“Unseen neighbours who farm the lava fields, and who can stall a bulldozer just by being thought to live there.”
The Huldufólk, the 'hidden people,' live parallel to Iceland — inside the rocks, hills and lava fields that Icelanders build their roads around. They look like people, dress in the old fashion (grey, or green, in most accounts), keep farms and livestock, marry and raise children; they are simply not visible, except when they choose to be, or when the boundary thins on certain nights of the year.
What makes the hidden people singular is not the belief but its persistence. Surveys across fifty years find only a small minority of Icelanders certain the huldufólk exist — and nearly half unwilling to rule them out. That ambivalence has real-world weight: bulldozers blamed for breaking down, roads rerouted around named elf stones, and a 2013 highway project through the Gálgahraun lava field halted while the courts heard from the Friends of Lava.
The Legend
The origin tale is domestic and a little heartbreaking. Eve, caught unprepared by a visit from God, hid the children she had not yet washed and lied about their existence. God's reply became the hidden people's charter: 'What man hides from God, God will hide from man.' Other traditions make them fallen angels too good for hell and too compromised for heaven, or the children of Adam and Lilith — beings adjacent to humanity, set just out of sight.
The hidden people keep a calendar. New Year's Eve is their moving day, when whole households of them relocate, and Icelanders once left candles burning to light their way. Twelfth Night brought elf bonfires, the álfabrennur; on Midsummer Night, folklore warns, they wait at crossroads offering food and gifts to test mortals; and at Christmas, farmhouses were cleaned and food left out — with tales of wild elf parties in the houses of those who left them empty.
The Record
The belief has been measured for a century and a half. Surveys from 1870 to 1920 found roughly ten percent of Icelanders professing actual belief; a 1974 study put certainty at seven percent; recent polling still finds seven to eight percent certain and around forty-five percent who consider the hidden people likely or possible. Folklorist Terry Gunnell's summary has become the standard one: very few Icelanders will say they believe — but they won't deny it either.
The construction record is stranger than the polling. In 1971 a bulldozer breakdown in Kópavogur was blamed on an elf rock and made national news. In 1982, about 150 Icelanders visited the NATO base at Keflavík to check on elves endangered by American Phantom jets. In 2004, Alcoa had to obtain certification that its smelter site held no huldufólk dwellings, and in 2013 the Gálgahraun road project stalled while the Supreme Court heard the Friends of Lava, who counted elf habitat among the harms. The road authority examined the disputed rocks — citing cultural heritage, not belief.
The Lore
Whether huldufólk and álfar — elves — are the same beings is an old argument. The scholar Konrad von Maurer held that 'hidden people' began as a euphemism to avoid naming the álfar outright; Terry Gunnell suggests different settlement-era beliefs blended into one tradition; a 2006 study by Katrin Sontag found 54 percent of Icelanders don't distinguish the two at all. Faroese tradition, for its part, describes the hidden folk as tall, grey-clad and black-haired.
Skeptics inside Iceland, like ethnographer Árni Björnsson, contend the whole business is exaggerated for children and tourists — and tourism has certainly embraced it. Reykjavík hosts an Elf School offering five-hour excursions into hidden-people lore, and Hafnarfjörður runs guided 'Hidden Worlds' walks through Hellisgerði Park, billed as the town's largest elf colony. The rocks, meanwhile, stay where they are; it is the roads that move.
Field Notes
- ✦ Surveys find few Icelanders certain they exist — and nearly half unwilling to rule them out.
- ✦ Road and building works have been altered to spare their dwellings.
- ✦ Closely tied to elf (álfar) traditions; many Icelanders use the two names interchangeably.
- ✦ Folk origin: Eve's unwashed children, hidden from God and so hidden from man in return.
- ✦ New Year's Eve is their moving day; candles were left burning to light their processions.
Case File
- Classification
- Hidden nature folk / elves
- Category
- Little People/Fae
- Territory
- Iceland nationwide; also known in the Faroe Islands
- First Sighted
- Long-standing Icelandic tradition
- Habitat
- Hills, rocks, lava fields and boulders
- Reported Size
- Human-like in size and appearance
- Also Known As
- Hidden People · Hidden Folk