According to Icelandic folklore, thousands of elves, fairies, dwarves, and gnomes—collectively known as “hidden people”—live in rocks and trees throughout the country. It is no wonder, then, that the world’s only elf school is located in Reykjavík.

My lord has read in reputable books that Icelanders emit such a foul stench that men have to position themselves upwind when speaking to them." Jón Hreggviðsson said nothing. The adjunct said: "My lord has read in reputable books that the abode of the damned and of devils is in Iceland, within the mountain named Hekkenfeld. Is this correct?" Jón Hreggviðsson said that he couldn't deny it. Next: "My lord has read in reputable books, primo, that in Iceland there are more specters, monsters, and devils that there are men; secundo, that Icelanders bury shark meat in the dungheaps by their cowsheds and afterward eat it; tertio, that starving Icelanders remove their shoes and cut pieces of them into their mouths like pancakes; quarto, that Icelanders live in mounds of earth; quinto, that Icelanders don't know how to work; sexto, that Icelanders loan foreigners their daughters for purposes of procreation; septimo, that an Icelandic girl is considered to be an unspoiled virgin until she has had her seventh illegitimate child. Is this correct?" Jón Hreggviðsson gaped slightly. "My lord has read in reputable books that Icelanders are primo, thievish; secundo, liars; tertio, arrogant; quarto, lice-ridden; quinto, drunkards; sexto, debauchers; septimo, cowards, unfit for war—" the adjunct said all of this without moving and the colonel continued to grind his teeth and stare at Jón Hreggviðsson. "Is this correct?" Jón Hreggviðsson swallowed to try to wet his throat. The adjunct raised his voice and repeated: "Is this correct?" Jón Hreggviðsson straightened up and said: "My forefather Gunnar of Hlíðarendi was twelve ells high." The colonel said something to the adjunct and the adjunct said loudly: "My lord says that whoever commits perjury beneath the standard shall suffer the wheel and the rack." "Twelve ells," repeated Jón Hreggviðsson. "I won't take it back. And he lived to be three hundred years old. And he wore a gold band around his forehead. His halberd sang the sweetest song that has ever been heard in the North. And the girls are young and slender and come during the night to free men, and are called fair maidens and are said to have the bodies of elves—

The Icelanders were struck by the number of times I'd visited their country: That trip, in 2009, was number fourteen. Hjalti came over and quizzed me, in Icelandic, patiently reframing his questions until, with my limited grasp of the language, I finally understood, but still some were hard to answer: Why do you come here so often? I kept Icelandic horses at home, so it wasn't just the riding. How to explain that, in Iceland, I was a different person? At home, I was a master of words and grammar. Here, I spoke like a child. I was spoken to as a child. They told me stories. I love the sagas, I said, all the old stories. Hjalti nodded, satisfied, but I knew it wasn't a complete answer. In 1992, I attended a lecture at the International Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, Michigan. In Iceland, Gillian Overing noted, the center is the margin. Geography is inside out. People settle on the temperate edges of the island, while its interior is a glacial desert, cold, inhospitable, and not even crossable most of the year. "What kind of self," she mused, "might these places reflect?" What kind of self has wilderness at its heart?