Some Reykjavik Statues, and Why Icelandic Wizards Are the Best Wizards

Reykjavík is full of statues. Here are some of my favorites:

Ingolfur Arnarson, first settler of the Reykjavík area (of napkin fame!):

St. George (I took this picture so long ago! I feel like I forgot that anything was ever green anywhere.):

Leif “The Lucky” Eriksson...looking like the bamf that he is:

Which stands in front of the Hallgrimskirkja, largest and most unusual building in Reykjavik:

And my very favorite statue in all of Reykjavík, located in front of the University:

Saemundur and the Devil!

Want to know what the heck is going on in this statue? Read on! So Saemundur, he’s a priest/magician, right? He goes to Norway to ask the king for a particular church position in Iceland, but there’s another fellow who wants the same job. King of Norway tells them whoever gets there first can have it. Saemundur summons the Devil, and promises him his soul if the Devil will carry him to Iceland without getting him wet. “Sweet deal!” thinks the Devil, and promptly turns into a seal, which carries Saemundur across the sea. (That creature he's riding in the statue, btw, looks like no seal I have ever seen, but I guess it is a devil-seal, after all.) As soon Saemundur catches sight of land, however, he takes out his psalter and smacks the Devil in the head with it, causing him to drop the wizard and violate the bargain. Saemundur swims the rest of the way himself, gets the job, and keeps his soul intact.

I love this story. It’s classic Iceland—to value books both as sources of knowledge and, when necessary, blunt weapons. Very pragmatic. Icelanders really do love their literature—even back in the days when they were living in turf houses and eating pickled fish all winter there was still a rather high literacy rate, and manuscripts were passed around from farm to farm for everyone to read.

(The Devil, incidentally, is rarely a serious threat in Icelandic folklore. On the contrary, he’s often quite stupid, and is easily outwitted by clever magicians like Saemundur. You’d think he’d give up on Saemundur’s soul at some point, but no—he is the Elmer Fudd to Saemundur’s Bugs Bunny. Not only does he always fail to steal the soul, more often than not Saemundur forces him to do some tedious or humiliating chore instead.)