I’d never thought much about elves except when I was rooting for Legolas to vanquish the Orcs in “The Lord of the Rings.” So it was a revelation to discover Nancy Marie Brown’s book “Looking for the Hidden Folk.” It’s her account of why most Icelanders - 54% in one survey – believe in the existence of elves. In fact, there are Icelandic “elf-seers” who say they talk to elves and in some cases have even persuaded government officials to divert new roads so they don’t run through the homes and churches where elves congregate.
I knew there was more to this story than an entire nation falling under the spell of mass delusion. So Anne and I drove out to interview Brown at her farm on a remote stretch of Vermont’s hilly Northeast Kingdom, where we met not just Brown and her husband, but their Icelandic sheepdog and three Icelandic horses. Brown LOVES Iceland. She’s visited dozens of times. She’s entranced by its rugged landscape and by its ancient lore, including the stories of elves and other nature spirits.
She’s also spent time with an elf-seer named Ragnhildur, and on one occasion witnessed an angry driver crash into a large rock that no one had seen before. They were left to wonder, did the elves put the rock there? Brown tells this story with a sense of wonder and amusement in our show “Everyday Magic.”
She says elves are the embodiment of a kind of reverence that Icelanders have for the natural world. Of course, I wanted to know if Brown herself believes in elves. “I have a very hard time saying that I believe in elves, but I do believe in elf stories,” she said. “I think it’s very important that we tell stories that encourage us to live simply and to value the things that we cannot see, to value the spirits in the land and in the trees.”
– Steve