In search of elves

If elves exist, they surely live in Iceland, their legendary home. Not having seen them since childhood, Wanita Bates decided last Christmas to renew her acquaintance with "the hidden people."

Updated:: 2009-10-26 01:55

Published:: 2008-12-10 00:00

By: Wanita Bates

What an elf looks like and why you don't mess with an elf

Magnús is a historian who's been collecting research about elves and hidden folk for 27 years, and teaching people about the different types of Icelandic elves since 1992. "There are at least two nations living here in Iceland," he explains. "The Icelandic people that I belong to and then there's this hidden people's nation."

I expect him to smile, but he's dead serious.

"So far I have met more than 700 Icelanders who have seen elves and hidden people." He points to boxes filled with cassette tapes of interviews about elf encounters.

The anatomy of an elf
"Elves have human forms, but they are smaller," he says, "from 10 centimetres up to about one metre. We have descriptions of at least 13 different types of elves. The hidden people, however, are human-size. You can't see anything different between them and us except that they are invisible most times."

That could be why I'm having trouble seeing them. They're invisible. He says the huldufólk speak Icelandic, wear clothes, have boats, horses, cars and even computers, and they live in the country, where their homes look like old-fashioned farms.

The elf spirits and hidden folk protect nature, Magnús tells me, and not only have they been friends to humans, but they have also actually saved their lives.

He has heard countless stories of travellers getting lost in the woods and the next thing finding themselves in the home of an elf, being fed, having their clothes dried, being given a bed, and in the morning being put back on the right track. Some of these encounters have turned into friendships between the hidden folk and humans that have gone on for generations.

Don't mess with the elves
And not all these stories are from a hundred years ago. Even the Icelandic highway department usually tries to find out from local people before roads are planned if elves or hidden people are living there. "We should respect them and be aware of their presence," says Magnús, "and try not to destroy nature where they have their houses. If you decide to mess with elves, expect things to get misplaced or go missing. There is the story about the woman who swears an elf woman living beside her house keeps borrowing her scissors, then returning them weeks after in a place she had already looked. On construction sites where an elf community is disturbed, there are stories of huge machines breaking down and even being overturned. They may be small, but their wrath can be great."

In search of elves

What an elf looks like and why you don't mess with an elf

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