The gospel according to Tolkien

Markus Davidsen, a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, thought he'd write his dissertation about people who believe that the Jedi religion, made famous by Star Wars, is real.  But after he began his research, he seems to have decided that that was just too silly a topic to research, so he changed his mind.

And decided to research people who believe that the religious schema from J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is real, instead.

Yes, we're talking Elves, and the whole Valar and Maiar thing from The Silmarillion.  And that there have been a series of massive cataclysms, including the one caused by Fëanor forging the Silmarils (a battle which "reshaped Middle-Earth"), and one that sank the continent of Númenor, not to mention the more famous Battle of Five Armies (from The Hobbit) and Battle of the Pelennor Fields (from The Return of the King).  All of which, mysteriously, have left no archaeological traces whatsoever.

But that's not all.  Many of these people think that they are Elves.  Or descended from the Valar.  And there are enough such folks that Davidsen was inundated with requests to participate in his research.  When asked how he found Latter-Day Elves, Davidsen responded, "Actually, they found me.  My graduation thesis on Jedis won a prize and that generated lots of publicity in Mare [the official newspaper of Leiden University] too.  As a result, those people got in touch with me: one group of Tolkien followers would put me in touch with another and it snowballed from there. The groups turned out to be quite diverse too, so I could compare them to each other."

[Image licensed through the Creative Commons Giorgio Minguzzi from Italy, Elf, Tolkien (5503256855), CC BY-SA 2.0]

Allow me to emphasize; these were not some folks playing role-playing games, a sort of Middle-Earth version of the Society for Creative Anachronism.  These people are serious.

And of course, what would a religion be without schisms and squabbling?  "There are those who swear that they themselves are descended from Elves and accordingly have Elvish genes," Davidsen says.  "That’s some claim, and taking it too far for the people who only claim to have Elvish souls and who dissociate themselves from that group."

Others, Davidsen says, go right to the top, worship-wise.  "Yet another group say they not remotely related to Elves, but that there is another world in which the Valar exist," he said.  "They use rituals to try and contact the Valar.  Some draw a circle on the ground, spiritually cleanse it and then evoke the Valar while others go on a kind of shamanic journey with their spirits travelling to another world."

Right.  Okay.  Because it's not like Tolkien made the whole thing up, or anything.

Davidsen, fortunately, agrees.  On the other hand, he says, "This kind of religion isn’t any dafter than other faiths, we’re just used to that particular madness.  We think it’s normal for Catholics to consume the flesh and blood of their God, but when the modern vampire movement says they draw powers from blood, we think they’re loonies.  It’s not really fair.  Buddhism dictates that some people have a Buddha nature, which is not essentially different from the Tolkien-esque idea of having an Elvish nature."

Which is spot-on, even if predictably I think it's all a lot of lunacy.  I tend to agree with Stephen F. Roberts, who said the following to a devout Christian: "I contend we are both atheists.  I just believe in one fewer god than you do.  When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Now, understand, as religions go, Tolkienism (or whatever it's called) at least has one selling point; it's got a beautiful narrative.  If I was forced to choose a fictional world to live in, Middle-Earth would come near the top.  It's got a grandeur, a breadth of scope, like no other fantasy world I've ever read about, and (best of all) the good guys win.

Which is more than you can say for the world of, say, the Lovecraftian mythos.  There, you do everything you can to worship Yog-Sothoth, or whoever, and for your devotion you get your arms ripped off and your face melted.  That's one fictional religion I'm glad isn't real.

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Fire and ice

I am frequently confounded by the capacity for humans to be rational and irrational at the same time.

Take, for example, the Icelanders.  Iceland has a 99% adult literacy rate.  Same-sex marriage was legalized in Iceland in 2010 -- by a unanimous vote in parliament.  In polls regarding religious belief, they have one of the highest percentages of atheists in the world.  (31% of Icelanders identify as "non-religious.")  In response to the Charlie Hebdo attack, the Icelandic government just this month voted by an overwhelming majority to decriminalize blasphemy -- not because they (or I) think that ridiculing someone's beliefs is nice, but because protecting free speech is more important than making sure that religion has some kind of Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card with respect to criticism.

"Freedom of expression is one of the cornerstones of democracy," a government spokesperson said.  "It is a fundamental point in a free society that people can express themselves without fear of punishment of any kind, whether on behalf of the authorities or others...  The Icelandic parliament has issued the important message that freedom will not bow to bloody attacks."

And yet... there are some odd things about the place.  There has been a resurgence in belief in the old Norse gods -- Odin, Thor, Njord, and the rest -- the Germanic neopagan belief system "Ásatrú" is amongst the fastest-growing religions in Iceland.  A poll, later verified by a thorough study, found that 54.4% of Icelanders believe in the huldufólk, which usually gets translated in English as "elves."  As I've mentioned before, there have been highway projects that have been stalled because someone decided that the proposed road was going to trespass on property owned by "the secret people."

But best of all, an Icelandic woman named Hallgerdur Hallgrímsdóttir has just published a book on how to have sex with elves.  And why you should want to.

Hallgrímsdóttir says her first sexual experience with an elf happened by accident.  "I was just wandering around," she says, "in Icelandic nature, alone in this beautiful situation, and he just came to me.  He whispered some things in my ear -- dirty talk, they're quite good at that, actually."

They're "tall and beautiful," she says.  "It almost looks like their skin emits light."

Hylas and the Nymphs by John William Waterhouse (1896) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

As far as what hot elf-on-self action is like, she waxed rhapsodic.  "It's almost like they know what you want in bed.  They don't have to ask, they can read your mind, and know better what you want than you do...  They're very flexible, so they can use positions that would not be possible for humans."

She backs this up with a series of stick figure drawings that made me choke-snort an entire mouthful of coffee, especially the one of an extremely male elf with an arrow pointing to a body part labeled "geyser."

There are both male and female elves, she tells us, and they are a pretty open-minded lot.  "All elves are bisexual," Hallgrímsdóttir says, "but guys and girls not ready for some same sex action don’t worry, no elf will do anything you don’t want to."

Amongst other things that you don't have to worry about, elf-sex-wise, are STDs and pregnancy.  You can become pregnant by an elf (or make a female elf pregnant), but you both have to want to make a baby for this to happen.  Which is pretty convenient.  

Oh, and elf semen is "glittery and shimmery."  So there's that.  She includes an "artist's rendition" of the result of a male elfgasm, which is striking not only in colorfulness but in quantity, and in (as it were) a rather impressive trajectory.

There are various other details that are, shall we say, a little too salacious for me to include here, so if you're curious you'll just have to listen to the interview with her on the link I posted above.  Suffices to say that the Icelandic tourist industry might want to plan ahead for an influx of people who are, um, hopeful in the supernatural romance department.

I'm curious to know how many people actually take her seriously.  The article says that Hallgrímsdóttir gets "a lot of flack from her countrymen" for her beliefs -- but if over half of Icelanders believe that the Hidden People exist, what's stopping Legolas et al. from seeking out illicit liaisons with their human cohabitants?  Is it that the people who believe in elves aren't really all that serious about it, sort of in the way otherwise rational people will wear a lucky hat to a baseball game, or avoid walking under a ladder?  It certainly seems odd that a populace that is as literate, well educated, and generally rational as the Icelanders would subscribe to a belief that is (to put it bluntly) extremely wacky.

But maybe all humans are like that -- masses of contradictions, all thrown together under a thin veneer of logic and reason.  Maybe I am, too, for all of my talk of skepticism and science.  Go beneath the skin, and there might well be a little pagan in all of us, however we might want to consecrate it or else expunge it entirely.  As one of my favorite quotes from Walt Whitman goes, "Do I contradict myself?  Very well, then I contradict myself.  I am large, I contain multitudes."

The gospel according to J. R. R. Tolkien

Markus Davidsen, a Ph.D. candidate in Religious Studies at Leiden University in the Netherlands, thought he'd write his dissertation about people who believe that the Jedi religion, made famous by Star Wars, is real.  But after he began his research, he seems to have decided that that was just too silly a topic to research, so he changed his mind.

And decided to research people who believe that the religious schema from J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings is real, instead.

Yes, we're talking Elves, and the whole Valar and Maiar thing from The Silmarillion.  And that there have been a series of massive cataclysms, including the one caused by Fëanor forging the Silmarils (a battle which "reshaped Middle-Earth"), and one that sank the continent of Númenor, not to mention the more famous Battle of Five Armies (from The Hobbit) and Battle of the Pelennor Fields (from The Return of the King).  All of which, mysteriously, have left no archaeological traces whatsoever.

But that's not all.  Many of these people think that they are Elves.  Or descended from the Valar.  And there are enough such folks that Davidsen was inundated with requests to participate in his research.  When asked how he found Latter-Day Elves, Davidsen responded, "Actually, they found me.  My graduation thesis on Jedis won a prize and that generated lots of publicity, in Mare [the official newspaper of Leiden University] too.  As a result, those people got in touch with me: one group of Tolkien followers would put me in touch with another and it snowballed from there.  The groups turned out to be quite diverse too, so I could compare them to each other."

[image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

Allow me to emphasize; these were not some folks playing role-playing games, a sort of Middle-Earth version of the Society for Creative Anachronism.  These people are serious.

And of course, what would a religion be without schisms and squabbling?  "There are those who swear that they themselves are descended from Elves and accordingly have Elvish genes," Davidsen says.  "That’s some claim, and taking it too far for the people who only claim to have Elvish souls and who dissociate themselves from that group."

Others, Davidsen says, go right to the top, worship-wise.  "Yet another group say they not remotely related to Elves, but that there is another world in which the Valar exist," he said.  "They use rituals to try and contact the Valar.  Some draw a circle on the ground, spiritually cleanse it and then evoke the Valar while others go on a kind of shamanic journey with their spirits travelling to another world."

Right.  Okay.  Because it's not like Tolkien didn't make the whole thing up, or anything.

Davidsen, fortunately, agrees.  On the other hand, he says, "This kind of religion isn’t any dafter than other faiths, we’re just used to that particular madness.  We think it’s normal for Catholics to consume the flesh and blood of their God, but when the modern vampire movement says they draw powers from blood, we think they’re loonies.  It’s not really fair.  Buddhism dictates that some people have a Buddha nature, which is not essentially different from the Tolkien-esque idea of having an Elvish nature."

Which is spot-on, even if predictably I think it's all a lot of lunacy.  I tend to agree with Stephen F. Roberts:  "I contend we are both atheists.  I just believe in one fewer god than you do.  When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours."

Now, understand, as religions go, Tolkienism (or whatever it's called) at least has one selling point; it's got a beautiful narrative.  If I was forced to choose a fictional world to live in, Middle-Earth would come near the top.  It's got a grandeur, a breadth of scope, like no other fantasy world I've ever read about, and (best of all) the good guys win.

Which is more than you can say for the world of, say, the Lovecraftian mythos.  There, you do everything you can to worship Yog-Sothoth, or whoever, and for your devotion you get your arms ripped off and your face melted.  That's one fictional religion I'm glad isn't real.

Faith, belief, and agnosticism: a guest post by author Cly Boehs

My dear friend, the author and artist Cly Boehs, was inspired by one of my posts from two weeks ago to write an essay of her own responding to the points I brought up, and I have invited her to present it here.  You can (and should!) read Cly's short stories, posted on her wonderful blog Mind at Play, and I encourage you all to buy her brilliant collection of four novellas, The Most Intangible Thing, available at Amazon here.  I know you'll be as entertained and intrigued by Cly's writing as I am.

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On Skeptophilia on December 24^th, 2013, in an article entitled, "Elf highway blockade," you ask the question, “…how do specific counterfactual beliefs become so entrenched, despite a complete lack of evidence that entire cultures begin to buy in?” You state that you get how individuals can become superstitious but are perplexed by how cultures can do this—supposedly because more heads should be better than one? The underlying question seems to be—why wouldn’t there be enough dissenting voices in such groups to stop such ridiculous claims? How can so many be so wrong about something so outlandish? 

Since I’ve spent quite a bit of time researching, thinking and writing about why people (as individuals and groups) believe what they do, I’d like to take this question on, at least offering an opinion in brief form. Over time, I’ve come to two major conclusions (1) groups don’t use factual evidence any more than individuals to come to their beliefs; and (2) once individuals’ beliefs are strengthen by numbers, the believers take on a superior hue such that they disavow any other claims than their own—they are right and that’s that. You seem to be asking how this can happen when there is contrary factual evidence readily available for them to see. To a rationalist, a term like “factual evidence” is redundant because both “facts” and “evidence” imply objectivity. To a person basing evidence on faith or will-to-believe, “evidence” lies in subjective truth; and since that truth’s validity is based on personal experience, the more of those will-to-believers you can gather together, the greater the validation of truth (see below).  

I’d like to draw attention to two points about both individuals and groups that allow any belief (superstition or not) to become foundational to them. First, culture, the state, the church, all organizations and institutions are made up of individuals and studies have shown that what the individuals in the group believe becomes strengthen by numbers. Which brings me to my second notion: that belief(s) of the group are held together because they believe they are right, often the only right. The strength of belief gained in numbers produces a feeling of superiority such that the group forms an “us vs them” mentality and most often (depending on how significant the belief is to the group) takes it to battle against other beliefs. Lord knows we have enough examples of this throughout human history and in foreign affairs today. 

It is tremendously important that we remember that groups are made up of individuals—that in the most important way, groups do not exist in and of themselves. When we begin thinking that they do, we end up in extreme situations such as with the Nazi mentality of World War II, the mass execution of 1862 in Mankato, Minnesota and the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. The defendants at the Nuremberg trials (or any others for that matter) can claim immunity on the grounds of mass-think. Which leads me to this business of feeling superior and safe because of being right. 

I realize in your article you are talking specifically about superstitious group beliefs—beliefs way, way out there like believing that elves not only exist but have rights. But I ask you, how far off is this from the now institutionalized belief that our supreme court recently translated into the law of the land, that corporations are individuals with rights? And how far away from beliefs such as transmigration of souls and transubstantiation is the belief in elves? Or that Buddha’s mother, before his birth, was struck on her right side by a white bull elephant that held a lotus in its trunk, an elephant that then vanished into her— or as another story goes—the elephant entered her womb and shortly after disappeared? This is after the elephant walked around her three times—well, of course it was three times. Three is the magic number of fairy tales and religious triads, right?

We all know stories from sacred texts that defy objective evidence—water into wine, an ass speaking on the road to Damascus, parted water to expose dry land (Buddha performed this one before Moses), a Hindu holy man changing jackals into horses and back again at will and the list goes on and on. Miracles or superstitions as a foundational belief arises out of “faith,” as a belief not based on facts. In fact, such beliefs as miracles and superstition are a demonstration of faith. Actually, it’s why they are there. Faith of this kind produces massive power in individuals especially when socialized and politicized, which makes faith-based belief(s) concrete in ritual and activism. Superstition works in this way because when individuals, strengthened by groups, believe against “the odds,” e.g., the Anabaptists against the Catholics and Protestants; the American Revolutionaries against English and French militaries—such polarities only strengthens each in what they believe is right. [A study demonstrating this clearly showed up recently on the site politico.com in which two psychologists demonstrated that the more extreme a person’s views are the more they think they are right.] The most important component in any cultural or polarized situation is belief, not reasonableness, facts. And this is because facts change by necessity; while belief can remain consistent and constant if founded in faith, the will-to-believe. The validity of a belief is often expressed in this constancy down through time, e.g. the Vedas are 3500 years old and Christian time is counted since Christ and so forth. There is comfort in not only being right but being so with such consistency and constancy. 

So how does a group of people (note that a singular verb is used for the term “group”) end up believing that elves should be given rights to stop a highway through their sacred territory? By individuals comprising the group believing elves-are-individuals-with-rights. And these individuals find strength in this belief by numbers in the groups and by the outlandishness of the belief as proof of faith in that belief. According to this logic then, the crazier the idea, the greater the faith needed to believe it; therefore, the greater the proof of its validity. Trust of this sort and the will-to-believe—a trust to act in faith before any supporting evidence, one of William James’ terms for this is “confidence”—can be constant in a way reason based on facts cannot. And the stronger the faith of an individual or group is, the stronger the belief. And because of this, psychologist and philosophers of all kinds of stripes have opted for head over heart, reason over emotion-and-feeling, reason over will. And it’s easy to see why. When people fear that their faith or will-to-believe is taken from them, they know that what they regard as constant, permanent, is gone; living in a constantly ambiguous state-of-affairs leaves one too vulnerable. ‘Tis unsafe. 

But polarity is not the answer. An alternative to rightness-in-belief lies in the willingness (note the word) to believe conditionally—not to give up belief. We will believe (again, note the word). We have to believe in order to function, actually to literally live at all. We don’t have all the facts for what we believe, never will. But in order to develop more fully as individuals, our beliefs have to be founded with an open heart and mind. And in order for this to happen, individuals have to believe in the self over groups, have to understand how culture can be an obstacle to self-identity, and have to be willing to die because believing this is deeply threatening to those caught in the whole system of belief that states “being right” is all there can be, especially when it comes wrapped in the outrageous intentionality of religious fervor. 

And what about imagination and creativity in all of this? The human capacity for ambiguity is at the heart of creativity, true self-identity, justice and all human endeavors with inherent freedom for the individual in them. Ambiguity is not waffling between one held belief and another—it is remaining open to the possibility that states-of-affairs can be other than they are perceived to be. In other words, we can be wrong. And the human ability to be wrong is inherent in so much of what we learn. [Gordon pointed out to me recently Kathyrn Schulz’s TED talk, “On Being Wrong,” which is a beautiful declaration on why we seek solace in being right.]

My view is not that we should evolve to a state of rationalism over beliefs based on faith or will, but become individuals with an ability to suspend belief just as we suspend facts. By “suspended belief or facts,” I mean lift the total-rightness-of-belief, out of its foundational bedrock, i.e. hold what is known either as fact or belief-through-faith in regard, even respect, even act on it until something else replaces it. But when suspended belief of this kind is presented to individuals as a possibility, they usually become more radicalized in their position than before. They can’t give up the constancy of faith over the inconstancy of facts, when in order for all of us to live as fully as possible, we have to give up both so that we can embrace both. What’s interesting is that when suspended belief is presented to a rationalist, meaning they have to take the agnostic position over the atheistic one, there is just as much fluttering of feathers and great resistance. Since rationalism is based on evidence (observable facts) and without it, there can be no belief, they are just as adamant in their position as Faith-and-Will believers are in theirs. Suspended belief doesn’t mean no belief. It means not knowing or even not knowable—which is what agnosticism is.

So what to do with the Friends of Lava and the project detrimental to elf culture?

What would “suspended belief” look like for both sides in this dispute? Why not negotiate and do it while applying Gordon’s suggestion of critical thinking thrown into the mix…mess—the discussion being along the lines of how far traditions in culture should/could be allowed to influence progress of a practical nature. But also, discussion with some open-mindedness has to be there as well, lifting that desire to be right and listening to the other side, working together to meet some middle way in the situation. We have these negotiations going on all the time—the ten commandments monument in the Alabama Judicial Building and another one in Oklahoma on its state capitol grounds as examples. Is this really too terribly different from the Icelandic version of respecting the Little People and their territory? Unfortunately we haven’t found a way yet to discuss such disputes without the rush to polarities and the superiority of our views—so until such time, it is left to the settlements in the courts.

Elf highway blockade

One thing I would love to know is how groups of people end up being superstitious.  Not individuals; you can see how specific individuals could become superstitious about odd things, through a combination of classical conditioning and confirmation bias (you wear a specific t-shirt to a football game, and your team wins; you link the t-shirt to the win, and every time something good happens while you're wearing that shirt, it reinforces the belief.  Voilà -- "lucky t-shirt").

But how do specific counterfactual beliefs become so entrenched, despite a complete lack of evidence, that entire cultures begin to buy in?  I know that this is skating onto some seriously thin ice for some people, and I've no intention to skate any closer.  In any case, as you'll soon see, I'm not talking about what you probably think I'm talking about.

The reason this question comes up is because of a link sent to me by a frequent contributor to Skeptophilia, regarding a highway project in Iceland that has been blocked -- because the project will upset the elves.

Meadow Elves (Ängsälvor) by Nils Blommén (1850) [image courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons]

The project was designed to create a direct route from the Álftanes peninsula to the Gar∂abær suburb of Reykjavík.  But the highway was supposed to cut across a lava field inhabited by huldufólk, the Icelandic version of the Little People, and this got some people seriously up in arms.  A group calling themselves the "Friends of Lava" banded together with the intent of stopping the project, citing "detrimental effect on elf culture" -- and amazingly enough, it worked.

"(The highway project) would be a terrible loss and damaging both for the elf world and for us humans," said Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a folklorist and seer from Reykjavík who was instrumental in halting the project.  "If you ask an Icelander about elves, they might say they don't believe.  But we always have stories of them, if not from ourselves then from someone close like a family member. Of course, not everyone believes in the stories, but the stories and the elves are still there and being told."

So the project appears to have been scrapped.  "Some feel that the elf thing is a bit annoying," said Andri Snær Magnason, a prominent Icelandic environmentalist.  "However, I got married in a church with a god just as invisible as the elves, so what might seem irrational is actually quite common [with Icelanders]."

What I find interesting about these beliefs is that they run counter to the usual perception of superstition being more common amongst the poorly-educated.  Iceland has an amazing educational system, resulting in a citizenry with a near 100% adult literacy rate.  They have the world's highest percentage of their GNP (8%) used for supporting education.

So the whole idea of education and superstition being inversely correlated apparently isn't true -- if we can draw such a conclusion from a sample size of one.  You would think that as the population becomes better educated, the amount of adherence to odd cultural beliefs would diminish, but despite the dramatic advances in education in Iceland in the past century, the belief in the huldufólk remains strong enough in Iceland to generate a legal block to a highway project.

I still think that learning critical thinking is the best way to counter non-evidence-based ways of thinking, so it appears that something else must be going on here.  One thing that comes to mind is that Icelanders are, as a group, extremely proud of their heritage, language, and history, and this is bound to make them more culturally conservative.  Beliefs and practices can be powerful indicators of cultural identity -- witness the members of my wife's family, who are descended from Lithuanian Jews, and who still celebrate a lot of the Jewish holidays and rituals -- although they have, by and large, abandoned the religious underpinnings. 

So I still find the Icelandic elves a peculiar thing, but I'll have to leave it to someone with a better background in folklore and anthropology to answer the question in a more rigorous fashion.  I guess it's to be expected that certain vestiges of old beliefs persist, even if the rest of the system has gone by the wayside.  Now, y'all will have to excuse me, because I need to finish this up.  I've got Christmas presents to wrap.

Elf kidnapping

It's not often you get to be a witness to the birth of an urban legend.

Or not so urban, actually, as this one supposedly happened in rural Iceland.  Have you seen it?  It's making the rounds of social media -- a story about a Danish anthropologist, missing for seven years, who showed up last week, naked and confused, claiming that she'd been kidnapped and held hostage by elves.  As of now, I've been sent links to the story a total of six times, so chances are you've run across it, too.

The story is that an anthropologist, Kalena Søndergaard, went off in February of 2006, "seeking proof of elves," and vanished.  Searches for her, centered around the Álfarkirkjan -- the "Elf Church Rock" where she was last seen -- turned up no trace of the missing woman.  Then, last week, some hikers stumbled upon her, crouching on a rocky ledge, looking "more ape than human."  The article says:

Danish researcher Kalena Søndergaard was stark naked, covered by dust and babbling incoherently when rescuers found her outside a tiny opening in the famous Elf Rock, traditionally believed to house the underground dwelling place of mankind’s tiny cousins.

“She was crouching like an animal and spoke only in a language unrelated to any we know,” said Arnor Guðjohnsen of the National Rescue Service, which airlifted the 31-year-old survivor to a hospital by helicopter.

“The only word we could understand was ‘alfur,’ an old Icelandic word for elves. On her back were strange tattoos similar to those markings Viking explorers found on rock formations when they settled Iceland in 874, traditionally known as ‘elf writing.’ ”

When I hit the name of the gentleman from the National Rescue Service, I frowned a little, because "Guðjohnsen" isn't a properly formed Icelandic surname -- all surnames in Iceland, by mandate, are the father's first name, in genitive case, followed by "-son" if it's a boy and "-dottír" if it's a girl.  So Arnor should have been "Guðjohnsson," not "Guðjohnsen."  (A similar problem happened later in the story, with a "folklore expert" named "Eva Bryndísarson" -- she would have been "Eva Bryndísardottír.")

Those, of course, could have been typos or mistranscriptions, and in any case are minor compared to the other whoppers that occur in the story.  Let's start with the fact that Kalena Søndergaard apparently doesn't exist, at least by my attempts to research her name online in connection to any citations for anthropological research.  Then let's take the photograph that was posted to "prove" the claims in the story:

So, on the surface, it does seem to be a photograph of some guy rescuing a naked woman sitting on a rock, and how many situations like this can have happened?  Turns out, it only took one, and it had nothing to do with elves; in March of 2011 the Daily Mail reported on the story of a woman in San Diego who had gotten stranded on a rock ledge trying to climb down to a nude beach, and had to be rescued from above.  Besides the very photograph that was used for the elves-in-Iceland story, the Daily Mail article had a series of further photographs showing the hapless nude sunbather being lifted to safety.

Then, there's the photograph that's supposedly of Kalena Søndergaard, prior to her harrowing experience with the Little Folk:

The problem is, this girl isn't named Kalena Søndergaard, she's not Danish, and she isn't an anthropologist.  Sharon Hill of the wonderful site Doubtful News found out that the photograph was grabbed from a Russian dating site -- probably selected because the girl looks vaguely like the woman in the rescue photograph.

So, due to the wonders of the internet, the whole thing was debunked in short order.  But the problem is that with hoaxes like this, often people only see the first half -- the claim -- and never run into the story disproving it.  It's probably human nature, of course.  Crazy claims have much more cachet than dry-as-dust debunkings do; who is going to forward a link making the not-too-earthshattering claim, "Elves don't exist?"

Anyhow, that's the straight scoop regarding the kidnapped Danish anthropologist and her terrifying encounter with the huldufólk.  The story is no more legitimate than the Crystal Pyramids of Atlantis thing or the Alien Mass Burial in Uganda thing.  Not that I expect this will make it die down -- for apparently one of the characteristics of bullshit is that once created, it never, ever goes away.

Elf awareness

I should know better, by now.  I shouldn't describe someone's woo-woo belief, and then exaggerate it for humorous effect, and say something to the effect of, "well, at least no one believes this."  It always seems to backfire, somehow.

You may recall that in yesterday's post, we had the story of Arní Johnson, an Icelandic member of parliament who became convinced that he had been saved from dying in an automobile accident by a family of elves living in a rock.  To express his gratitude, he had the rock moved to his front yard, and an "elf expert," Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, said that was fine as long as the rock was placed in grass (the elves wanted some sheep, apparently) and that it was moved in such a way that the elves were "comfortable" during the journey.

And hoping for a laugh, I quipped, "How do you become an elf expert?  Do Icelandic universities offer a major in elfology?"

Well.  Like I said before, such comments often come back to bite me on the ass.  To wit: today in Iceland Review Online we have a response to Arní Johnson's actions in moving the elves' house, from a guy named Magnús Skarphéðinsson, saying that Johnson was acting foolishly in moving the elves, and in fact may have jeopardized his health in so doing.  And who is Magnús Skarphéðinsson, you may ask?

He is principal of the "Icelandic Elf School."  (Read about it here.)

Skarphéðinsson says that there are thirteen kinds of elves in Iceland, and that they aren't the same thing as the hidden folk; the hidden folk "are just the same size and look exactly like human beings, the only difference is that they are invisible to most of us. Elves, on the other hand, aren’t entirely human, they’re humanoid, starting at around eight centimeters."  His school offers certificate-earning programs on the subject of elves, but also "delves into the study of dwarves, gnomes, and trolls."  Because heaven knows we don't want to be ignorant about trolls, or we might get eaten by one while carelessly trip-trapping across a bridge.

Skarphéðinsson also says that there are gay and lesbian elves.  I'm probably indulging in unfounded speculation, here, but I bet that most of them are refugees from North Carolina.

I should mention at this point that Skarphéðinsson also offers courses in "auras and past-life regression."

Okay.  My first question was, is Skarphéðinsson kidding?  Or what?  There's part of all of this that sounds like he's pulling our leg a little.  But according to the article I read on Skarphéðinsson and his school, supposedly 54% of Icelanders believe in elves and the rest, and in fact public works projects are frequently altered, put on hold, or scrapped entirely if the proposed work looks like it's going to piss off the "invisible folk."  Construction of a big stretch of the Ring Road -- Iceland's main highway -- had to be halted temporarily while workers moved a big rock that supposedly housed a family of dwarves.

And honestly, who am I to criticize?  It's kind of a charming tradition, really.  Given the number of Icelanders who claim to have had encounters with the "shadow people," maybe there's something more to it than I realize.  I have a friend, also a writer, who swears she had some inexplicable experiences in a house that was reputed to be occupied by fairies -- and fictionalized the whole thing into a wonderful novel, called Away With the Fairies (which you can buy here).  The author, Vivienne Tuffnell, is in other respects a thoroughgoing skeptic, so maybe there's more to this legend than I'm seeing.

In fact, I can say with some certainty that if I ever return to Iceland, I will definitely take a class at the Icelandic Elf School.  It would be a proud day for me to hang up a certificate above my desk saying that I had successfully completed a course of study in elfology.  And I have, finally, learned my lesson, namely never to suggest that a particular belief is so silly that no one could ever consider it.

Dead sheep, live elves, and a stuck willy

Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we've got our eyes on three stories from far afield.

Let's begin with a tragedy in Wales, and hope things get cheerier as we progress.

In our first story, we have reports that the Beast of Bont is at it again, so you might want to cancel that walking tour in the Cambrian Mountains.  (Source)

Sheep farmers in Pontrhydfendigaid, a small town near Aberystwyth, discovered last week that twenty sheep had been "massacred" in a spot near Devil's Bridge.  This immediately conjured up memories of past attacks, which reportedly have been going on since the 1970s, and have been attributed to a loathsome predator nicknamed "the Beast of Bont."

In this most recent attack, local resident Mark Davey and his partner Annette made the discovery.  "The whole area just stank of dead animals and was quite sickening," Davey told reporters.  "I could see that the inside of the animals had been ripped out and body parts were lying all around.  I thought it could have been foxes or badgers but it was just the increasing number of dead sheep that started the alarm bells ringing in my head.  As we walked further we saw several more sheep scattered closely together, again as though some large animal had attacked them.  We were getting quite scared and wondered what the hell was doing this."

Myself, I would have wondered to the extent that I'd have gotten right the hell out of there.

"Each time we saw them we thought that something had quite clearly attacked them because they looked like they had been ripped apart," Davey said.  "It was a very strange feeling when we saw the sheep because some of them were lambs with just half of their bodies, or just the rear or the back legs left on the field.  I could also see a small lamb which looked to me as if it had been carefully placed in the corner of some building ruins.  This one was untouched but it appeared that it had been put there for a reason - maybe to come back to it later."

Police say that the pattern of sheep-killings resembles others that have occurred in the area.

Despite periodic reports of "large, puma-like creatures" in the Cambrian Mountains, no one has been able to obtain any kind of reasonably reliable evidence to indicate what might be responsible for the killings.  Thus far, only sheep and goats have been attacked, but police have instructed locals to "be vigilant when outdoors."  That's putting it mildly.  If this had happened in my neighborhood, I might become vigilant to the point of never leaving my house again.  I'm just brave that way.


Of course, if you don't want to meet weird things away from home, you can always have the weird things brought to your doorstep.  This is the philosophy of Arní Johnson, an Icelandic Member of Parliament who decided to bring a boulder housing "three generations of elves" to his front yard.  (Source)

Johnson first ran into the boulder in a nearly literal sense, when he was involved in a serious car accident in January of 2010.  His car flipped, landing forty meters away from the highway, damaging it beyond repair -- but leaving Johnson completely unharmed.  Johnson decided that it couldn't just have been luck, so he started looking around for what could have saved him, and then he saw this great big rock.

Now, I've been to Iceland, and I can say with some authority that great big rocks are a dime a dozen.  Iceland itself seems, in fact, to be one great big rock, with a little bit of ice and grass to break up the monotony.  But this was no ordinary rock, Johnson said; no, it was the home of some elves, and the elves had saved his life.

"I had Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, a specialist in the affairs of elves from Álfagarðurinn in Hellisgerði, Hafnarfjörður, to come look at the boulder with me," Johnson said.  "She said it was incredible, that she had never met three generations of elves in the same boulder before.  She said an elderly couple lives on the upper floor but a young couple with three children on the lower floor."

My first question is: how do you become an elf specialist?  Do Icelandic universities allow you to major in elfology?  If so, how do you study them, being that even people who think they exist say that they don't exactly wait around for you to examine them closely?  Be that as it may, Johnson was tickled with what Jónsdóttir told him, and decided to have the boulder moved to his home in Höfðaból in the Westman Islands.  Jónsdóttir said that the elves were fine being moved, but that he had to do it right.  "(The elves) asked whether the boulder could stand on grass.  I said that was no problem but asked why they wanted grass.  ‘It’s because they want to have sheep,’ Ragnhildur replied."  So Johnson is having the boulder ferried across to his home, wrapped in sheepskin "so the elves are comfortable."

After the horrors caused by the Beast of Bont, you have to wonder exactly why the elves want to have sheep nearby.  But we're hoping that the elves have no ill intent, and the whole story will end happily.


And a happy ending is more than we can say happened for an adulterous couple in Kenya, who discovered during an amorous encounter that a curse by the woman's husband had left them stuck together.  (Source)

According to the story, the husband had gotten wind of his wife's cheating ways, and had hired a practitioner of black magic to cast a spell on the wife.  The next time the wife and her paramour went at it, the unfortunate man found that he had basically been making love to one of those Chinese finger-traps.

Once the couple realized that their hook-up had left them unable to unhook, they panicked, and their shouts of alarm attracted the attention of the police and an increasingly large crowd.  Finally the husband arrived, and after the adulterous man agreed to pay the husband twenty thousand shillings in reparations, a pastor was called in, who prayed over the couple, and the two were able to separate.  It is probably just my sordid imagination that pictures this as being accompanied by a sound like a cork being pulled from a wine bottle.

I do have to ask, however; do Kenyan pastors have special prayers for this kind of thing?  "O Lord, we beseech thee to call forth thy mighty powers, and help this sinner free his wang, that he might go forth and never more boink another guy's wife, for yea, I believeth that he hath learned his lesson."


So, those are our stories for today -- the sheep-eating Beast of Bont, transporting elf boulders, and adulterous men getting their willies stuck.  Here at Worldwide Wacko Watch, we are constantly alert, bringing you only the finest quality journalism from the world of the weird.  "Ever vigilant," that's our motto.  That, and "Man, people believe some weird stuff, you have to wonder if we skeptics are justified in having any hope at all."  But that's kind of depressing, so we'll stick with "Ever vigilant."