The Hidden People of Iceland
Roads bend around boulders, and trolls stand frozen on the shore. Why Iceland still makes room for elves, and where the strange landscape explains everything.
Illustrative image.
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Iceland has roads that bend for no visible reason. Ask locally and you may get the real answer with half a smile: the boulder they curve around is inhabited, and it was easier to move the road than argue.
Elves next door
The hidden people, or huldufolk, are Iceland's elves: not tiny winged things but a parallel folk who live inside rocks and hillsides, keep farms and churches of their own, and mostly want to be left alone. The old explanation says Eve hid her unwashed children from God, and what is hidden once stays hidden forever. Belief is not universal, and most Icelanders will laugh if you ask directly, but surveys have long found that a surprising share of the country refuses to rule the hidden people out. Construction projects have genuinely been rerouted after protests over elf stones, and disturbing a known elf rock is still considered asking for trouble: machinery breaks, weather turns, and the job goes wrong until the rock is left in peace.
Trolls caught by the sun
The other inhabitants of Icelandic folklore had worse luck with daylight. Trolls are creatures of the night, and sunlight turns them to stone. The landscape is their graveyard. At Reynisfjara, the black-sand beach on the south coast, the sea stacks of Reynisdrangar are said to be trolls who were dragging a three-masted ship ashore when the dawn caught them; they stand in the surf still, masts and all. Half the strange rock formations in Iceland carry a similar story, and once you have driven through a lava field in fog, you understand why. This is scenery that looks carved on purpose.
Why belief lingers here
Iceland was settled late, written early and lived in sparsely, so its stories never had to compete with much. But the deeper reason is the land itself: it steams, glows, shakes and swallows farms. People who share an island with erupting volcanoes and wandering glaciers keep a healthy respect for forces they cannot see. The hidden people are simply that respect, given a name and a neighbourhood.
Where the stories stand
- Icelandic folklore - the living tradition itself: elf stones, troll tales and how Iceland keeps them.
- Reynisfjara - the petrified trolls of Reynisdrangar, black sand and thundering surf.
- Kirkjufell - the arrowhead mountain that looks exactly like a place where stories start.
Respecting the neighbours
Icelandic weather does not care about your plans: the cold-weather kit applies most of the year, and the hiking checklist covers the rough ground between sights. Photographers chasing trolls at dawn will want the night and low-light kit, plus spare batteries; the cold drains them fast.
One local rule covers everything: do not stack stones, do not move them, and leave the odd boulder odd. It is either good manners to the hidden people or good manners to Iceland. Same thing, really.
