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Storytelling in Iceland
Prose And Verse at the Heart of a Nation
I can personally attest to the love Icelanders have for storytelling. Growing up, my grandmother, whose family emigrated from there, was FILLED with stories. It seemed everything contained within it a story. For example, Icelanders have a tradition (and a story) about a strange creature that pretends to be your child, but really is an old man. So what mothers need to do when their children are young is when the child is sleeping under the covers, they need to pull the covers up from over him to make sure the baby isn’t really an old man with a beard smoking a pipe. Luckily, my mom checked on me when I was a baby and I did not have a pipe. Crisis averted.
These stories are part of a very old tradition of legends that center around the “hidden people” — or as we better know them — elves. In fact, a large number of Icelanders will not deny the existence of the hidden people. I’m sure my grandmother, an educated and highly intelligent woman, wouldn’t have, either.
And why would they? After all, denying the existence of creatures found in their stories would be similar to denying their culture. So much of Icelandic culture stems from a vast, ancient network of storytelling that goes all the way back to Viking Age itself.
