Ah, where do we start with the myths, monsters & magic of Iceland? Þórr, better known to English-speakers as Thor, who may as well be the patron saint of Iceland? The many ghosts blamed for causing various hot springs? The Eastfjords’ Lagarfljótsormur? The infamous witchcraft museum and the necropants?
Every country – every place – has its own supernatural backstory but I’ve never felt it as prominently as I do in Iceland. Their old gods of an entire millennium ago are still there. Icelanders are automatically registered as Lutherans at birth unless their parents deliberately opt out and there are plenty of churches, some of them very pretty. But I’ve never felt the belief in God in Iceland the way I feel the belief in Thor. Belief? No, it’s less like they believe in Thor as a supernatural entity and more like they believe in Thor as a not-too-distant relative they remember fondly. The rest of them don’t get so much of a mention – I’ve met a man named Óðinn but I don’t feel like they think of him in the same way.
And then there are the ghosts. The first one that comes to mind at at Gunnuhver, on Reykjanes. Guðrún Önundardóttir, better known as Gunna, starved to death when her landlord took her cooking pot in place of the rent she hadn’t been able to pay. When she died, her coffin mysteriously turned very light and a voice was heard announcing that there was no need to bury her very deep, she didn’t plan to stay in the grave long. The ghost killed the landlord and haunted the village and eventually a sorcerer was called to remove her, which he did by dropping her into the hot spring well out of anyone’s way. I don’t know if it’s now Gunna who’s supposed to cause the boiling and the steaming and the chaos there or if the boiling and steam and chaos killed off the ghost for good.
Then there’s the deacon of Dark River. He was riding to visit his girlfriend – girlfriends don’t fit in ancient Icelandic ghost stores; his beloved lady, maybe? – but on the way a bridge collapsed, dropping the deacon and his horse into a half-frozen river where they drowned. Not perturbed by this turn of events, the deacon continued to the good lady’s house, collected her, put her on the back of his horse and rode off with her. All good except she has no idea he’s dead – not until his hood slipped down and she saw his skull illuminated by moonlight. They rode to the church at Myrká where Guðrún – her name was also Guðrún, it’s a popular name, although the deacon could not speak the name of God (Guð) after he was dead so he called her Garún) saw an open grave which the deacon tried to pull her into. Luckily he’d dragged her out of the house so quickly she only got one arm into her jacket and she managed to slip out of it and escape his grasp. The deacon fell into the grave which filled itself up and yet despite being dead and buried, he continued to haunt Guðrún until a sorcerer came and trapped the ghost permanently in the ground with a rock on top.
What other ghost stories do I have? I have a really good book, which I think I’ve mentioned before, A Traveller’s Guide to Icelandic Folk Tales by Jón R. Hjálmarsson, which details trolls and elves and wizards and ghosts and so on.
Well, there’s the whale at Hvalfjörður. Not exactly supernatural but how else do you explain whale bones at the top of one of Iceland’s highest waterfalls? That bit is absolutely true. How did they get there? Well, the whale was a man who was trapped by the elves for a year, who fathered a child by one of them and then cursed to turn into an evil whale when he denied it. The whale rampaged in the fjord, sinking ships and killing people until a local pastor managed to lead the whale up the fjord, up the river, up the waterfall and into a lake at the top, where the whale died of exhaustion.
Ok, I’ll tell you about the necropants before I finish this. There’s a museum of witchcraft in Hólmavík, which is halfway up the east coast of the Westfjords. I’ve not been there myself because I’m a little bit nervous of driving around the wilds of the Westfjords but it’s full of magical stuff. There’s magical staves – I assume these are basically magic runes like the Helm of Awe (I have a Helm of Awe phone charm hanging from my Laugavegur Trail scrapbook). There’s a zombie. There’s milk-sucking demons. There’s a ritual sacrifice bowl. Oh, and there’s necropants. Now, to be fair, you have to have permission from the… donor… before you can make necropants. You dig up the freshly-dead-and-buried donor and flay the skin from the waist down and then put them on like a pair of tights. Put a coin and a magic rune in the… well, these necropants are made from a man and so there is a small bag pocket in the middle and coins will continue to fill it as long as you leave the original in there. You can pass these on to someone else by making sure they step straight into them as soon as you take them off. They’re hairy.
Iceland has a thousand other myths and legends and ghost stories but if you want more, go for the Eddas (Prose Edda | Poetic Edda) or for the folklore book mentioned above. (The Eddas are non-Amazon affiliate links; the folklore book is an Amazon non-affiliate link)