Thordur and the Hidden People

About the legend

Being

Huldufólk (the hidden people)

Cultural meaning

In Icelandic folk belief, the huldufólk, the hidden people, live alongside humans but out of sight, inside rocks, hills and cliffs. In the legends Jón Árnason collected, they look just like people, often finer dressed, and they have farms, households and even trading houses of their own. People can see them only when the hidden people themselves wish it. They are good neighbours to those who treat them well, and they remember both kindness and harm for a long time.

Fun fact

Drangey, the cliff island the young men wanted to sail to, is a real island. Its sides are so steep that you cannot climb up without a path, but the top is green and grassy. Long ago, the people who owned it took sheep up there in autumn, and the sheep grazed on top of the island all winter!

Cultural notes

This legend comes from the first volume of Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri, the great collection of Icelandic folk tales that Jón Árnason published in Leipzig in 1862 and dedicated to Jacob Grimm. Its first part tells of the álfar and huldufólk, the elves or hidden people. «Þórður á Þrastastöðum» (Thordur of Thrastastadir) is set on Höfðaströnd in Skagafjörður, although the collection marks it as a legend told in Eyjafjörður. Hofsós was the trading place Thordur was heading for, to trade his goods for grain, linen and small wares. Þórðarhöfði is a headland on that coast, and Drangey is an island in the middle of Skagafjörður where, Jón Árnason writes, many people went every spring to catch seabirds and to fish. The same collection has related legends: in «Álfakletturinn hjá Æsustöðum» an elf woman comes to a mother in a dream and asks her to stop her children throwing stones at the rock where the elves live, and in «Endurgoldin mjólk» a farm wife who leaves out milk all winter is given a fine heifer in return. In 1864 George E. J. Powell and Eiríkur Magnússon translated the tale into English in Icelandic Legends as 'Thordur of Thrastastadir'; their version turns the shawl into a cloak and the bread into cakes.

About this retelling

Icelandic legend, retold for children A retelling of the Icelandic legend of Thordur of Thrastastadir and the hidden people, from Jón Árnason's collection of Icelandic folk tales (1862).

Based on «Þórður á Þrastastöðum» in Jón Árnason's Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri (1862). Thordur, whom people thought odd, losing his way in the snow on the way to Hofsós, the tall trading houses with light, music and dancing, the man in a frock coat, the supper and the bed, the trade at far better prices, the shawl for his wife and the bread for his children, the stones thrown at the rock where the merchant's son lay sleeping, Thordur's words that it was a pointless game, the others' mockery, the headland where the houses had stood, and the wares he kept all his life all come from the legend. In the legend the host serves wine and Thordur grows tipsy; here it is a warm drink. The merchant says the stones would have killed his son; here they could have hurt him. In the legend people think the snow too thick before Thordur sets out; here it thickens on the way. The legend saves the summer day for the merchant's explanation; here the story begins with it. The names Gudrun and Bjarni, the two children, the young men's words, the socks and mittens, the girl who brings Thordur a dry cloth, Thordur's worry about getting home to his family, the merchant's son beside him in the shop, the merchant's words 'You could not see him, but you stopped them anyway', Gudrun's reply and Thordur's greeting to the headland were added for Nordic Tales.

Sources

• Þórður á Þrastastöðum — Jón Árnason, Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri, vol. 1 (Leipzig 1862), pp. 9–11
• Thordur of Thrastastadir — Icelandic Legends, collected by Jón Árnason, translated by George E. J. Powell & Eiríkur Magnússon (1864), pp. 24–26

Themes

• courage
• kindness
• gratitude
• respect
• huldufólk
• hidden people
• Þórður á Þrastastöðum
• Thordur
• Hofsós
• Skagafjörður
• Þórðarhöfði
• Drangey
• Iceland
• Icelandic folklore
• Jón Árnason
• elves
• winter
• snowstorm
• doing what is right

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