Book Review of Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth by Nancy Marie Brown

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book stats:

274 pages, published in October 2022

you may enjoy this book if you like:

Non-Fiction * Iceland * Books about Climate and the Planet

travel inspiration:

Iceland! Since our 2018 trek on the Ring Road (read about that here), we’ve been in love with this starkly beautiful country. Trip #2 was cancelled in early covid, and we plan on returning within the next year or two. This descriptive book by Brown will take its readers right into the heart of this country of rocky pillars left behind by long ago lava flows and steep mountains that climb into the clouds before disappearing.

about the author: nancy marie brown

After a decades-long career as a university-based science writer, Brown decided to try her hand at combining her knowledge and love of Scandinavian culture and history with her non-fiction writing skills. Brown’s own educational background includes graduate level comparative literature studies, and she has long held an interest in the Icelandic sagas. In fact, she spends chunks of the year living in Iceland, where she gives tours and history lessons, and the rest of the year as a resident of Vermont in the United States, where she keeps Icelandic horses. (As an aside: We had the good fortune of meeting some beautiful horses while in Iceland. Their lineage dates to the 800s-900s when Vikings brought them to Iceland, and the country has held strict requirements to prevent their line from changing.)

In addition to a young adult novel, Brown has written seven other works that heavily rest in the world of the Vikings and Icelandic sagas: Ivory Vikings (2015), The Saga of Gudrid the Far-Traveler (2015), Song of the Vikings (2012), The Abacus and the Cross (2010), The Far Traveler (2007), Mendel in the Kitchen (2004), A Good Horse Has No Color (2001), and The Real Valkyrie: The Hidden History of Viking Warrior Women (2021) (read our review of this book here).

review of looking for the hidden folk: how iceland’s elves can save the earth by nancy marie brown

With a title like Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth, I was both intrigued and wary of a tome on the supernatural. Having read a prior well-researched book by the academic author, though, I cracked open the first page ready to go wherever Brown decided to tred.

Iceland made its way into the modern consciousness and adventure travel list when it made the news in 2010 for the Eyjafjallajökull volcano erruption that caused signifiant air travel disruptions on flights to/from Europe. With an unexpected level of attention, Iceland embraced the branding and marketing opportunity to create a jazzed travel economy that continues.

But while Iceland was a small, blurry dot on the map lingering beyond mainland Europe for most of us, Brown was immersed in the land, culture, and archaeology of Iceland going back to the 1980s when she first began her travels to the country. She had a front row seat for the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull, visiting the spewing lava up close on ground that not far below it had streaming, steaming lava making its way to the surface. She watched the world turn its eyes to Iceland, the uptick in interest, and observed the tourism boom get underway as she continued traveling to the country time and time again. And in reading the articles about Iceland, she observed the frequency with which the articles joked about the number of Icelanders who believe in elves.

Brown wiggled her finger into that crack in the door and decided to explore what Icelanders say they believe, how those beliefs show up in very tangible ways (e.g., delaying road contruction to move elf houses), how they reflect the natural world now and historically, and why they really aren't all that different than beliefs widely shared around the globe. This is not, however, a book about whether elves are real or not; it is a book about the connection between people and the land, the stories we tell that reinforce that connection, and how the loss of this is intimately entwined with our climate crisis.

Brown is a wonderful storyteller, taking readers down unexpected twists and turns, and helping others see the country she has visited and gotten to know over decades. Looking for the Hidden Folk is both a love letter to Iceland and Earth but also a reminder to everyone else that we have forgotten this important, reciprocal relationship at our own risk.

Shortly after reading Looking for the Hidden Folk, I picked up Robin Wall Kimmerer's Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, a perfect companion read that expands and supplements Brown's thesis.

For anyone who loves the planet, the outdoors, and is intrigued by Iceland, I highly recommend Looking for the Hidden Folk.

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