The Stone Trolls of Reynisfjara — Caught by Sunrise

Reynisfjara Beach, South Iceland

The sea stacks at Reynisfjara — Reynisdrangar — are trolls who tried to drag a three-masted ship to land through the night and failed. Sunrise caught them mid-pull, and they have stood frozen in the surf ever since.

Reynisfjara is a black sand beach on the southern coast of Iceland, backed by remarkable hexagonal basalt columns and flanked by three sea stacks rising from the water — Reynisdrangar — that the folk tradition has a very specific explanation for. Two trolls lived in the cave in the cliff above the beach. One night, spotting a three-masted ship too far from shore to be of use to them, they waded out and seized it. They pulled. The ship resisted. They pulled harder. Their feet were in the surf, their hands on the hull, and the ship was coming — slowly, slowly — toward shore. They had not noticed the time. The eastern sky lightened. Sunrise caught them exactly as they were: straining, forward-leaning, up to their waists in the sea. The process of petrification is instantaneous in the folklore tradition. One moment they were trolls. The next, basalt. A third stack stands apart, slightly smaller. This is explained variously: a third troll who had stayed back; a troll-wife who waded in to help just as the light arrived; or simply a different creature altogether, caught by the same unforgiving dawn. Reynisfjara is now one of Iceland's most visited beaches. The sea here is genuinely dangerous — the surf creates sneaker waves that have killed visitors without warning. The trolls' failure to haul their prey to shore has not diminished the sea's appetite for it.