Haunted Walk´s in the PRESS!

To commemorate this other-worldly aspect of Icelandic culture, I went on a haunted walk of Reykjavík. Given Icelandic folklore and the trend towards haunted tours in other cities, it is surprising that no one had thought of this idea before Jónas Freydal Thorsteinsson created them this year. Then again, maybe prospective guides were concerned the 24-hour daylight would take away some of the eeriness (which it does).

Jónas Freydal leads most of the twice daily tours himself, assisted by the able Belen Buendia. The haunted walks project is clearly a labour of love for this affable man who has worked for decades as a marketing consultant in the tourist industries of numerous countries.

Jónas is adamant that he did not want to create yet another clichéd tour where actors dressed in period costume jump out from dark corners. He wanted to take the tales and legends of the city and use them to paint a picture of the darker side of Reykjavík without unnecessary embellishment.

To do so, Jónas Freydal combed the archives and the libraries searching for the juiciest morsels of local history.

Then came his stroke of genius: he hired several mediums to walk the anticipated route of the city and identify spirits and any other unusual presence they might encounter. He matched the stories he found to the histories he had compiled, including tales of the French sailors who drowned in the harbour and the Viking spirit who was accidentally unleashed during the 2001 construction of the Reykjavík Centrum Hotel.

The tour is a rather lengthy two-hour walk around the city centre. Their tailor-made lopapeysur protecting them against the wind, Jónas Freydal and Belem guided our small cluster of participants to various corners of town of which even locals are not always aware: the small empty garden behind the Althing, where an old speaker’s corner is haunted by spirits; the city’s oldest tree, a European mountain ash, still growing strong next to a souvenir shop; the plaques commemorating an old cemetery, now in a square built over 30 generations of dead Icelanders.

I even caught a fleeting glimpse of those ancient implements from the past – phone booths. The journey ended appropriately in the cemetery on Sudurgata, where Jónas Freydal gleefully showed us the grave of a devil worshiper (the cross is upside down and the coffin itself is encased in cement), and the unmarked tombs of abandoned children.  

Jónas tells his stories in Icelandic blasé fashion, letting the gory facts speak for themselves. He also inserts a few of his own prophesies, from the coming of the Avian flu (“it’s just like those who died of Spanish flu,” he reminds us somberly, gesturing to a row of graves from 1918) to the impact of the Kárahnjúkur dam project and the country’s recent financial troubles (apparently the fault of the angry Viking spirit released in 2001).