Skip to main content

Friday Night Folk-tale: Strandarkirkja

Strandarkirkja is located on the south coast of Iceland and is one of Iceland‘s oldest churches. The current building dates back to 1888, but there has been a church in this location since at least the 13th century.



The following tale is told of the origins of the church:

A young man, the son of a farmer, was sailing from Norway with a load of wood for building houses. As his ship neared the southern coast of Iceland, a great storm broke out with thick fog and darkness and the crew were convinced that the ship was going to founder upon the shore and break apart. There are few natural harbours in this particular area of the southern coast and there was no way of finding any shelter from the storm. 

The crew knelt in prayer and pledged to build a church if they were able to land safely, in the location of landing. As soon as the words of the pledge were uttered, a bright light blazed up on the shore. They followed the light and suddenly the storm died down and all was still. As they approached land, they saw that the light emanated from a shining figure on the shore, but it disappeared when they landed. 

Looking back in the dawn light, they saw that the light had guided them through a narrow trough of calm sea that cut through a great wall of breaking surf. Since that occurrence, the inlet where they landed has been known as Englisvík or Angel Inlet. As pledged, they built a church up on the shore above their landing place, where a church as stood ever since. 

Ever since that first miracle, people who are struggling against the odds, in danger or trouble, have made pledges to the church. Usually these pledges come in the form of money, but people have also given furnishings to the church, and there are many stories of wishes being miraculously fulfilled.
Some say that as a result of this, it is the richest church in Iceland.

Copyright notice: The wording used to tell this folk-tale is under copyright. The story itself is not copyrighted. If you want to re-tell it, for a collection of folk-tales, incorporate it into fiction, use it in a school essay or any kind of publication, please tell it in your own words or give the proper attribution if you choose to use the wording unchanged.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Book 7: Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuściński (reading notes)

-This reads like fiction - prose more beautiful than one has come to expect from non-fiction and many of the chapters are structured like fiction stories. There is little continuity between most of the chapters, although some of the narratives or stories spread over more than one chapter. This is therefore more a collection of short narratives than a cohesive entirety. You could pick it up and read the chapters at random and still get a good sense of what is going on. -Here is an author who is not trying to find himself, recover from a broken heart, set a record, visit 30 countries in 3 weeks or build a perfectly enviable home in a perfectly enviable location, which is a rarity within travel literature, but of course Kapuściński was in Africa to work, and not to travel for spiritual, mental or entertainment purposes (he was the Polish Press Agency's Africa correspondent for nearly 30 years). -I have no way of knowing how well Kapuściński knew Africa - I have never been there...
Post a Comment
Read more

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...
25 comments
Read more

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...
9 comments
Read more