Unveiling the Secrets of Iceland's Enchanting Elves. #folklore #iceland #secret #elves
5We have previously discussed how road planning issues are frequently impacted by the widespread belief in elves in Iceland.
There are many who contend that the belief is comparatively new.
Few people took the belief in elves seriously in the past, according to Arni Bjornsson, who worked in the ethnology section of the National Museum of Iceland.
Hippie culture of the 1970s and an event in 1971 involving "a clumsy but merry bulldozer driver" who damaged rocks outside of Reykjavik and put the blame on bothersome elves led to the popularization of the idea.
Though it made news and started an elf craze, no one believed him.
During a summit between Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan in Reykjavik in 1986, elf-mania spread, with numerous reporters questioning Bjornsson about Icelandic believe in elves because they had restricted access to the leaders and had to find other ways to pass the time.
This greater visibility did nothing but encourage the belief in elves among many Icelanders, who twenty years ago might have laughed at the notion.
Though elves are found in various European cultures, Alaric Hall of the University of Leeds contended that the earliest Icelandic colonists valued them more because there was no native population in Iceland to conquer, meaning that they were in fact indigenous people.
They, however, wish not to be. They genuinely desired to be invaders, just like everyone else in medieval and early modern Western Europe.
Thus, elves gave you access to this historical native community, which gives you the impression that you are the conqueror.
These stories got increasingly sophisticated in later years as beleaguered Icelanders talked of the elves' magnificent palaces and sumptuous feasts.
The myth's contemporary resonances are neatly linked to romantic ecological ideology and a backlash against modernity in culture.