Names for the Sea by Sarah Moss (the unexpected everything .txt) 📕

in a place where they’ve torn down the elves’ house. Sometimes it’s only to give the elves a week to move to a better place, or even sometimes it’s enough to move their house, if it’s a stone, to move it just a little bit. It’s all about talking to them.’

She’s an elf consultant, I think. And there are houses where people are unhappy, houses with presences you try not to think about. We moved into one when I was eleven, a house with too many doors in which you couldn’t hear what was happening in other rooms. It came with a complicated alarm system that didn’t make anyone feel better.

‘Can you give me some examples?’

‘Well, the most recent one is in Reykjavík. The people had built their house into the ground, because they wanted it to be as natural as possible. But no-one could sleep in the main bedroom and the little girls who lived there were unhappy, and people kept hearing things and sensing things. At first they thought it was ghosts, so they called me. But they’d taken land from a father and a young daughter, and he was angry because he didn’t have his home any more. So we agreed that the owners would put a big stone back in the corner of the bathroom, and they wouldn’t touch a huge rock in the garden. So the elf man and his little girl had a small corner in the house, and their main home in the garden. And then everyone was happy.’

A kind of elf reservation. ‘I’m surprised the elves were happy.’

Þórunn shrugs. ‘Well, they were forced to be. They’re more understanding than we are. They prefer to build away from us, but we’re always moving, and then what are they to do?’

In the human version of this tension over land rights, in Israel and Northern Ireland, for example, they usually resort to explosives.

‘So they’re always benign? Well-disposed?’

‘If they’re approached with goodwill. I’ve never in my sixty years come across a bad being. I’ve never seen any demons or bad elves. Not when I haven’t understood why they’re behaving like that. Usually it’s because something has been done to them.’

‘What about ghosts?’ The ghosts are what I’m really interested in. I know there are powerful Icelandic ghost stories but no-one will tell them to me. Even Pétur and Vilborg respond with courteous distaste. They are not nice, I’m told firmly, and I haven’t yet been here long enough to know how to get people to talk to a foreigner about things that aren’t nice.

Þórunn doesn’t want to tell me about ghosts either. ‘I don’t like the word ghosts. My guides have a word for people who have passed over in the last two hundred years. There’s always someone around but they’re not doing much, just watching over. They’re not very different from when they were alive, asking why you painted the wall a colour they don’t like. If there’s some event, a wedding or christening, they’re always very excited. But I’ve never seen a bad person who’s gone over. I’ve seen them frustrated – I was at a funeral for a young man, and he was there in the church by the coffin where they always stand, and usually one or two with them. He was very angry and he had to be taken away. He was young, and he was very drunk when he fell and wrecked his head, and he was angry. But usually when they are buried they go and say goodbye to their nearest and dearest. And that’s very interesting for me. Maybe a widow was being very brave, but when her husband comes and touches her shoulder, then she breaks down. And also I can see it with the children. And that’s what people don’t understand. They say, “Oh, it was when I heard this song, then I just broke down.” But that’s not the reason. It’s the final goodbye. Maybe I just don’t want to see anything bad. I love to go out here in the winter at night, just to have the complete darkness surround me. It has never even entered my mind that there could be anything to harm me out there.’

‘That sounds comforting,’ I say. I am trying to imagine Þórunn’s world.

‘It is comforting. And for me, it’s normal and I feel safe. People say they saw a big black shadow or they felt cold. Well, I feel people who have passed, and if they drowned or froze I can feel their cold. But it’s just part of life. Maybe because I was born that way.’

Þórunn has seen the hidden people all her life, played with them as a child. I turn my question around.

‘When did you realise that other people couldn’t see them?’

She laughs. ‘It’s very strange, but I was thirty-five years old. I was working in a bar, and there was a young man who often came there. And after he’d had three or four vodka tonics, another guy would come in and lean over him, nudging into him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying but it was clearly, “Go on, have another, just a little one.” I knew this beautiful young man and he couldn’t handle his liquor. It went on for months, and one day I said to my boss, “I’m going to say something to that guy. He’s no friend to Siggi, getting him to drink so much.” And my boss said, “Sorry, which guy?” And I said, “Come on, the guy hanging over his shoulder.” And my boss said, “What do you mean? There’s no-one there.” So I just—’ Þórunn zips her mouth. ‘Some people do say that other beings drink through them, and it’s not exactly like that, but sometimes alcoholics who have passed over, they can see the aura of drinkers getting less protective. And even if the beings or the dead people can’t drink themselves they can enjoy the – the drunkenness. You know?’ She babbles in