An elf in the rock

An elf in the rock

Iceland before the twentieth century was by all accounts a gloomy place. The turf and driftwood houses in which most Icelanders lived were stuffy and largely windowless; the oil lamps that illuminated them during the long dark winters too weak to light whole rooms. It is perhaps no wonder, then, that a belief in the supernatural flourished. Halfway through this anthology of Icelandic folk tales, Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir quotes a man born in 1923 as…