Trolls!

Our first full night in Iceland, we were invited to go to the auditorium in our hotel to drink hot chocolate and listen to stories read by a local actress.  Except for the part where I spilled hot chocolate all over Matt, it was one of my favorite things we did.  The first story she read us was the story of Flumbra, the foolish giant (troll) who tried to go visit her lover with eight kids in tow.  Everyone who's familiar with the Lord of the Rings knows what happens to trolls who get caught by the sunrise, and alas for Flumbra and her eight sons were turned to stone.  If you want to read the full tale, I did buy the book.

The Icelanders have a great many stories to tell about Vikings and puffin youngs, and also about trolls.  The ancient settlers of Iceland used to say that the standing stones that litter the volcanic countryside are trolls who were caught by daylight.  Even now, they say that 2/3 of all modern Icelanders believe in trolls and fairies.

Anyone who knows me won't be surprised that the troll stories captured my heart and my imagination.

Iceland is also known for its wool.  We were a little short on cash, so we agreed to just one special souvenir each from this trip.  Matt got a bottle of not quite the most godawful liquor you could find, and I got eight skeins of Icelandic wool yarn.  The only question was what to do with my yarn?

Eventually, of course, I decided to make trolls with it.  This blog post is about the making of those trolls. I'll leave you to judge whether they were the best use of my Icelandic wool.

The first hurdle was deciding on colors.  One of the things that most struck me about the Icelandic landscape was the colors.  Pictures--even with our decent camera--really don't capture it.  But here's a couple shots to give you an idea:

The moss covered lava rocks were my very favorite.  Here, you can see the lake Þingvallavatanin the distance, and the spray from the Oxararfoss waterfall at the end of that pathway.

 Another shot from the shores of the lake Þingvallavatan.  I loved the red of the rowboat.

Here's a shot of just some random hillside in the Icelandic countryside, including all my favorite Icelandic colors.  You can even see a few trolls scattered about on the hillside.

 And here we see the sun breaking through the clouds (finally) at the fjord Hvalfjörður, with the blue-gray sea and the brown grass and the black lava sand.

 My very favorite, though, was the green moss on the lava plain surrounding the Blue Lagoon, with its murky blue-white water.

 Freakin' gorgeous, right?  So we actually bought a touristy pantone book that showed off the Icelandic colors, and took it with us to the yarn store.  I tried to capture my favorite colors in the eight skeins of yarn I chose.  At this point I thought I might try making a representational landscape tapestry or something.  I don't know.  I have weird ideas.  Anyway, I picked up these colors, and on a whim I also stuck a few rocks in my pocket.

 I believe it was on my way to the airport, when we saw some really good-looking trolls in the distance (alas, I didn't get a picture of them from the moving bus), that genius struck.  I would make little trolls, and each of them would have an Icelandic stone inside.  Right off, I set to knitting.

 It was fun trying to use my authentic colors to recreate miniature versions of the Icelandic countryside even when I got home.  (I think that cat missed us.)

 

And here's the result!

 

 Here we have one that still needs his moss, and two that are almost finished.

With the black ones, I was trying to capture the moss on black rock look.

 

 With the gray, I was hoping for something more like this; though I couldn't help giving him some moss, too.  The moss is just so springy and bouncy and you sink nearly knee deep into it in places!

 Very nice, yes?  Here's my first finished one.

Looks just like Iceland, right?  Here, have a photo to compare.

 

 Of course, there aren't only stone trolls.  There are also Ice Trolls, who live on the glacier.  What happens is you get a hole in the glacier, called a moulin, where the water collects and melts out a passage to the river that flows under the glacier.

 Over time, this hole will fill with ash, because there's always ash on these glaciers from all the volcanoes.  The ash blocks out the sunlight, so that everything around the hole melts away, leaving what they call a dirt cone.  Because they're made of nothing but ice and ash, these dirt cones move around.  One will melt away, and another one will pop up a few hundred yards away.  It's a constantly changing landscape.  Something that is there one month and elsewhere the next must be a troll, right?  Ice trolls.

Note, I don't have very many pictures of the glacier on account of it raining so hard I thought my camera would get saturated and break.  It's a shame, because the glacier was unquestionably one of the very coolest things we saw.

Also, the glacier contained layers, just like a tree trunk contains rings.  The snow from every year adds a new layer, which compresses when the next year's layer is added.  Years in which volcanoes erupted include a layer of ash.  So in the wrinkles and crevasses of the glacier, you can see the geologic history of the island.  The lower, larger ash line on this one is from the eruption of nearby Katla in 1918.  (Which, incidentally, happened three years after the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull.  One tends to follow the other.)

 So of course I had to make an Ice Troll as well.  Here he is, chilling with his buddy from Þingvellir.

And there you have it.  The trolls of Iceland, made miniaturized in Icelandic wool and with little hearts of Icelandic stone.  I think it's a decent souvenir.  Especially paired with a shot of Brennivín and a steaming bowl of lamb stew.  I'll have to tell Matt to get on that.