Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth

Synopsis

In exploring how Icelanders interact with nature—and their idea that elves live among us—Nancy 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 art—from ancient times to today—Brown 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 Otherworld—in ancient lava fields, on a holy mountain, beside a glacier or an erupting volcano, crossing the cold desert at the island&’s heart on horseback—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 preserve—or 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.

Copyright:

2022

Book Details

Book Quality:

Publisher Quality

Book Size:

328 Pages

ISBN-13:

9781639362295

Publisher:

Pegasus Books

Date of Addition:

10/04/22

Copyrighted By:

Nancy Marie Brown

Adult content:

No

Language:

English

Has Image Descriptions:

No

Categories:

Nonfiction, Travel, Social Studies

Submitted By:

Bookshare Staff

Usage Restrictions:

This is a copyrighted book.