Stranger than Paradise
The most common, nearly automatic, greeting when landing back home after a trip abroad is “how was it?”. I was expecting that when coming back from Iceland, and from past experiences, I never really know what to answer. I mean, after a real intensive month away – every single day packed with completely different experiences – where does one even begin?
And I would have probably had the same dilemma when Icelanders we were to meet would present us the already hackneyed “so, how do you like Iceland?” if it wasn’t for our host in Reykjavik. “So, what should we answer?”, I asked after he had warned us of the most common sentence coming up in locals-tourists encounters. In what turned into a local cult movie, he instantly replied, a Japanese businessman is confronted with this question, and his as hackneyed answer apparently turned immortal: “it’s a very strange country”.
So, here are some snippet-accounts of my own visit to Iceland which might help clarify this indeed common observation.
There’s a distinctive and rather regular tone when Icelanders speak about the local mythical creatures. I’d say it’s a kind of seriousness diluted with jocularity. It seems they’re aware that a foreigner is likely to consider these as children’s jokes. But there’s no ridicule in this tone, it’d be irony at most. A visitor to Iceland would necessarily be confronted with this fine dissonance: How could members of such an advanced society really afford believing in elves and trolls living among them? But this is no touristy folklore – it is indeed a vivid tradition.
But, in fact, the local Nordic folklore constantly interweaves with modern-day religion. It has already been 1000 years ago when legislator Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði allegedly threw his statues of the Norse gods into the fabulous waterfall of Goðafoss following the parliamentary decision on formally adopting Christianity. One example for this unique amalgamation can be found every late December at the site of Dimmuborgir, nearly 50 kilometers from Goðafoss. While Christians in most (European and North-American) countries welcome the goodhearted grandpa Santa Claus, Icelanders have instead no less than 13 Yule Lads – naughty troll descendants – said to be living in Dimmuborgir.
Translating into “Dark Castles”, we were half a year early, or late, when we visited this large collection of oddly-shaped lava formations. It was already quite late and rather gloomy when we arrived, nearly by ourselves, so one might expect we had better chances to meet these mischievous creatures. Instead, photos from the traditional annual celebrations on the information boards in the site’s entrance made us realize that we actually already met one of them the day before, in a nearby café. He was speaking, we recalled, about smoking or the like.
God save the Queen (and vice versa)
The village of Borgarfjörður eystri – described by a local resident as the most distant point from Reykjavik, apparently the Icelandic term for civilization – derives its name from both the Fjord it’s set on, and a nearby low rocky hill called Álfaborg, Icelandic for Elf Rock. The hill’s small protected area is said to be home to the seductive elves’ queen. But, in the village’s tiny church – merely a couple of hundred meters away – the very same 30-meters high mound serves as a platform for no other than Jesus preaching to his followers in an altarpiece painting by Iceland’s most celebrated painter, Jóhannes Kjarval.
Far away from there, another geological formation refers to both Christianity and “the hidden people”. Resident of the town of Selfoss, probably in his 50s or so, the man who picked us up in his 4WD car at Thorsmork told us he just came to see the area, particularly in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption a couple of months before. “That’s the Alfakirkja,” he slowed down, bended over the steering wheel and pointed at a 20-something meter high cave to the left of the dirt road, “the church of the elves.” “So, the elves are also Christian?” I wondered. He was baffled. “That’s what the experts tell us…,” he clumsily tried answering.
