The Hidden People of Snæfellsnes

Snæfellsnes Peninsula, West Iceland

The Huldufólk of Snæfellsnes are the best-documented community of hidden folk in Iceland — believed to inhabit specific rock formations along the peninsula, consulted before construction and road-building to this day.

Snæfellsnes Peninsula stretches sixty kilometres into the Atlantic west of Reykjavík, dominated by the glacier-capped Snæfellsjökull volcano at its tip. The peninsula's lava fields and rock formations are among the densest concentrations of Huldufólk belief in Iceland. The Huldufólk — hidden people — are not the diminutive fairies of northern European tradition. They are human in scale, described as resembling Icelanders in appearance and organisation, living in a parallel society within the rocks and hills that coexists with but is invisible to normal human perception. They are not benevolent, exactly — they are simply present, with their own interests and their own sense of what is due to them. On Snæfellsnes, specific rocks are identified as Huldufólk residences, and these rocks are treated with corresponding respect in construction projects. Road planners in Iceland have a long-standing practice of consulting an elf-seer — someone with the ability to perceive the hidden people — before cutting through significant rock formations. Several roads on the peninsula have been rerouted after consultation indicated that the planned route would disturb occupied residences. This is not fringe practice. A 1998 Gallup poll found that 54 percent of Icelanders believed in the existence of the Huldufólk, with a further 25 percent declining to disbelieve. The Snæfellsnes tradition is the most active surviving centre of this belief. The glacier at the tip of the peninsula — described by Jules Verne as the entrance to the centre of the Earth — is considered by some practitioners to be a significant point of contact between the Huldufólk world and the human one.