The Prophecy Stone of Viðey — One Word at Midnight

Viðey Island, Reykjavík Harbour, Iceland

Viðey Island in Reykjavík harbour was once a monastery. A flat stone on the island's northern shore is said to speak one word to whoever presses their ear against it at midnight. The word is always accurate. No one knows what it means at the time.

Viðey is a small island in Kollfjörður, barely two kilometres from central Reykjavík, once the site of the oldest stone building in Iceland — the Viðey church, built in 1225. A monastery operated here from 1226 until the Reformation, when its property was confiscated and its abbot executed. The island was subsequently a farm, a governor's residence, and eventually a public park. John Lennon's Imagine Peace Tower has burned here every October since 2007. The prophecy stone tradition is attached to the island's monastic period but predates it in the folk memory. There is a flat stone on the northern shore — unremarkable in appearance, perhaps a metre across, partially buried — that the island's fishing community associated with a specific capacity. At midnight, if you press your ear to the stone, you hear one word. Not a sentence. Not a question. One word, in Icelandic, spoken at normal conversational volume as if by someone immediately behind the stone. The word is always in the future tense. It describes a thing that will happen. It does not say when, or to whom, or in what circumstances. It is always accurate — the people who have tested this and kept records are consistent on this point — but its accuracy becomes apparent only after the event described has occurred. The accounts span from the 15th century through the mid-20th. Three different words were given to three different listeners in the same month of 1892. All three events occurred before the following summer. The words given were: 'burning,' 'lost,' and 'born.' The stone is still on the northern shore. Its precise location is not marked on any Viðey map. The island's caretaker knows where it is. He does not press his ear against it.