Looking for the Hidden Folk
How Iceland's Elves Can Help Save the Earth
- 328 pages
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
About This Book
In exploring how Icelandersinteract with natureâand their idea that elves live among usâNancy Marie Brown shows us how altering our perceptions of the environment can be a crucialfirst step toward saving it. Icelanders believe in elves.Why does that make you laugh?, asks Nancy Marie Brown in this wonderfully quirky exploration of our interaction with nature. Looking for answers in history, science, religion, and artâfrom ancient times to todayâBrown finds that each discipline defines what is real and unreal, natural and supernatural, demonstrated and theoretical, alive and inert. Each has its own way of perceiving and valuing the world around us. And each discipline can be defined, in the Icelandic perception, by its own sort of elf.Illuminated by her own encounters with Iceland's Otherworldâin ancient lava fields, on a holy mountain, beside a glacier or an erupting volcano, crossing the cold desert at the island's heart on horsebackâ Looking for the Hidden Folk offers an intimate conversation about how we look at and find value in nature. It reveals how the words we use and the stories we tell shape the world we see. It argues that our beliefs about the Earth will preserveâor destroy it.Scientists name our time the Anthropocene: the Human Age. Climate change will lead to the mass extinction of numerous animal species unless we humans change our course. Iceland suggests a different way of thinking about the Earth, one that offers hope. Icelanders believe in elvesâ and you should, too.
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- A Note on Language
- Part One
- Part Two
- Part Three
- Part Four
- Part Five
- Photographs
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Notes
- Copyright