Gretchen Pankhurst's first update on the Elves, Huldufolk and Icelandic sea creatures expedition.

Gretchen Pankhurst here - reporting from Olafsfjordur, Northern Iceland where I am currently based.

Gretchen Pankhurst - research assistant.

In recent days I have been exploring the lay of this beautiful land,this has given me every confidence that my mission to find the indigenous Elves, Huldufolk or Sea Creatures will be a successful one.

Today however I met Hronn who is the librarian for the whole of the Fjallabyggd area, that is to say she is the head librarian of both Olafsfjordur and Siglufjordur. She returned happily 2 years ago to her home area after 25 years away. Unfortunately Hronn advised me that I was not looking in the right area of Iceland at all, and that I should go to Hljodaklettar which is the best place for Elves as it has the best stories as well as fantastic landscape. She also told me East Iceland was best for monsters but that I could also go to Eylafjordur which is not too far away.

Possible Elf habitat.

You might imagine that i was disappointed by this news, but much like Professor Hildeberg ( who has taught me so much ) my instincts were telling me otherwise. There is something in the air. I am confident that with patience and a lot of time my endeavours will be rewarded.

Elves are usually found living in rocks - this looks extremely hopeful.

I was not disheartened by this news, Hronn showed me some websites and some books which i will pour over tonight. 

I met some other interesting and intelligent people but they didn’t know any more than myself as they were both working in education and one was from Sweden and the other originally Slovakia.

But then in the supermarket which really does seem to be the hub of everything in Olafsfjordur, I met a lovely gentleman ‘ Ingi Thor ‘ perhaps his name is - he has not seen Elves but he has seen ghosts and he advised me to take my research to the home for mature residents, because they would be able to tell me a lot more and give me their eye-witness accounts.

Evidence of some type of creature.

I also met Kristine she told me there are many stories around Olafsfjordur, she told me that January 6th is the day that the Elves appear ( unfortunate that I have just missed it for this year ) some years ago Mikhail ( a man who lives in Olafsfjordur ) saw an unknown Horse running around loose, he alerted some other towns people to it, nobody knew where it came from, they realised then it was an Elf horse. Three years later on the 6th January one of Mikhail’s own horses dissappeared and has never been found since.

A place I plan to contemplate at length 

In Olafsjordur and indeed the whole of Iceland there are many stories like this one. I hope very much to hear them. There are many written down that I can tell you about,but I hope mostly to hear people’s stories at first hand.

Tomorrow I am going to go and talk to Loa in the supermarket as she has a lot of stories to tell me from her father. 

A likely place to look for Huldufolk

I am in no rush, I plan to stay here for however long it takes.

Nature, Elves, Huldufolk, Creatures, Ghosts whatever we wish to call them they need to be listened for patiently, you can’t rush something that has been part of the natural World for 100’s or 1000’s of years. Just because the pace of modern life is so quick,  we can’t hurry nature to fit in with our work loads, schedules, banking hours etc.

What both Ingi Thor and Kristina were saying is that we have to take things slower and really take our time to listen,to concentrate on what nature and the mountains have to tell us.