Here is a little extra folk-tale for you to enjoy on Halloween. It is the most famous Icelandic ghost story there is, and almost every Icelander knows it. A modern version, filmed for television, had the deacon riding a motorbike. In Icelandic folklore, ghosts are supposed to be unable to say the name of God and will change names which incorporate God’s name into something else. The woman in the following story is named Guðrún, which means “God’s Rune”, but the ghost shortens it to “Garún”, which I spell as “Garoon” in the story to approximate how the ghost would have said it. The name of the church-farm the deacon came from translates as ”Dark River”. I have used the translated name of the farm and left out all other place-names to make it easier to read the story aloud. Another thing you need to know is that in many of the old-style churches in Iceland, the church bell was not located in a belfry, but at the top of the gate that led into the church-yard. This type of gate was ca
Bookish expressions of a Bibliophile living in Reykjavík