Icelandic Folklore: Elves, Trolls, and Hidden Worlds
In Iceland, folklore isn't something locked in old books. It's part of the landscape. Ask around and you'll find that a surprising number of Icelanders won't entirely rule out the existence of the huldufólk — the hidden people. Roads have famously been rerouted to avoid disturbing rocks said to be elf dwellings. Whether or not you believe, one thing is certain: Iceland is a country that takes hidden worlds seriously.
That spirit runs through Maya Brooks and the Land of Fire and Ice, the fantasy adventure by young authors Atharv and Nyssa Bagotra. In the book, Maya discovers a hidden portal in her grandmother's attic and steps into a realm of fire and ice. The world is invented — but the idea at its heart, that another world might be hiding just out of sight, is pure Icelandic folklore.
The hidden people
The huldufólk are Iceland's most famous legend: a parallel society living in rocks and hills, invisible to most humans but very much present. Stories tell of travelers who were helped — or punished — by the hidden folk, of farmhouses built with a spare door for elf visitors, of construction projects paused when machinery mysteriously broke down near an "elf rock."
Anthropologists will tell you these stories helped people make sense of a harsh, unpredictable landscape. But there's another way to look at it: Iceland's folklore is a storytelling tradition built on the idea that the world has more layers than the one we see. Sound familiar? It's the same promise every portal fantasy makes — including Maya's.
Trolls, giants, and the petrified landscape
Iceland's trolls are the huldufólk's rougher cousins: enormous, dim-witted, and doomed by daylight. Legend says trolls caught by the sunrise turn to stone — which is why so many Icelandic rock formations have names and stories attached. The sea stacks at Reynisdrangar? Trolls frozen mid-stride. The cliffs along the coast? Giants caught out after dawn.
For a young reader, this is irresistible logic: the landscape itself is a cast of characters. Every strange rock is a story. It's the same instinct that makes kids invent histories for the odd corners of their own homes — the creaky attic, the dark cupboard, the door that's always locked.
Portals and thresholds
Folklore across cultures loves a threshold: a wardrobe, a rabbit hole, a platform between platforms. Iceland adds its own flavor — mist that rolls in and changes the world, caves that seem to go deeper than they should, hot springs appearing in the middle of nowhere like doorways to somewhere warmer.
In Maya Brooks, the threshold is a grandmother's attic — an ordinary place made extraordinary. That's the folklore move: the hidden world isn't far away. It's right here, one brave step through the portal away.
Why legends matter to young readers
Folklore teaches kids something important: that stories aren't just entertainment, they're how people understand the world. Icelandic children grow up with the huldufólk the way other kids grow up with fairy tales — as a living tradition that says pay attention, the world is stranger than it looks.
That's exactly the sensibility that makes a young reader fall in love with fantasy. And it's why a book about a girl, a portal, and a land of fire and ice feels so at home alongside Iceland's oldest stories.