The rune Fe = Wealth
In Nordurardalur, one of Iceland’s northernmost regions, my beloved David and I drive from the whale watching party town of Arkureyri further north to the fishing village of Hjalteyri, to a one-time sheep farm called Aranaress Paradiso, meaning eagle peninsula paradise, where we will stay for a few days in hopes of seeing the whales. Despite the isolation, I consider the name a good sign as it is a father-sign, the bird my father cherished and which has appeared, along with the kestrel and heron, as totemic birds in my life—not that they guide me—I am unguidable, but these birds remind me to pay attention.
We see no eagles.
We have been drinking Gull, the commoner’s beer. I have been learning Icelandic runes and making jokes about the bad translations. We have come to Iceland to honor David’s retirement from thirty plus years of teaching. But the surface reason, a retirement trip, an adventure to mark the juncture, the new phase, the once-in-a-lifetime photo-op masks a more mysterious reason. To be honest, I chose Iceland. He agreed. I wanted to brush up against a beauty that would break me, us, in some way I couldn’t define. For all our staid qualities, I wanted to pierce this quiet, companion- rich marriage. I knew only that the imagery would have to be dramatic, theatrical, and at the same time earthbound. I knew this because these forces are who we are: he, the rock; I, the drama. Yet both of us, we are also our opposites. The relationship shifts like the tectonic plates beneath this country, about two centimeters a year. But the tectonic plates part; could we move closer? And what of the friction of that? Beauty that breaks us. We are now only a few days from the end of this trip. We have seen sights that have brought us to tears, but we are still who we are.
The highway parallels the spine of volcanic ridge north, then north again as it rises to agitated peaks, then falls away, opening views to the fjord. Opening views. As happens in Iceland. Every curve opens a view, a sight, a new wonder. On the other side of that ridge, the Eyjafjordur is white- striped and steely, indicating the deep waters through which the whales migrate. We are not far from the Arctic Circle, but the sun is deceptive, extended even so late in the day. And wind. Even at the base of the ridge, the wind shrills—puffing wildly down from the heights. When you rent a car in Iceland, men with beautiful accents warn you: note the wind when you open car doors—wind that strong. One clerk told us this is the third windiest place on the planet, but no one lives in the first two.
The rune Sol = Sun
When we unstrangle the suitcases from the car and tow them toward the door of the hostel, the gusts push us forcibly into the great room and slam the doors behind us. Despite clean bright walls and finished floors, shades of the Viking mead halls permeate these adapted-to-guesthouse sheep barns. High-ceilinged, beamed, spacious but shadowy. The commons area is mapped with small mismatched tables where other hikers gather to read and play cards (not a euchre player in the bunch) in the low light spilling from the window bays at each end. This is June: that sun will last until nearly midnight, some light all night long. The light’s angle silhouettes us as we arrive, makes us almost otherworldly. This long light, the way it slides sideways for so many hours into the evening, makes you want to believe the things they, these Icelanders, want you to believe.
Just inside, shoes cluster the floor like villages—no one in Iceland wears shoes in their houses. We will quickly learn that Eyglo, the proprietor who warmly greets us, also felts indoor slippers; elf shoes, she calls them. Colorful and warm, she offers them for house wear. It is our first clue. What we don’t know. The place is also called the Elf House, and Eyglo, a self- taught artist, paints images of the elves (who she has never seen), and also of the hidden people (who she has also never seen). These portraits grace a small table shrine, hanging in a pinnacle arrangement with the mermaid of the rocks at the center—she’s yet a different being.
“This is how they look in my mind,” Eyglo explains. There are six in close vicinity: House Fairy, Garden Fairy, two elves —each with different purpose, the Hidden Lady. A merman just at the base of the fjord. The mermaid also lives near a rock offshore in the fjord, but she’s “way out there.” They have Icelandic names, but these are unpronounceable, not out of any mystical issue, but because it’s Icelandic.
If asked, Eyglo quietly provides a map of where on her property these alternative beings hang out. It’s a slick little tract with the usual challenges that Icelanders seem to have with accurate proportions on maps, but it numbers the places where the fairies and hidden people live, and next to her thumbnail portraits, offers brief descriptions and what she believes about their existence. Since I have just published a new fairy tale, The Lake Michigan Mermaid, I am not about to dis a woman for her belief in elves and hidden people. And of course, I am curious. This soft-spoken, plump proprietor with dark brown eyes and warm hands who makes her own lava bread—also dark brown (and baked in geothermally heated ovens)— who greets everyone with an unpretentious welcome, seems an unlikely candidate for elf-whisperer.
I settle in for what I think is the lighthearted experience of being with someone who believes that in this otherworldly place there really are other worlds. She does not proselytize, but she asks if maybe there are other dimensions, ones we cannot begin to imagine. That’s where these beings are, she claims, “In other dimensions.” She’s not talking physics. I don’t think she’s talking physics. She never claims to have seen them, and says only that if you are quiet and meditative, that they will become present to you, and sometimes will answer a question, for they know some things we do not. It occurs to me that everything in the natural world knows things we humans do not, but I don’t quibble.
It also crosses my mind that hers is the best of touristy gimmicks, though if so, it is a quiet gimmick. Nothing on the website alludes to the presence of these beings, elves, or any mystical peeping toms. She does not seem whimsical nor silly but practical and down to earth. In fact, she is not the first to speak to us of this belief among the Icelandic people—we were told the road commissioners will change the direction of the roads if they believe they are disturbing the elves’ property or the homes of hidden people—and there have been contracts between humans and elves regarding said roads.
When I press a bit, she speaks openly in broken but clear English of the Icelanders’ belief in the elves and the hidden people, “We are such a young country—we live on a fault line, volcanoes and glaciers still move here, and humans settled for only about a thousand years, and so few of us, really, so recent. We have Sagas of those times. We still feel the forces here in the north. We are still close to earth, to the natural processes, to what it was like only a few decades ago in the darkness of winter, without electricity, with only the animals and the shadows and the wind and the aurora and the long nights. These other folks would have been a comfort. Or maybe they need our comfort.” She is so sincere, I have another beer. I can imagine a winter loneliness this near the Arctic Circle would demand unearthly (or other earthly) comfort.
Over a late beer, David and I sit with her. I ask her to tell me more about her little people. She is quick to correct me, and makes what seems a crucial distinction. “Not little people. Little people are here. Like munchkins in Wizard of Oz.” I apologize, not mentioning that too is a fairy tale. David gives me the look, meaning I am on shaky ground.
But she is sunny about this teaching. “Two kinds. Elves and hidden people.” She goes on to explain that elves are truly another kind of being, a bit smaller than we are, with pointed ears, sharp hearing, long lives. They see us in ways we do not see ourselves. Despite her objection, her interpretation follows the descriptions of the “little people” I have heard of in Ireland.
“But the hidden people are just like us,” she says. “Like us?”
She tells us the story of the “Hidden People” who are not elves but are humans living invisibly alongside us. She tells us their creation story. In paradise, when God was to visit Adam and Eve, they would prepare for his visit. But Eve had so many children, and she was so desperate about getting them all clean and presentable that she hid the ones she could not get cleaned up in time. “Of course,” Eyglo says, “God is God, and knew all this, and said to her that since he could not see them, she would not be able to see them either.” They became unseen, living invisibly alongside us. Of course, it’s another vengeful god story, or a story in which deception must always be punished—no one gets away with shit, so take it to heart, especially if you’re hiding dirty kids in the cave in the back forty. And certainly, let us show no compassion for an overwhelmed mom. But still, the idea that they exist among us intrigues me. I look at David, who is quietly listening, sipping in his usual polite silence. Yes, he would take this in, quietly accepting.
But the point for Eyglo? The hidden people are with us still, and though we can’t see them, they sometimes need us, for they live much more simply than we do, “. . . like the Amish,” she tells us (how does she know about the Amish?), and “especially in birth they often need our help,” though she does not say how we help them. But if we do, they always leave us something, “a spoon or something silver that is not like anything else in the world.” Unlike anything else in the world. I study her face, clear and open and kind. “Ask them,” she says, looking at me as though she knows I have a question. But I have no pressing question. Do I? I’m from the U.S., visiting Iceland, touring the Ring Road with my husband, David, seeing the sights, hiking and drinking Gull, and so I smile and tell her that I am glad she has such a connection to them. She leaves me to my skepticism. I stare out her light-filled windows. Not a bird, totemic or otherwise, in sight. In the middle of the night, I wake to the silky light that never leaves Iceland at this time of year. I wake knowing I am curled around the question about my marriage. I fall back to sleep in that light. In the morning the question has again disappeared.
The rune Logur = Water
Because I have written a tale about a mermaid, and it’s selling well, and my writing partner in the project will be delighted, I do want to find Eyglo’s mermaid’s rock. Take the picture. Send it to my writing partner. So jokes aside, the next morning, David and I follow Eyglo’s map until we are confused—not unusual with Icelandic maps, so we leave off looking for her path and do what Americans do, cross the field randomly—harder going as the mounds of soft brush and grass disguise the lava-racked terrain, pocked with small secret holes—which deceive even my goat-footed stride, not to mention what they’re doing to David’s new knee. Perfect habitat for elves, I swear. A tractor path stumbles us up to the north-south ridge. We come upon the eastern side of the fjord and walk toward a bluff where Eyglo has said if we were lucky, we might see the whales blow. I click dozens of photos, looking for the mermaid rock. The fjord spreads north below us, its mysteries sliced by froth. Do the other dimensions flow from the dark water, or the fire under it this far north?
We watch the distant waves, the old water spread below us. No whales, but it occurs to me we are walking at the far end of the world, as far north as we will ever be. The terns and plovers rise over us, calling alarms. Or just calling. Depends on how we hear them, or how much we know of the behavior of terns and plovers. At our feet, small brave flowers blossom densely, and we step carefully. I find myself thinking that I do not want to disturb them, whoever Eyglo claims gather in the rock cluster on this side of the ridge.
Then, at the brink, a turn, an even grander view of the northern fjord. That’s what this country does—you turn, and there’s another view, different and more dramatic. But on the very edge of the bluff, a too- peculiar coincidence rising: at my feet a fire ring embedded in the sedge and cudweed, a deliberate oval of stones set in place on the edge of this bluff that falls to icy waters, stones set with a single stone at one end of the ring to rest the pot, and then a sit-upon stone just outside the circle. A circle, a stone inside, a stone outside, unused for some time—the grasses grow unruly between the stones. A stone circle? This is uncanny.
Later, Eyglo will ask if I felt them.
I think about this trip, coming to Iceland for David’s retirement, coming to this northern reach to see if there will be a shift now that he does not have to work so hard, now that he will have more time. But here I am again, wandering ahead with him following. David trails behind, yes, tender of his new knee, but also giving me, I have to believe, time to be in the solitude I crave. Attentive, but following.
It comes to me like a whisper that I am feeling around inside our marriage, our question of how we see each other. I can see him in my mind, a thumbnail of gentility, tenderness, always near, not always visible. It has been a long time since I have felt David because he is always there—so present, he is hidden from me in his quiet constancy.
I leave the fire ring, the question hanging—who made it?
Walk a long fence line, find a place on the edge of the bluff, in cool grass, stare north to the Iceland Sea. Energy, wildness, stunningly fresh air, my own sense of grateful adventure, and finally, the heightened mind that comes with being on the edge.
David nearby, but not with me.
Terns and plovers and gulls dive, soar, call—a chaotic harmony. I turn to search. He is far across the ridge, sitting in the moss, watching me.
Among us, always near us, Eyglo said, but we can’t see them.
Are we the hidden people?
Truth is: David and I are different people. And we are deeply attached. We practice love for each other, but we do not always have much in common, and are often at odds in our decision making, a respectful but long-winded, passive-aggressive process. What do you want? No, what do you want? We do not wish to part; we do not even feel entirely comfortable sitting apart. Or rather, he does not. Or rather, I do not. I’m not sure which. Both. Yet, we do sit apart. It comes to me that Rilke wrote about two solitudes respecting each other. Like that?
In the way of long marriages, I listen to the wind. I watch the immensely cold fjord kick up white caps that might be whales blowing but are not. I tell myself it is important to be separate, to sit on different ridges, and that I am who I am, and he is who he is, and we do not compromise that. But maybe that is not important at all. These are deep northern waters. It comes to me slowly: this Iceland trip was more mine than his, more about me wanting a new territory, new . . . something. Over the ridge, the varied, interlocking fugues of a dozen northern birds ring out like odd bells. Did I ever say that was what I wanted? Maybe the hidden people can hear the harmonies. I had been imagining a different harmony. I try to listen to this one. I try to be present. What was it I wanted? I can’t remember. Only this: these deeps of marriage may not change all that much anymore. I look across the ridge. He waves, rises, steps into the grasses and walks toward me.
It comes to me that sometimes I am hidden from him. Oh. That idea.
The rune Ar = Plenty
When we come down from the ridges, I ask Eyglo to help me identify the mermaid rock among my photos. As I flip through images, she sees the picture of the ring of stones, the small firepit.
She interrupts. “Where is this? Where were you?” she asks. I try to tell her.
“I’ve never seen this.” Her face, creased with wonder.
I explain how it works with the stone inside for the pot, and the stone outside the circle for sitting. Then I realize, from the expression on her face, that explanation is not relevant.
I say, “Maybe the Hidden People built it.”
She studies me closely to see if I am joking. Her face is searching; she finally nods. She has known this ridge for a long time, she says, but she has not seen this circle of stones. I have been in circles of stones and circles around fires all my adult life, since realizing I wanted to make poems, and I have told tales and said poems by heart at those circles. I have been part of a storytelling group for a couple decades. About this, I do not joke.
But how did I find this circle? I stumbled on it like I stumble onto so much in my life. OR. Did the elves cross dimensions for a brief moment? Did the hidden people join our separate worlds for the click of my iPhone? No.
Eyglo’s stories break into metaphor. The questions reveal. Do any of us ever fully realize what it means to sit at the circle, and then to separate from the circle, or to be with a mate who lets you walk into the circle of solitude and sits apart from you and watches while you feel the heat of imagination work its way, while the wind chills and blesses you, while the birds shout their otherworldly alleluia of hunger and alarm and being alive? Except for Eyglo’s wonder, I’d say the fire pit was probably left by fishermen decades ago, who came there with fresh catch and cooked a meal in the open, and felt the wind, the long-spirited sun, and listened to the birds. And okay, yes, I want to believe it may also have been the place where the hidden people met to exchange stories of the humans who wander apart but never far apart, from them or from each other, where they whisper to us what they see so we may see ourselves.
Anne-Marie Oomen is author of The Lake Michigan Mermaid (with Linda Nemec Foster), Love, Sex and 4-H (Next Generation Indie Award for Memoir), Pulling Down the Barn and House of Fields (both Michigan Notable Books), An American Map: Essays, and a collection of poetry, Uncoded Woman (Milkweed Editions). She edited Looking Over My Shoulder: Reflections on the Twentieth Century (MCH). She has written seven plays, including the award-winning Secrets of Luuce Talk Tavern. She is an instructor at Solstice MFA at Pine Manor College (MA), and Interlochen College of Creative Arts. Visit her at www.anne-marieoomen.com