The Icelandic Roots Writing Group recently had a story prompt of “Something That Is Very Icelandic”. The following is the story from Doreen Borgfjord McFarlane and how she relates to being Icelandic.
By Doreen Borgfjord McFarlane, June 11, 2024
Two thoughts came to my mind as I considered what I think of as being particularly Icelandic. One is related to genealogy and immigration. The other is, probably not surprisingly, about hidden folk and Icelandic ghosts and such.
I was raised with a great deal of pride about being Icelandic. Where I come from, Winnipeg, Canada, it was considered perfectly normal to say “I’m an Icelander” or “I’m Icelandic.” (In the process, my mother’s English lineage was simply tucked away and not spoken about.) It mattered not at all that I had not myself come from Iceland, or even my father, who was born in Arborg, Manitoba. If you came from Icelanders then you were Icelandic. End of discussion.
I was raised to have love for a country that my grandparents who came to Canada in 1888 never were able to return to, and a country my dear father never laid his eyes upon. When I finally got to Iceland in 2017 and again in 2023, I believed I was not coming for the first time but somehow “returning home.” I was beyond thrilled when I learned that the Icelandic people actually did not think of us as Canadians and Americans but rather as “western Icelanders”. We were their own! And, we had simply travelled west; well, in fact quite far west! How wonderful for me to learn that, just as my emotions had always told me, I am indeed an Icelander!
My second topic about things very Icelandic is related to people we also love but cannot see with our eyes: the huldufolk; the little people, the hidden people. They, along with Icelandic ghosts, have been beloved by the Icelanders and remain so.
I have a strong sense that, like things and ideas religious, people tend to believe in them, and not believe in them at the same time. (The Icelanders, after all, do come out of deeply pagan roots and in some ways have never given up Thor and Odin and such.)
I read recently that there may be a good reason the Icelanders cling to their magical friends. It may well be because when they arrived in Iceland so many years ago, they realized it was totally unpopulated. No fellow Scandinavians had settled there. And not any Indigenous people! They were isolated on their farms and very much alone. It warms my heart to think that, in the absence of any living breathing neighbors, the early Icelanders became sensitive and aware of alternate possibilities – people and little people, ghosts and apparitions who lived alongside them and who might be communicated with on lonely dark winter nights. Hence, our many Icelandic tales about these people who live among us!
I love all things Icelandic and I hope you have enjoyed these wandering Icelandic thoughts.