The Huldufolk and the elf stones

Living Icelandic tradition that has genuinely rerouted real roads

Huldufólk means hidden people, and the way to understand Icelandic belief in them is to stop asking whether Icelanders think elves are real. Surveys run by the University of Iceland have repeatedly found that more than half the population will not flatly deny that the hidden people exist, which is a different question and a much more interesting answer. It is less a faith than a refusal to be rude about the landscape.

The proof of it is in the roads. At Álfhóll, Elf Hill, in Kópavogur just south of Reykjavík, attempts to put a road through the rock have failed since the 1940s. In one attempt machinery broke down repeatedly with no explanation anybody liked. In the 1990s powerful drills came apart against the rock without marking it. The road there today simply narrows and bends around the hill, and the hill is now a protected site.

It happens at national scale too. On the Álftanes peninsula a road project in 2013 ran into a stone that could not be moved, and the way it was resolved is the most Icelandic detail available: a seer, Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, negotiated with the hidden people on the project's behalf, and an arrangement was reached in which the stone would be lifted and set down beside other stones of its kind rather than destroyed.

The practical shape of the belief is that certain rocks and hills are somebody's home and you do not blast them without asking. Whether you take the somebody literally is left open on purpose.

The pin sits in the Reykjavík area, where Álfhóll is. Walk up to it. It is an unremarkable knuckle of lava with a road politely going around it, and that is exactly the point.