I think that the most reasonable explanation for this elf phenomena is that the conditions in Iceland just happen to be ideal for actually observing spirits and promoted spirits we call angels. From my perspective I do not have to assign a new class of being as a new conjecture to be investigated.
Iceland has a minimalist biome and that means there is far less interference in seeing such a spirit. Thus it becomes much more likely that they would naturally emerge within the culture as active participants. Reports suggest that they are just as active elsewhere but simply rarely perceived.
Thus the whole realm of fairy and elf happens to be
human spirits becoming progressively more active in essentially doing
the right thing. This conforms completely with the major sources on
spirits such as Swedenborg.
Why Icelanders are wary of elves living beneath the rocks
By Emma Jane Kirby
BBC News, Reykjavik
19 June 2014 Last updated at 20:03 ET
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-27907358
Plans to build a new road in Iceland ran into
trouble recently when campaigners warned that it would disturb elves
living in its path. Construction work had to be stopped while a
solution was found.
From his desk at the Icelandic highways
department in Reykjavik, Petur Matthiasson smiles at me warmly from
behind his glasses, but firmly.
"Let's get this straight before we start - I
do not believe in elves," he says.
I raise my eyebrows slightly and incline my head
towards his computer screen which is displaying the plans for a new
road in a neighbouring town. There are two yellow circles marked on
the plans, one that reads Elf Church and another that reads Elf
Chapel. Petur sighs.
"Ok," he acknowledges wearily. "But
it's not every day in Iceland that we divert roads for elves. It's
just in this case we were warned that elves were living in some of
the rocks in the path of the road - well, we have to respect that
belief." He grins shyly and picks up his car keys.
"Come on, I'll show you where the elves
live," he says indulgently.
The elf chapel and the highway
- Work on the highway to link the Alftanes peninsula to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer was halted when campaigners warned it would disturb elf habitat and a protected area of untouched lava
- The chapel (pictured, with Petur) is a 12-foot-high jagged rock
- The matter was resolved in part when a local lady who claims to talk to elves, mediated and they agreed to the road so long as their chapel was carefully moved and put elsewhere
- The highways authority will not reveal the cost of moving the rock, but says it weighs 70 tonnes and they will have to hire a crane
Surveys suggest that more than half of Icelanders
believe in, or at least entertain the possibility of the existence
of, the Huldufolk - the hidden people. Just to be clear, Icelandic
elves are not the small, green, pointy-eared variety that help Santa
pack the toys at Christmas - they're the same size as you and I,
they're just invisible to most of us.
Mainly they're a peaceable breed but if you treat
them with disrespect, for example by blasting dynamite through their
rock houses and churches, they're not reticent about showing their
displeasure. During our car journey, Petur tells me several stories
about how elves are suspected to be behind bulldozer breakdowns and a
series of workmen's accidents.
As I step out of the car at the site of the elf
church a vicious gust of icy wind punches me full in the face making
me stagger backwards on to the black, volcanic rock.
Iceland's rugged landscape is no bucolic idyll -
the very ground boils and spits irrationally, the surrounding craggy,
black mountains fester menacingly and above, the sky is constantly
herniated by the iron-grey clouds it strains to hold up. It's a
visceral, raw and brutal beauty which makes Heathcliff's Wuthering
Heights look like a prissy, pastoral watercolour.
"You can't live in this landscape and not
believe in a force greater than you," explains Professor of
Folklore Adalheidur Gudmundsdottir when I visit her at the
university.
She looks at me imploringly. "Please don't
portray Icelanders as uneducated peasants who believe in fairies, but
look around you and you'll understand why the power of folklore here
is so strong," she says. It is of course also strong in the
tourism trade.
On the main road into town from the airport,
"Elves Live Here" signs try to lure the fanciful into
spending a few thousand krona (a few pounds) on a tour of an elf
village, a CD of mystical music, or for the less whimsical, perhaps
an "I had Sex with an Elf in Iceland" T-shirt.
There's even an elf school in the capital at
which I dutifully enrolled.
Magnus Skarphedinsson, the headmaster, a rotund,
ebullient chap who ate large quantities of breakfast cereal during my
one-on-one lesson, had regrettably never seen an elf himself although
he did own an old cooking pot that apparently had once made stews in
an elf kitchen before the bottom rusted away.
His eyes twinkled so wickedly throughout the
class that at the end I asked if he wasn't some kind of malevolent
fairy himself.
Petur and I have now reached the 12-foot-high
jagged rock that's apparently home to the elf chapel. I scour it
closely but apart from an insect or two scuttling to find some
shelter in its moss-encrusted crevices, I can see no signs of any
life, mythological or other. Petur eyes me suspiciously.
"I could tell you about our family elf,"
he begins tentatively. I encourage him to tell his tale and learn
that Petur's family had a protective elf in the wild north of the
country who'd brought them good fortune.
When he'd gone on a camping trip to the isolated
area, his father asked him to go and pay his respects to the elf and
to thank her.
"But I don't believe in elves so I sort of
forgot," he says. The next day, despite the overcast sky and
drizzle, he woke up so badly blistered by what appeared to be sunburn
that he could barely stand.
As we turn into the blustering wind we catch each
other's eye. We both have one hand gripped on to the rock with the
desperation of gamblers clinging to a lucky charm. We walk back
towards the car in a smug complicity of being almost non-believers.
No comments:
Post a Comment