Three inhabitants per square kilometre: it would almost seem normal to want pixies for neighbours.A sun that hardly sets any more in the fine season, islands sprung straight from the bowels of the Earth, cliffs where seabirds nest. In Iceland, people still hold on to what allowed them to survive, and to what remains invisible. Two stories for Faut pas rêver: on the Westman Islands, a handful of men carry on collecting seabird eggs at the end of a rope; on the country’s roads, Icelanders tell of the hidden people of elves, trolls and gnomes.
It was by gathering the eggs of fulmars and guillemots along the cliffs that the people of the Westman Islands survived famines. No one lives from it any more, and the law allows only one weekend a year for the collection. At the head of a handful of men is Halli Geir: chief of the town’s police, fourth in his category at the last world arm-wrestling championships, and cliff acrobat. On the Westmans, no swings or sandpits: the kids grow up at the end of a rope. On the quay, he meets his friends, among them Stewart, from England, where collecting is no longer allowed. Course set for Bjarnarey; two hundred and fifty metres higher up, the bags and provisions still have to be hauled up, hoping the rope holds. In the evening, everyone has their own larder: fermented shark, dried fish, puffin, pickled sheep’s testicles, fulmar eggs. The next day, a home-made machine helps Halli Geir down the rock face, with Hlötver on the rope. “Collecting eggs is both fun and serious.” A few dozen eggs in two days: for Halli Geir and Hlötver, it will not last.
For Hlötver, a new generation will only take over if one day there is internet and television in the hut.
The fulmar always lays at the same time, in mid-May: from one year to the next, its eggs can be counted on.
So fragile that the buckets are lined with plenty of grass. In the past, collecting them was even banned at times: the bird was more precious than the egg.
In its early days, the machine hauled the man up the cliff at 80 km/h; it had to be modified.Iceland has only 330,000 inhabitants, but nearly a million trolls, elves and gnomes. According to the very serious Professor Magnus Skarphéðinsson, more than one Icelander in two is convinced they exist; 8,000 people from all over the world have already consulted him in his office in Reykjavik. He has never seen one himself, but elves are everywhere: flower elves are seven centimetres tall, mountain trolls from two and a half to six metres. They complain that people lie, steal and pollute. By the motorway, he points out the grey rock: during the roadworks, the machines kept breaking down and the accidents followed one after another, until a medium spoke to the elves, who were furious; the company moved the rock fifteen metres with a crane. Due east, Kété, who communicates with them, saw in a dream two elves suggesting she build a little house by the roadside, with a sweet dispenser. On the Westman Islands, finally, Árni Johnsen, an MP for twenty-five years, rolled over five times one day in bad weather and came to rest at the foot of a rock that saved him. He brought it home: twenty-five tonnes, and two ferry tickets for the young elf couple, children and the elderly travelling free.
Among the first Vikings who landed 1,150 years ago, Magnus Skarphéðinsson maintains, there were shamans who could already see elves.
According to Árni Johnsen, the elf house has two storeys and windows looking onto the sea, which its inhabitants had never seen.“We can learn from them to be modest, to be good, and also to live without aggression. Today, there are so many people who don’t look at the stars…”Árni Johnsen, on the elves