Bedtime Story

Thursday nights, Airwaves Hotel Reykjavik Natura hosts "Bedtime Stories", where professional actors/readers come and tell/read Icelandic stories to an audience. This is a free event, and they offer hot chocolate, cookies, pillows, and blankets, and encourage us to wear our pyjamas. The story teller tonight was, in fact, one of my professors at the University, and he told us wonderful folkloric tales of elves, seals, trolls, and ghosts. He sat in an idyllic red velvet armchair, on a dark stage with a single lamp shining down on his book.

The story I want to tell you is about the origin of elves. But first, whatever your impression of elves may be, Icelandic elves are said to be very similar to humans, only more beautiful, and capable. They live only in the countryside, maintaining a rural lifestyle, tending sheep and cattle.

The genesis of elves is an interesting mixture of Nordic and Christian mythology. In the beginning, Adam and Eve had fourteen children. They lived in a house, and one day God came to visit them. Eve was in the middle of bathing the children when God arrived. God asked Eve how many children she and Adam had, and if he may see them. Eve was ashamed to present the seven unbathed children to God, so she told Him that they had seven children, and presented the clean ones to Him. God, knowing very well how many children there were in reality, said to Eve: "What you have kept hidden from my eyes will also be kept hidden from human eyes henceforward." And this is why elves are not visible to humans today, except for when elves wish to reveal themselves.