May 19, 2025

We need to talk about the Eddas and Sagas of Iceland. Not fairy tales, not bedtime stories. These are some of the oldest written narratives in Europe. Tales of outlaws and settlers, doomed love, suffering and yes, elves. These are tales that are so thick they make Shakespeare look like a novice. They were first written down in the 13th and 14th centuries, but they had been passed down orally for centuries before that. Around fires through long winters where entertainment options were fairly limited unless you were skilled at knitting in the dark.

It is interesting to note that Iceland has one of the highest literacy rates in the world and has for centuries. Even in the 14th century when much of Europe was still struggling to educate the working class, Icelanders were expected to read. This is a country that was built on words. When the rest of Europe was building castles, Iceland was building fictional characters. And these words were not just entertainment, they were cultural nuances, they explained how a farm got its name, why that ridge might be cursed and why your great grandfather got insulted during a sheep dispute. They gave meaning to the land, to the weather, what it meant to be Icelandic.

And here’s the point. They weren’t always realistic. That’s what happens when you tell a story. The fish gets bigger each time the story of the catch is repeated. To Islanders it is not necessarily a lie, just a negotiable blur.

There seems to be a social tolerance here for imagination. You don’t have to believe in something for it to be tolerated. You don’t have to destroy the story. It’s not about the literal belief; it’s about cultural permission. It’s about creating space for things that may not even be true but have become part of your country’s folklore.

It’s about elves.

And the tradition of telling stories has not gone away. It has gotten stronger.

Today, Iceland has the highest number of authors per capita in the world. One in ten Islanders will publish a book in their lifetime. Just think about that. 1 in 10! In other places you’re lucky if 1 in 10 people read a book! In Iceland they write them!

There is even a special name for this publishing season: Jolabokaflodid. During the Christmas season people give each other books often that they have written themselves. And the kind of stories being written are not rehashed. But they always have that same thread running through them, a deep connection to place and the willingness to let the strange and the sacred sit side by side. These stories are popular outside of Iceland as noted by the fact that Hallador Laxness, an Icelandic writer, won the Nobel Prize in Literature. “A grand writer who towers like a cliff above the flatland of contemporary writing, a new literary giant—it is our duty to celebrate that fact with joy!” Those were the comments made during the Nobel Prize presentation.

There is a strong sense that stories matter in Iceland. That imagination is not something you grow out of but grow into.

More importantly, is that your landscape is not just something you walk across but something that you tell stories about. True or fictional.

And that perhaps explains elves.

Stories told for centuries take on a life of their own with a strong serving of embellishment added to the recipe with each retelling. You don’t just walk across the landscape you are careful not to disturb who may be right under your feet. Maybe there is nothing under that rock, but the end result is that you walk more carefully, you respect the land. It is the least you can do. Especially to a story (elf) that has kept you warm many a cold winter night.

Thanks for traveling with us.