One of my objectives is to bring a multi-discipline approach to this blog. I have an interest in science and mythology, to name just two fields of study, so I look for similarities as well as differences between them. In the area of science, I read voraciously on the current thinking in the field of physics, for example, dark matter, branes and M-Theory. Then, too, I enjoy reading about mythology. You might think these two fields have nothing in common, but the point of this post is to suggest that they actually may. So, what if anything do fauns have to do with fermions, or banshees with bosons? Let’s put that off and begin with a disclaimer.
Not superstition
To believe that fauns, faeries, unicorns and dragons once existed is no more superstitious than believing in the passenger pigeon or the Tasmanian tiger. Superstition, according to Merriam-Webster, is “a belief or practice resulting from ignorance, fear of the unknown, trust in magic or chance, or a false conception of causation.” Superstition is forbidden by Scripture for a number of reasons, including resorting to some ridiculous ceremony or inferior power when God alone is sovereign.
And what of the powers attributed to some of these creatures? If they truly existed at all, might they just as well follow different laws of physics than those of us? We’ll see in this essay that in the case of at least Iceland and Norway, elves, trolls, and other Huldufólk (or hidden folk) did not live per se on earth, but either in a place parallel to earth (according to the Norse) or superimposed on earth (as the Icelanders understood it). That mystical place was called Álfheim by the ancients. Such a place might be in fact be a brane where reality is completely different than ours as we’ll soon discover.
Consider the Scriptures
Mythological creatures are mentioned in no less an authority than the Holy Bible. I believe that one’s first approach to the Bible is to take it literally whenever possible or reasonable. And obviously we cannot always take the Bible literally, because Jesus spoke in parables and allegories. But if the Bible mentions a horse, I think it means a horse. If it mentions a unicorn, I think it means a unicorn. Because someone may not believe in unicorns does not give them license to torture the sense of a verse to make it fit his personal worldview.
Jesus said in John 10:16 that he had “other sheep” to attend to. Did he mean literally a flock of sheep? Probably not. Could he have meant Gentiles? Yes! I think so. What about a sentient life form in another part of the galaxy? Why not? I’m not frightened at the thought of visitors from a planet circling Tau Ceti landing on earth. They were created by God Almighty even as we were, and Jesus died “for all.” We don’t know if there is extraterrestrial life, but God does.
Hypothesis
My hypothesis is that we, our world, our solar system, our galaxy, exist on a ribbon of space called a brane. There are other branes in space-time with other universes and realities. One or more branes may be very close to ours, not close enough to provide easy access, but sometimes thin enough to provide communication between branes, and then at times to allow life forms from a second brane to visit earth, and possibly people from earth to accidentally get swept up into another reality, perhaps never to return. It might take a cosmic event to open a portal between brane-worlds. These events might be colliding cosmic strings. vacuum decay, or other events.
A bestiary
When referring to mythological creatures in this post, it is important to classify them according to what we know of their origin and nature, else it will be more confusing than necessary. I’ll use three categories to simplify this.
Category One consists of creatures similar to dire wolves and Megalania monitor lizards that once existeted but are extinct today. Examples of these lifeforms include fauns, unicorns, cockatrices and dragons. But where are their remains fossilized remains, you may ask? There are several answers. They may as yet be undiscovered. Paleontologists of the world spend most of their time on barely one percent of the planet’s surface. Then again, it is not unusual for animals to seek secluded places when they sense their death is imminent. A dragon with a cave for a lair may go to the deepest recesses of the cave to die. Other animals may sink in lakes, bogs or have their remains washed out to sea or otherwise scattered No more than fifty long-lived dragons might suffice to account for the stories in legends about them.
Choose the same number of objects and deposit them across the globe. What are the odds that they would be discovered?
Also, there are numerous descriptions of dragons, many quite detailed, from Western Europe to China. And yet, absent any fossil record, the reality of the dragon is unceremoniously discounted and considered to be myth. However, the Lascaux Unicorn pictured above, with two horns, is considered to have existed though not a single fossil can corroborate its existence. Why hold the door open for one beast and shut it for another given equal constraints?
Category Two consists of creatures extremely rare, remote and corporeal. Trolls would fall into this grouping, perhaps Grendel from Beowulf, Yeti and giant denizens of the deep.
The last category (Category Three) is of particular importance to this post. These are interdimensional or transbrane beings who dwell in a parallel, hidden or superimposed domain. These creatures include fairies such as Titania and Oberon, elves, the Lady of the Lake in Arthurian legends, and the Yunwi Tsunsdi among the American Cherokee and Iroquois people, to name just a few examples.
This three-category taxonomy is important because some monsters of myth are clearly bones and blood, mortal, as the faun admitted to St. Anthony of Egypt, like all life on earth. And some can be located only in certain discrete locations (i.e., land vs. water, alpine environments as opposed to tropical places).
Caveats
The feature photo is meant to suggest elves, a type of Icelandic Huldufólk. In actuality, however, Icelandic elves looked in many cases almost identical to ordinary people, except for a small, curious difference in the philtrum, the crease in the upper lip directly under the nose. I chose the Tolkien-like, pointed-ear folk to emphasize the difference between elves and people, and to suggest an exotic, otherworldly scene, which is exactly what Álfheim, the home world of the elves, is. So, elves as far as Iceland goes truly do not have pointed ears. No doubt this is a relief to all.
Trolls (tröll)
Just as the lifeforms in Category One were incidental to M-Theory and branes, the fact that trolls figure so prominently in Icelandic folklore is reason for me to discuss them nonetheless so there is no confusion as far as there in the paradigm they do or do not fit.
Icelandic trolls (Category Two) are strong but dim-witted, ogre-like creatures associated with different geographical features in Iceland, such as mountains, cliffs, sea stacks or caves. They were said to lurk in ravines where they feast on stray cattle or even unsuspecting humans.
Not every troll is dangerous or disagreeable. Some are fairly friendly to humans, especially if the troll is treated with respect.
If
Where are the trolls?
If the official and unofficial histories of Iceland are to be taken literally, there are the petrified remains of dozens if not hundreds of trolls in different areas of the countryside. Not all of these formations have survived intact. Karl, one half of the troll pair at Drangey in Skagafjörður, said to have been caught turning stone while leading a cow across the fjord, collapsed in an earthquake in 1755, the same year1 the volcano Katla had its largest eruption in historical times, though the two events are roughly three hundred kilometers apart and I have found no direct account linking them. Kerling, Karl’s counterpart, still stands.
These vanished formations are reminiscent of Lot’s wife, said to have been turned into a pillar of salt (Genesis 19:26). No such feature exists today, yet the Jewish historian Josephus claims to have personally seen it in his own lifetime, decades after the resurrection of Jesus and many centuries after the destruction of Sodom (Antiquities of the Jews, Book 1, Chapter 11). Whether this accounts for all of the trolls or not is an open question. Might there still be a few trolls in some sort of stasis, ready to rouse themselves in the last days? They could easily be indistinguishable from the craggy mountains and cliff faces that abound in Iceland. I offer this last possibility as an image rather than a claim; it cannot be tested even in principle, and I would rather say so than let it pass as an argument.
Elves (álfar)
Much of what people today know about elves has been corrupted by Tolkien movies and various computer or role-playing games.
In Iceland, elves are somewhat thinner and a bit taller than the people of Iceland. They are also known for their delicate beauty. They are completely mortal, though with a longer lifespan than the average human.
Elves are classified in the third category, which suggests that they properly dwell in a different reality than we do. In fact, they live in a realm called Álfheimar. That elven world is home to light elves (ljósálfar), the surface dwellers. The more dangerous dark elves live below the surface (dökkálfar).
The two types of elves are described in the thirteenth-century A.D. Younger (Snorra) Edda, where it states:
Many places are there, and glorious. That which is called Álfheimr is one, where dwell the peoples called Light-Elves; but the Dark-Elves dwell down in the earth, and they are unlike in appearance, but by far more unlike in nature. The Light-Elves are fairer to look upon than the sun, but the Dark-Elves are blacker than pitch . . ..
It is said that another heaven is to the southward and upward of this one, and it is called Andlangr; but the third heaven is yet above that, and it is called Vídbláinn, and in that heaven we think this abode is. But we believe that none but Light-Elves inhabit these mansions now.
In Icelandic cosmology, the first heaven is the one we see at night when we look at the skies. It consists of stars, planets, the Milky Way and so on. There is, in Icelandic and Norse mythology, a heaven above that called Andlangr. Vídbláinn lies above that as the third heaven, and that plane is inhabited by the light elves. The dark elves, or black elves as they are sometimes called, live in Svartálfaheimr, which is located beneath the surface of our planet.
Dark elves (dökkálfar)
The dark elves, thousands of feet under the surface, are misshapen and hideous in appearance. They use the intense heat of their environment to work metals and gems, and they are likewise known for powerful enchantments used against humans who made enemies of them, striking mortals with unexplained illnesses and terrible pains. Such victims were considered to have been “elf shot.”
The boundary, whether wall, veil, force or geometry, between humans and elves can be porous, allowing elves to mix with humans, humans to hear strains of elven music, or humans to glimpse fleeting images of Álfheimr. As it is now, and according to certain theories in modern physics, it is possible for two realities to occupy the exact same “space” or spatial coordinates, though the alignment, or phase, is a bit different. If you’ve ever tried to tune an old analog radio or television, you know that while it is generally possible to get a clear signal on your desired frequency, sometimes atmospheric or solar conditions allow the signal from another broadcast location to “spill” or “bleed” over into the signal you are trying to isolate. This example may not make sense to a physicist, but it illustrates the point.
Religion
While trolls have a history of enmity against Christians and Christianity, fauns, fairies and elves seem interested in redemption, and there are stories of elven churches, such as the one at Tungustapi, also called Álfakirkjan, and the one near Álftanes, as well as baptisms and so on. Elves, thought by some to be descendants of Eve, on occasion were said to marry Christians, and their hybrid children were raised in the Church. This is true in Iceland in particular. Church leaders prior to the Reformation who had met such species or had written or counseled about them were not particularly sympathetic to them, often writing them off as demonic or as fallen angels. Nor were fairies necessarily responsive to the gospel. Elves could be adjured as evil spirits, but here Christianity is a power they’re subject to, not a faith they share, worship and cherish within. So a distinction must be carefully made. Writing off an unfamiliar species of being is what some people do today when they dismiss reports of extraterrestrials or interdimensional travelers, as recorded in the UFO/UAP literature, as evil. But the Reformation allowed religious leaders (like Kirk) to freely explore and advance the notion that there were other sentient creatures, with or without human souls, who required the opportunity to hear the gospel and decide for themselves. This is the opinion that I personally hold. When Jesus spoke of other sheep, perhaps these are whom he had in mind.
So, where are the elves?
Mythology has something of a Fermi Paradox to deal with. The original Fermi Paradox, put forth by physicist Enrico Fermi (1901–1954), asks: if the universe is teeming with life, why have we not seen any signs of it? “Where is everybody?” he was said to have asked his colleagues. Likewise, if our planet once abounded with changelings, centaurs and satyrs, nymphs and naiads, where did they all go? The seventeenth-century minister and folklorist Robert Kirk, writing of the Sìth, also known as the Wee Folk, in Scotland, does not describe a distant country. He refers to them as a created order who exist among us, but we are not ordinarily able to see them. And while there are perhaps different ways to interpret that notion, twenty-first-century physics theoretically allows a radical and affirmative answer to Kirk’s question. It is the answer to this question that I will propose.
And actually, elf-related activity has been alleged to have occurred in Iceland during the first quarter of this century.
In 2012, folklore-related sites, and elven historical sites in particular, gained legal protection in Iceland. Several incidents below illustrate the consequences of ignoring the law.
In 2013, a road construction project involving the Álftanes highway connecting the Álftanes peninsula was abruptly halted by the Icelanic Supreme Court for environmental reasons and because continuing the project according to plans would have meant demolishing an elf holy place. The Icelandic Road and Coastal Administration explained that “issues have been settled by delaying the construction project at a certain point while the elves living there have supposedly moved on.” Two years later, road crews in Iceland covered an “enchanted” elf rock with debris, only to encounter machine
At this point I’d like to share how M-Theory can account for some of the circumstances represented in mythology, even as I made a faily compelling case in adapting M-Theory and brance to places around the world such as Delphi, Jerusalem’s Pool of Bethesda, and Lourdes to name just a few locations.
Branes
A brane, likely short for membrane, is best understood as an area of space under a specific restraining tension. Our galaxy, and perhaps our entire universe, is not attached to a brane so much as it is constituted by one; the brane is not a platform we sit upon but the very fabric of space our galaxy occupies. Calling a brane a fabric is a useful shorthand, though not a fully accurate one; the truth is stranger than that, since a brane is a distinct kind of physical object with its own calculable properties, not simply a woven material or a field of familiar particles and forces.
Branes come, broadly speaking, in two varieties: a two-dimensional brane and a five-dimensional brane. But we are a three-dimensional reality in addition to time, which is temporal and not spatial. So, we have more than two dimensions but less than six. How do we fit in? The answer seems to be that we are encased in an extra dimension beyond the 3+1, which would then equal five.
Different models in physics either allow for some minor rustling (drift) in the branes, or they do not. If our location on our brane is close to another brane, there need not be any drift for my hypothesis and the essay on Holy Places to occur, assuming data can cross over. But branes that are not fixed by geometry can potentially collide, with unimaginable, though catastrophic, consequences.
Now to the “nitty gritty.”
Álfheimar, or Alfheim in its anglicized form, is the realm or home of the elves. It is superimposed on our reality, and as such it is almost certainly a constituent part of our brane. Elves are not confined to Álfheimar, but humans cannot leave our reality nor enter Álfheimar (or at least there is no historical or mythological record of it happening). My mention of the different “heavens” above was incidental, and possibly added to the Edda by author Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241), who apparently inserted it as an attempt to reconcile the Norse/Icelandic cosmology with the Christian view set down by the apostle Paul (2 Corinthians 12:2-4). So it is useful in understanding this construct, but it is a Christian-era addition rather than something organic to the older mythology, and it plays no part in M-Theory.
Our universe is three-dimensional plus time, which is the temporal portion of a fourth dimension. The bulk of our brane (according to M-Theory) is five dimensions. However, since M-Theory allows for eleven dimensions according to some theorists, the fifth dimension might be nothing more than an abstraction to balance the mathematical equation. As far as the remaining six dimensions, none of which we can experience, they are nevertheless not only “here” on earth, but everywhere as well. This is anathema to the prevailing notion that the hidden dimensions are compactified into something much smaller than an individual atom, roughly a hundred billion billion times smaller. Perhaps this popular compactification assumption is meant to explain why the higher dimensions cannot be perceived. They are not apparent, that is, except for those areas near the temple of the Delphic Oracle, the grotto at Lourdes, the Pool of Bethesda, or the elven church at Tungustapi that suggest something is present and on occasion makes itself known.
In this essay, I’ve taken European mythology and attempted to bring some insight and rigor, some objectivity, to a body of literature that is at once subjective and entirely anecdotal. As we learn more about the future, we may find that the odd pieces of the past fit very well into the tapestry of what we know. It may be odd to apply a scientific framework to fables, but it may also work.
Footnotes
1A note on 1755: it was an eventful year well beyond Drangey. On November 1 of that same year, an earthquake and the tsunami and fire it triggered devastated Lisbon, destroying the Portuguese Crown’s naval and colonial archives and costing an estimated forty percent of the nation’s gross domestic product. Historians widely treat 1755 as the year Portugal’s standing as a global power began to unravel.
