Having found a last-minute
deal on airfare, which was simply too good to pass up, my husband, Zafir, and I
headed off to Iceland, where we spent ten incredible days.
Upon arrival, I knew
NOTHING about Iceland—other than Mikhail Gorbachev and Ronald Reagan met there
(in 1986) and most Icelanders refused to disavow the existence of elves. As it
turned out, my learning process would begin the very next day, and I would go
on to experience the magic of Iceland firsthand.
Temples of Light
19 August 2014—It was our
second day in the capital of Reykjavik, and in the late afternoon, we visited
Hallgrimskirkja or the Church of Hallgrimur, named after Hallgrimur Petursson
(1614-1674), the Lutheran poet-priest who wrote the Passion Hymns, based
on the gospel account of Jesus’ last days. This immense, concrete building—visible
from a distance of 20 kilometers / 12 miles—was consecrated as a church in
1986. It is the plainest, starkest house of worship I’ve ever seen!
As I walked around the
exterior, my inner eyes opened, and for a few minutes, I could see gigantic
structures, which stood on the same spot as Hallgrimskirkja but in a different
dimension. They appeared to be constructed of light and glistened pink and
yellow.
A Spirit of the Land?
21 August 2014—We spent the
day on Heimaey, off the South coast. The eruption of Eldfell (Mountain of Fire)
in 1973 came close to extinguishing life on Heimaey, which is the largest and
most populated of Iceland’s islands. Earlier in the day, we drove from sight to
sight, and at one point, I found myself attracted to a piece of volcanic rock—9
by 12 inches with dramatic swirls in it—which I picked up and put into the back
of the rental car.
That night, immediately
after closing my eyes, a very clear picture of what appeared to be a man
flashed before me, which scared me. His gray eyes were fierce and menacing, and
above his eyebrows, a ridge protruded from his forehead. I felt that a larger
than life spirit, a spirit of the land, if you will, had bled into my world.
Suddenly Clairaudient
24 August 2014—We visited
the Public Park and Botanic Garden in Akureyri, the nation’s second largest
city, in the North, where we were wowed by arctic flowers. Around 8:00 PM, we
resumed traveling on Route 1, known as the Ring Road. Sunlit clouds encircled
the mountains ahead. I recall a snow-capped peak in the distance, a mountain to
the left, and a shorter one to the right.
We were 20 kilometers / 12
miles outside of Akureyri when my inner eyes opened, and I saw the shorter
mountain erupt, shooting bright orange lava far into the air. I said to Zafir,
“Do you see that mountain? It’s going to erupt in our lifetime!” (Though I’m
not certain, the “snow-capped peak in the distance” may have been
Dyafjallshnjukur (1,225 meters / 4,018 feet), the “mountain to the left”
Kirkjufjall (1,150 meters / 3,772 feet), and the “shorter one to the right”
Dyngjahnjukur (929 meters / 3,047 feet), which I had seen erupt.
I went on to say, “We must
have crossed some sort of line. The vibration is very high here. My inner eyes
are completely open. Ask questions.”
At my insistence, Zafir
peppered me with questions. The answers were being poured into me. Never before
had I been so clairaudient. Here is a portion of that exchange.
Is the dollar going to
collapse?
Yes.
When?
2017. It [the U.S.] is not
the place to be when it collapses. Get out before then. He [Zafir] will know
when to go. He [Zafir] has good instincts. He [Zafir] will know where to go.
Will the Euro collapse?
Yes. But it’s not going to
fall flat on its face. They are focusing my attention on the word Deutsch.
After the dollar collapses, Germany will withdraw [from the Eurozone] so it can
more effectively assert itself economically on the world stage. It will
re-issue the Deutsche Mark.
Should we buy gold?
No. Buy silver.
Will New Orleans be
flooded?
No.
Will New York be
flooded?
Yes. But the flooding will
not be as extensive as many people fear. Battery Park won’t exist.
When will this happen?
2035, 2053.
Should we buy property?
Yes.
Where?
Venezuela, the Southeast
coast of Venezuela. It will be a prosperous and stable country in the future.
The house will be high on a bluff or hill.
(As you may know, Venezuela
does not have a Southeast coast. My words would have been more precise if I had
known more about the geography of Venezuela; the Embalse de Guri, the Isla de
Margarita, and the Lago de Maracaibo—all in Venezuela—each has a Southeast
coast. My words would have been even more imprecise if I hadn’t known of
Venezuela or South America. Because truth is channeled through knowledge, I
have long referred to National Geographic as a medium’s best friend.
“The more you know, the better it can flow.”)
Making Friends
25 August 2014—It was
overcast and drizzling, and earlier than usual we began searching for a room.
We found one in Olafsvik, in the vicinity of the mythical glacier Snaefellsjokull, which is located in the West of the country. Interestingly, in
Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne (1828-1905), the
would-be explorers enter the planet’s interior through Mount Snaefell, on the
Southwest edge of Snaefellsjokull.
After we unpacked, we
headed to nearby Rif, in hope of finding a coffee shop. We were in luck: Kaffi
Sif was still open. A woman by the name of Sif Svavarsdottir served us some
much-needed tea and vegetable soup, and then, to our good fortune, spent time
talking to us.
Sif, who struck the
psychotherapist in me as very grounded, explained to us that she moved to the
Snaefellsnes Peninsula because she feels “at home” there. Many people, she
said, believe that powerful ley lines run through the peninsula, through
Snaefellsjokull in particular, which some consider to be the heart chakra of
the world.
While Zafir was present, I
told Sif of seeing the mysterious being with the ridge protruding from his
forehead and becoming uncharacteristically clairaudient while on the outskirts
of Akureyri. Sensing that she was in safe company, Sif told us that living in
the area had opened her up as well. She went on to share that she converses
telepathically with both angels and elves.
I was overjoyed to be
having a conversation with an Icelander about elves, as I recalled lonely
planet’s admonition:
“Many Icelanders get
sick of visitors asking them whether they believe in supernatural beings. Their
pride bristles at the ‘Those cute Icelanders! They all believe in pixies’
attitude…and even if they don’t entirely disbelieve, they’re unlikely to admit
it to a stranger.” 4
Elves from My Past
Sif explained that elves,
like angels, are vibrating on a faster or higher level, which explains why
people remain unaware of them most of the time. Of elves, she said, “I hear
them, but I have never seen them.”
At that moment, I blurted
out, “I have seen them!” Sif and Zafir looked at me in amazement.
I told them that one summer
or autumn afternoon in 1990, while riding the Chicago L, I closed my eyes to
nap. While my eyes were closed, otherworldly beings flashed before me, which I
described in writing. I explained that I never saw these beings before or
since, and at the time, I hadn’t read or seen anything even remotely related to
them. Until now, I had treated their appearance as an inexplicable, isolated
incident.
The place soon filled with
other customers, and Sif had to slip away. As she did, she recommended the book
The Magic of Snaefellsjokull: Legends, Folklore, and Mystique by Runa
Gudrun Bergmann, which was available for sale at the café.
Of elves or “hidden
people,” Bergmann writes:
“They are approximately
the same size as humans, but vibrating on a much higher frequency, so they seem
slightly transparent as their energy is so lucid. Old folklore accounts that
describe human encounter with the hidden people describe men for example being
lured to them because of the light. I always say that filmmaker / director
Peter Jackson did a good job portraying them in the Lord of the Rings movies,
because he made them slightly transparent, as they are.” 1
When Zafir and I returned
to New York, I succeeded in locating the file folder Spiritual Writing
in which I found this account of my own encounter with elves:
I saw them sometime ago,
weeks ago, I wanted to say a long time ago, long ago. There was a family of
them. The father’s eyes were particularly large; they were round, visibly
oval. They were a beautiful blue shade of powder blue. Along the edge you
could see speck[s] of a deep, burnt blue blue. Here and there, there were
little speck[s] of white light—like pinpoints. There were children with
him—maybe a woman too. They looked right at me as if they knew me. They seemed
rather sad. As I looked into their eyes, I knew that we had me[t] before. I
want to compare their ever, ever, ever so wonderfully gentle nature to a family
of deer, but they they made me feel that they didn’t like being compared to a
fury-faced, dark eyes [dark-eyed], blood-filled animal of earth. Their bodies
are completely filled with light.
(My writing “they didn’t
like being compared” to an “animal of earth” suggests that they communicated
telepathically with me. I wrote the account—in blue ink—on some sort of library
slip. If one looks closely at the reverse side, one notices DATE DUE in
black ink and NO 10 ’90, that is, November 10, 1990, in green ink.)
The Elf Rock
26 August 2014—We decided
to spend the day driving around the Snaefellsnes Peninsula, which juts out from
the country’s West coast, and relied on Bergmann’s The Magic of
Snaefellsjokull to guide us to the more supernatural sites.
On the South coast of the
peninsula, near the town of Hellnar, we visited Londrangar, which are two
natural rock columns at the edge of Faxa Bay. They are volcanic plugs, that is,
basalt that filled in the crater of the volcano, which eroded away long ago.
The larger column is 75 meters / 246 feet high and the smaller 61 meters / 200
feet.
Of Londrangar, Bergmann
writes:
The old belief was that
they were elf dwellings, so no farmer made hay around them. Erla Stefansdottir
[Icelandic seer and elf expert] calls the eastern one (75 m high) the church of
the hidden people and the western one (61 m high) the library.
The western one may not
contain books, but is as I intuitively understand it a transmission center,
where wise beings transmit energy to anyone open to receive it. The message
they give me is that they are activating certain centers in our brains to
prepare us for the challenging tasks that the future holds. 2
Upon arriving at
Londrangar, we parked the car and set out on foot for the columns. A few
minutes later, recalling what Bergmann had said about the “Library”—the shorter
column—I decided to go back to the car to retrieve the volcanic rock I had
brought from Heimaey. Zafir was more than perplexed, and I explained to him
that I planned to rest the rock in the perfect crevice or niche (in the
Library) and then hope for a download or transmission of information.
I climbed around the first
column and then the second. At the base of the latter—at the edge of the sea—a
partial cave shielded a shallow pool of water. In the cave wall, there was the
perfect niche.
Getting there wasn’t easy.
I had to walk down a slippery, grass-covered slope and over even more slippery
boulders, covered with rockweed.
When I finally reached the
pool, the tide was starting to come in, which meant that I didn’t have much
time. I held the rock in place and prayed, “Help me to communicate with elves
and others beings and transmit to this rock everything I need to know.” A few
minutes later, rock, that is, book, in hand, I beat a hasty retreat back to the
car.
Afterward, I discovered
that I had temporarily deposited the rock in the Church of the Hidden People
not the Library. Nevertheless, the rock, The Elf Rock, rests securely in the
study of our home in Brooklyn.
Another Miracle at
Mary’s Spring
Our next destination was
Hellnar, from where we hiked to the town of Arnarstapi. We passed through
Draugalag or Oddnyjargjota (Oddny’s Hollow), where centuries ago a priest by
the name of Latin Bjarni “exorcised” Oddny Pila, a young woman who had back
from the dead and then went on rampage injuring people and killing livestock.
On the way there, we passed by Einbui (The Hermit), a rock formation long
believed to be the dwelling place of elves.
We were also on the lookout
for Mary’s Spring, where the Virgin Mary appeared to Bishop Gudmundor The Good
in 1230 CE. According to Bergmann, healings and miracles continue to take place
at the spring where locals placed a marble statue of the Virgin in 1989. 3
Knowing the sun would soon
be setting, Zafir suggested that we return to Hellnar (from Arnarstapi) via the
paved road instead of the hiking path. At some point, however, he realized that
this road was going to take us out of our way. Seeing Hellnar in the distance,
he then suggested that we cut through the meadow between us and the town. The
grass and moss were wet, and we got soaked up to our kneecaps.
As we approached Hellnar, I
said, “I don’t want to miss the spring, so let’s ask the locals how to get
there.” Minutes later, I looked up and saw the little marble statue. The fact
that we were right next to the spring amazed both of us. I touched my third eye
chakra with water from the spring and prayed for purity.
The Face of Egil
27 August 2014—On our way
back to Reykjavik, we made an unplanned stop at Borgarnes, on the West coast,
where we visited The Settlement Center. At the center, we went to two
exhibitions.
According to the museum
brochure, The Settlement Exhibition tells the story of “the first men to
set foot on the island and how the land was settled up to the establishment of
the first parliament in the world, the Althing” and The Egils Saga
Exhibition tells of “Egil…a larger than life hero, an intriguing
combination of violent Viking and sensitive poet.”
In this exhibition, we
learned of Egil Skallagrimsson, the central character of Egil’s Saga or Elga.
His grandfather, Kveldulfr—a shape-shifter—and his father, Skalla-Grimr,
fleeing Harald Fairhair of Norway, settled in Iceland, where Skalla-Grimr
became a blacksmith and farmer and the father of two sons, Thorolf and Egil.
According to Elga, Egil composed his first poem at three and committed
his first murder at seven. He was known to go berserk and to practice magic
using runes (the characters of runic alphabets).
As we exited The Egils
Saga Exhibition, we came face to face with a deformed skull, which had a
ridge protruding from the forehead. The audio guide suggested that Egil’s
skull, if it is found one day, might resemble this one.
According to Elga, Skapti Thorarinsson, a Christian descendant of Egil,
exhumed Egil’s remains from one church so he could re-inter them at another:
He [Skapti]
picked up Egil's skull and placed it on the fence of the churchyard. The skull
was an exceptionally large one and its weight was even more remarkable. It was
ridged all over like a scallop shell, and Skapti wanted to find out just how
thick it was, so he picked up a heavy axe, swung it in one hand and struck as
hard as he was able with the reverse side of the axe, trying to break the
skull. But the skull neither broke nor dented on impact, it simply turned white,
and from that anybody could guess that the skull wouldn’t be easily cracked by
small fry while it still had skin and flesh on it. 5
According to
Jesse L. Byock, who authored the article “Egil’s Bones” for Scientific
American, this description of Egil’s skull suggests that Egil suffered from
Paget’s Disease. 6 This chronic condition results in abnormal “bone
remodeling,” that is, irregular bone growth. Byock argues that Egil’s going
blind, feeling cold in his feet, and losing his balance, all of which are
mentioned in Elga, are symptoms of advanced Paget’s Disease. 7
Future
Conversations
Wow! I couldn’t
believe it! In fact, I still can’t believe it! I saw the face of Egil, Egil Skallagrimsson! Why? I do not know.
What I do know
is that the elves, which I first saw in 1990, are with me now, and they are
eager to share their knowledge. With a fair amount of trepidation, I am willing
to continue the process that they set in motion so many years ago. What I also
know is that I will be returning to the Land of Fire and Ice in the very near
future!
1 Runa Gudrun Bergmann, The Magic of Snaefellsjokull: Legends, Folklore,
and Mystique (Iceland: Isis-Iceland Publishing, 2014), 73.
2 Bergmann, 55.
3 Bergmann, 63.
4 Brandon Presser,
Carolyn Bain, and Fran Parnell, lonely planet Iceland (China: Lonely
Planet Publications Pty Ltd, 2013): 324.
5 Hermann
Palsson and Paul Edwards, trans., Egil’s Saga (New York: Penguin
Classics, 1976), 10.
6 Jesse L.
Byock, “Egil’s Bones,” Scientific American 272 # 1 (January 1995): 84.
