Vættir

A longship turns toward an Icelandic shore, oars steady, the carved dragonhead at the prow staring straight at the cliffs. Before the keel grinds onto sand the men reach up and lift the figurehead off its post and stow it down in the hull. They will not arrive grinning at the country.

This was law, set down in the old Úlfljótslǫg: men were not to come to land with gaping figureheads or yawning snouts, lest the vættir of the country be frightened and turn against them. Every Icelander knew it. To come in with the prow still snarling was a provocation, and the country would remember.

Vættir, in Old Norse, simply means beings. The word descends from a deeper Germanic root meaning a thing or a creature, and its English cousin survives in the old word wight. The category is enormous and a little vague on purpose. It can include the gods themselves, the Æsir and the Vanir, who are understood as great families among the spirits. It includes the giants, the dwarves, the elves of light and dark. It also includes a far smaller order of being: the small wight under a stone in someone’s pasture, the spirit of a single waterfall, the presence in a particular birch grove.

The taxonomy fans out by where they live. Landvættir hold the land. Sjóvættir hold the sea. Vatnavættir guard specific waters. Skogvættir live in the forests, fjallvættir in the mountains, húsvættir under the timbers of a farmhouse. None of them are quite gods. None are quite the dead. They are the place itself, or they are bound to it so closely the line stops mattering.

The most famous vættir of all defended Iceland from a Danish king. Snorri Sturluson tells the story in Heimskringla. King Harald Bluetooth, eyeing Iceland for invasion, sent a sorcerer ahead in the shape of a whale to scout the coastline for soft places to land. The whale-wizard swam in toward Vápnafjörður on the east, and a great dragon came down the valley to meet him, with a train of snakes, toads, and lizards spitting venom. He retreated and tried Eyjafjörður in the north, where a bird so vast its wings touched the mountains on either side of the fjord rose up against him. He swung around to Breiðafjörður in the west and found a bull wading into the sea, bellowing, with a crowd of land-spirits behind it. He went south to Reykjanes and there met a mountain-giant taller than the hilltops, an iron staff in his hand, a host of trolls and jötnar at his back. The wizard turned for Denmark. Harald cancelled the invasion.

Those four became the four guardians of Iceland’s four quarters: dragon in the east, eagle in the north, bull in the west, bergrisi in the south. They stand on the Icelandic coat of arms today, beneath the red cross, on a block of columnar basalt. They appear on the obverse of every króna coin in circulation. The country has not stopped acknowledging them.

What a vættr looks like depends entirely on which one. Some are vast, a dragon coiled in a fjord, an eagle that bridges a valley with its wings. Some are no bigger than a house cat and live under a stone in the corner of a field. Some appear human-shaped and beautiful and hard to tell apart from the hidden people, the huldufólk, in whose stories the vættir partly survived. Some are felt and never seen at all, a hush that falls when someone walks too close to a cairn, a sudden cold near a rock that everyone knows not to disturb. The old sources rarely give a single, fixed appearance, because there isn’t one. Vættr is a category, and the category is the size of the country.

How they came into being is also vague, in the way old beliefs about the land tend to be. The settlers of Iceland, arriving from Norway in the ninth century, did not bring the vættir with them. They found them already in residence. Landnámabók tells of a man called Goat-Björn who dreamed one night that a rock-dweller offered him a partnership, which he accepted. The next day a billy goat came down from the hills and serviced his she-goats, and his herds grew fast and rich. After that, men with second sight could see all the land-spirits walking with him to the Thing, and following his brothers when they went out to hunt or fish. The relationship was older than the farm. Björn had only signed onto something already there.

The proper way to maintain that relationship was, and is, simple. You leave them food. A bowl of porridge on a flat stone. A piece of dark bread by a cairn. A pour of milk into the grass at the foot of a rock no one mows around. In one Icelandic sermon, women set offerings beside cairns and on flat stones and waited for the year to come back fat. The contract is straightforward. You give them their share. They keep the goats fertile, the fish in the nets, the children alive through the winter.

Christianization made all of this heretical. The Norwegian Gulating laws explicitly forbade the worship of beings believed to live in groves, mounds, or waterfalls. The vættir did not vanish. They were renamed. The tomte and the nisse, the small house-spirits of Scandinavian farmsteads, are húsvættir under different names, still left a bowl of porridge at Christmas. The huldufólk of Iceland, the hidden people who live in stones and may be elves and may be landvættir, still influence where roads are built. Modern Icelandic planners reroute around boulders that someone has dreamed about, or delay construction until the residents are reported, by dream, to have moved out. None of this is particularly old-fashioned. It is what people there do.

Their powers come from where they are. A landvættr tied to a hill is, in some sense, the hill’s working part: its luck, its fertility, its willingness to feed the people on it. Treated well, vættir bless what they govern, the harvests, the herds, the catches of fish, the safe passage of ships through their waters. They can drive away invaders, as the Icelandic four did. They can shapeshift into the local animals if the situation calls for it. They can speak in dreams to those who listen. They can refuse to be moved.

Their weaknesses are matched to their strength. They are local. A vættr cannot follow a man across the sea. Their power runs out at the edge of their place. They can be frightened by something as small as a carved figurehead on a longship. They can be offended by blood spilled where they live, by waste left where they do not want it, by simple human carelessness. The relationship is reciprocal: when the offerings stop, when no one talks to the rocks anymore, the contract slowly dissolves. The land does not curse the people. It just stops giving as much. After enough time, the place becomes only a place, and what was in it has gone somewhere else, or quietly stayed silent.

The Icelandic foreman, faced with a boulder in the way of a runway, dreams that a woman is asking for two more weeks to move her family out. He gives her two weeks. The Americans wait.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are vættir?

Vættir are the nature spirits of Norse and Icelandic belief, supernatural beings tied to specific places in the land, sea, mountains, forests, and homes. The Old Norse word simply means “beings” and shares a root with the English word “wight.” The category is enormous and deliberately loose: it includes the gods, giants, dwarves, and elves as great families of spirits, as well as the smaller place-bound wights under a stone or in a single waterfall.

What are the four guardians of Iceland?

The four guardians of Iceland are a dragon in the east, an eagle in the north, a bull in the west, and a bergrisi or mountain-giant in the south. According to Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla, they drove off a sorcerer in whale-form sent by the Danish king Harald Bluetooth to scout Iceland for invasion, and Harald cancelled his plans. The four guardians still appear on the modern Icelandic coat of arms and on the obverse of every króna coin in circulation.

What types of vættir are there?

Vættir are organized by where they live. Landvættir hold the land, sjóvættir the sea, and vatnavættir specific waters; skogvættir live in forests, fjallvættir in mountains, and húsvættir under the timbers of a farmhouse. The broader category also includes the Æsir and Vanir gods, the giants, the dwarves, and the elves, all understood as great families within the same kind of being.

How did people honor vættir?

People honored vættir by leaving small offerings of food and drink at the places where they lived. A bowl of porridge on a flat stone, a piece of dark bread by a cairn, or a pour of milk into the grass at the foot of a rock were the standard gifts. One Icelandic sermon describes women setting offerings beside cairns and on flat stones and waiting for a fat year in return, and in exchange the vættir kept the goats fertile, the fish in the nets, and the children alive through the winter.

Do people still believe in vættir today?

Belief in vættir survives in modern Iceland and Scandinavia, both in folklore and in everyday practice. After Christianization the old rites were outlawed by laws such as the Norwegian Gulating code, but the beings persisted under new names: the tomte and nisse of Scandinavian farmsteads, and the huldufólk and rå of Iceland. Modern Icelandic planners still reroute roads around certain boulders or delay construction until the resident spirits are reported by dream to have moved out.

Related Entries

Landvættir, Sjövættir, Bergrisar, Tomte, Nisse, Huldufólk, Æsir, Vanir, Jötunn, Dvergr, Ljósálfar, Wight, Rå, Domovoi, Leshy