Looking for the Hidden Folk

In exploring how Icelanders interact with natureand their idea that elves live among usNancy Marie Brown shows us how altering our perceptions of the environment can be a crucial first 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 artfrom ancient times to todayBrown 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 Otherworldin ancient lava fields, on a holy mountain, beside a glacier or an erupting volcano, crossing the cold desert at the island's heart on horsebackLooking 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 preserveor 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 elves and you should, too.

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