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Looking for the Hidden Folk: How Iceland's Elves Can Save the Earth Audiobook
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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 defines what an Icelander might call an 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.
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“Occupies a nice middle ground between the scholarly and popular. She takes elves seriously as a cultural belief and knows how to tell a story about them and their role in the history and lives of Icelanders.”
— Iceland Review
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“Brown overlays a glowing web of connections on Iceland’s folkloric—and literal— andscape of ice and fire, illuminating the answers to the many questions she poses.”
— New York Times Book Review -
“This compelling and highly readable book offers a thought-provoking examination of the nature of belief itself, drawing compelling conclusions among humans, storytelling, and the environment.”
— BookPage (starred review)
Awards
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A New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice of the Week
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About Nancy Marie Brown
Nancy Marie Brown is the author of several highly praised cultural histories, including The Real Valkyrie, Song of the Vikings, and Ivory Vikings. These titles have been favorably reviewed in the New Yorker, the New York Times, the London Economist, the Wall Street Journal, and many other journals. She has spent decades studying Icelandic literature and culture.
About Ann Richardson
Ann Richardson is an Earphones-winning narrator who studied broadcast journalism and Spanish at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln. Years later, the desire to take up a creative yet productive career lead her to narrating audiobooks and founding Great Plains Audiobooks, an audiobook publishing company focusing on bringing Midwestern literature to audio.