The Sea Troll of Hornstrandir — Guardian of the Far Cliffs

Hornstrandir, Westfjords, Iceland

The Hornstrandir peninsula in the Westfjords — the most remote land in Iceland — is said to harbour a sea troll who guards the cliff-bird colonies and capsizes boats from fishermen who take more than their share.

Hornstrandir is the northernmost peninsula of Iceland's Westfjords region, uninhabited since the 1950s and accessible only by boat in summer. Its cliffs are among the highest seabird nesting sites in the North Atlantic — puffins, guillemots, razorbills, and thousands of kittiwakes colonising every ledge from the waterline to the fog. The tradition of the Hornstrandir sea troll is not one creature but a type: the guardian of the cliff-fisheries, known in the region as the Bergbúinn — the Cliff-Dweller — who monitors what is taken from the sea and the cliffs and enforces a kind of rough accounting. Fishermen who took seabird eggs in quantities considered excessive found their boats capsized in calm water. The capsize was always described the same way: the boat tilted from the side away from shore, as if something large had pushed from the open sea. No wreck was ever explained by normal conditions. The men who survived these capsizings returned to shore and did not take eggs again. The same troll was credited with guiding lost boats back to the Hornstrandir shore in fog — steering them away from the reef at the peninsula's western point that lies barely below the surface and has never been charted reliably. Whether guide or executioner depended entirely, the local tradition maintained, on what you had taken and how much. Hornstrandir was deserted when the last farms were abandoned in 1952. The troll, if it was ever tied to the human presence there, has not left with the people. Hikers who camp on the peninsula report unusual sounds from the sea after dark.