The Ravens Who Watch

Ravens are curious creatures. They hunt for food as we do, they solve problems as we do, and they entertain themselves as we do. But some are unlike the others. Some just watch. They observe, they learn, they wait, sometimes for centuries, just to be human once more…

I moved to Ísafjörður from London in August for a postgrad – being unsure of what I wanted in life, but knowing I would hang myself working at a 9-to-5 desk job. It’s a small town in the Westfjords of Iceland that's so far hidden that even the ring road, which goes around most of the country’s perimeter, was at least a 200-mile drive away. But it truly is the country’s hidden gem. Being that far north, however, the sun never sets in the summer, so midnights are as bright as middays. But the winters are quite the opposite.

I started guiding for a local tour company. Mostly, I would be on the bus tours for cruise ship tourists. I would talk on the microphone as the driver took us all around the valleys and over the mountain passes, sometimes to Friða’s farm to play with her sheep. My favourite tour was to the Dynjandi waterfall, where we would always pass by the Mjólkárvirkjun hydroelectric power station run entirely by waterfalls. Green energy plus a limitless water supply means that every household comes with a washing machine, dryer and a dishwasher – a luxury every student dreams of.

There’s only one set of power lines in the entire Westfjords, which run along and over the mountains, providing power to all seven thousand of us scattered about in villages and other small towns of barely a thousand people. Often the winter storms do some damage, so we get our fair share of blackouts until the lines can be fixed, or until someone starts up the backup diesel generators.

My favourite story to tell would be about the Útburður. In the olden days, if a mother could not care for her newborn, she would abandon it in the lava fields. The child would return as an Útburður – a lost spirit taking the form of a raven, lingering in the lava fields, waiting for unsuspecting travellers. There is a sad truth to the legend. Ravens are clever and curious creatures, and they often like to mimic the sounds they hear - like water drops, car horns or even mimicking someone shouting. So when they would find a baby abandoned in the empty fields crying for their mother, the ravens would mimic those cries as they flew all the way back to the villages. Perhaps to summon the villagers to the baby’s aid. Sadly, there wouldn’t be anyone to care.

Ravens are such fascinating creatures. The thought of learning about these intelligent beings really excited me, so I wanted to study them for my final thesis, even despite my boss’s ominous warning. “Beware of the ravens who watch”, she said at the end of one of my tours she was shadowing. At first, I thought she was trying to be funny by adding to the spooky atmosphere. But there was something about her tone suggested a hint of sincerity.

I hadn’t given it more thought until the very last day the final cruise ships departed before for the winter came. It was when I was discussing thesis ideas with another classmate that I noticed my boss went very pale. She suddenly seemed disconcerted by the conversation. I asked if she was alright. But she leaned in very closely and asked, “Are you absolutely sure about studying the Ravens?” I told her it was only an idea; my topic may change. I asked her again why she was so agitated at this idea. But she only replied, “Beware of the ravens who watch”.

This time, I asked what she meant by that. She leaned in closer once again as she put an arm around me and whispered, “People disappear when the lights go out. Not for too long, everyone here knows everyone. We’re all practically related, so of course we’ll realise someone is missing. But just long enough that they won’t be noticed. But the ones who come back, they are not the same people who leave….”

“So what does this have to do with ravens?” I asked, confused. But she merely shook her head, pulled back and started to put on her coat. “That’s why I never stay over the winter, you see”, she chucked, “I love Ísafjörður, and I would not live anywhere else. But I go to Reykjavik to stay with my mother. I hate the city, I really do. But I don’t want to be taken away like the others.” She gave a cackling laugh, a laugh someone who had only three hours of sleep would give, before she drove off into the evening dusk.

Karla was one of those Icelanders who claimed the elves and hidden people spoke to her. She was someone who never slept more than four hours a night. She ran marathons for fun and lived off nothing but protein bars and black coffees – coffees strong enough to keep the average person up for three days straight. But she had a point about the winters here.

As winter came, we lost daylight at a rate of knots. The sun would be so low in the sky that it would stay hidden behind the mountains. And after seeing the final mid-November sunset, we would be left at the mercy of the darkness until the spring. Still, there were enough Christmas lights to make the town feel cosy and homely. I hadn’t given more thought about Karla’s ominous warning, until I met that boy.

I later got a winter job as an after-school coach for 5–7-year-olds. There was one child, however, who stood out to me. He never did get on with the others and would often be almost disturbed at everything they did. I had to call his mother when he got violent one afternoon. I thought she would give me the whole spiel of how he wasn’t normally like this, and she would deal with him when she got home. But instead, she just asked me to be a bit more forgiving with him. “He hasn’t been himself for the past year", she said, "not since the blackout”. I asked her what she meant. She looked down, trying to find the right words to tell me in English.

“The winters here are dark. You have not had your first blackout, but it is a darkness like you have never experienced. Sometimes it distresses people so much it changes them. But it is not like trauma, it is like they are another person. They lose memories, forget friends and family members, and forget how to do simple things like drive a car, or make a phone call, or even turn on the shower.” I asked her if there were others like her son. She said there were. Sometimes they changed for the better, angry and moody people would often become more relaxed and friendly. But aside from acting creepy and possessed, they all had one thing in common. They would all be missing for a few days after a blackout.

I told Trevor about it on the way home. He didn’t seem to care; he was too busy complaining about our latest assignment. But I wasn’t listening to him either. I suddenly felt very disconcerted, like a dog sensing a storm in the distance. Something felt off. I looked around but only saw a few passers-by and some birds - gulls and ravens. I remembered Karla’s warning once again. “Beware of the ravens who watch”.

Most of them seemed to be more interested in the contents of the bins or bullying the seagulls. But there was one that was different. One sat on the roof ominously still, keeping its gaze firmly on us. Even when we turned onto a different road, I noticed it flew up to a higher vantage point and kept its eyes locked onto us.

I pointed out the bird to Trevor, and for a moment, they kept their eyes locked onto each other. He yelled sharply to try to scare it away. But it's eyes stayed transfixed on us. Trevor’s attention shifted away to say goodbye. He wasn’t the most self-aware and didn’t realise just how loudly his words echoed in the fjord. But I could have sworn one of those echoes was strangely distorted. As if it hadn’t come from the mountains echoing, almost as if it came from the raven mimicking Trevor. It made me remember the stories of the Útburður again – ravens mimicking cries of the dying newborns, abandoned in the lava fields.

It all happened on our first blackout. I remember the darkness of that night when the lights faded all at once. It happened roughly just before midnight. The darkness was nothing like I’d ever seen before. The skies were empty, and the air was oddly still. It was as if the town had been swallowed. All I could make out were the faint silhouettes of buildings and mountains, barely illuminated from trickles reflected by the snow.

That was when I heard it. A soft knocking. Only it wasn’t a knock in the usual sense. It almost sounded like something pointy and sharp – like a cane or a ski pole tapping against the wood. I wanted to use the light from my phone to move about, but I forgot where I had left it. As I fumbled about in the dark searching for any light source, the knocking sound grew more frantic and sharper. But I still couldn’t find that damn phone. Little did I know that my missing phone had saved my life.

As the knocking grew more frantic, I stopped searching and instead rubbed my hands against the walls, feeling my way towards the door. Gently, I scanned my hands against the grooves between the wood and metal of the door frame until I could feel the cold metal of the handle. But just as I had placed my hand on it, the knocking had stopped all of a sudden.

I tried to look through the window to see if I could make out anyone outside, in case it was a neighbour who was locked out of their home, or if it was just something stuck to the walls that had blown into the wind. But I couldn’t hear anyone, and the night was still and quiet; not a whisper of a breeze could be heard. I looked through the door window, but couldn’t make anything out but the silhouettes of the buildings. So, I turned to head back to my room.

Then I heard it again. This time, it came from across the road. I peered through the window once more, but still I couldn’t make anything out. From across the road, where Trevor lived, I heard the door open just as the knocking became more frantic. I thought I could make out Trevor holding a small light in his hand, illuminating a small circle around him. The light pointed in my direction. But something was blocking the beam. Something had emerged from the ground, and from its shadow grew a shape that almost seemed human. Almost. As it rose, it seemed to unfurl something along its sides, like a bird expanding its wings. All of a sudden, it swiped forward at the house, and the faint light that was casting its shadow had disappeared.

Almost immediately, the lights came on. It always takes a while for the diesel generators to get going. In theory, people could take that time to appreciate the stars or even the northern lights if they were out. But the Icelandic skies were always so littered with clouds and mist that it was rare to catch such sights.

I tried to scan the area to figure out what this mystery figure was. I slowly paced forward outside towards the other house, looking for this mystery creature. But there was nothing. Strangely though, Trevor's door was left open.

I walked inside to investigate and was greeted by Trevor’s housemates. But Trevor himself was nowhere to be seen. I thought he had gone on a midnight walk to enjoy the dark sky. But it was only as I left the house that I noticed something sticking out of the snow, a single black feather.

Trevor didn’t turn up to class the next day. We first thought that he was ill. But his room always seemed to be empty. After a few days, we considered telling someone - the lecturers, the police, mountain rescue, anyone who could shed any light on why he had just mysteriously disappeared. But I was against it, because of what I saw later the next night.

I had gone for a walk up along the mountain pass, following darker skies for a better view of the northern lights. I was alone. I had reached the furthest point I could get to before the snow blocked my path. As I looked above the lights streaking over the mountains that pierced the sky, I froze.

The lights illuminated a silhouette dancing on the ledge of the summit. I couldn’t be sure if it was a person. They moved in the most contorted way, like a marionette pulled by a child who did not know how to properly control it. I watched it for what seemed like hours, trying to figure out if it was someone needing help or if it even was a person. I don’t know if it was my desperation to try and find him, but the shape of the thing, I could have sworn it looked like Trevor. He is quite round, fat and stout, and he walks with a hunch on his neck from probably years of poor posture. That figure, the silhouette looked so much like him, that I was almost certain it was. But as I took a step forward, it suddenly froze. As if it could see me watching it from hundreds of metres below. That was when it dropped back and suddenly disappeared.

Four days after the blackout, Trevor finally reappeared. But he seemed like an entirely different person. The bubbly, annoying and loud man we all knew was now morbidly quiet and distant. We tried to ask him where he was, but all he would say in response was, “I had to figure myself out first”. What was stranger was his accent. Trevor was from Texas, but now he had this strange Icelandic accent. He was even struggling with his English. Compared to my London accent, I always joked he sounded like a hillbilly with an eye for his cousin. But it was as if he had only just learnt to speak the language.

Even stranger, he started grumbling gibberish to himself. I soon got suspicious and started secretly recording him. To my surprise, it almost sounded like Icelandic. But not the way we had been taught. It was so grumbled I could barely make out what he was saying. I finally found someone to help me translate. I’m glad I did. If I hadn’t… well, I don’t know what would have happened to me.

Friða would sometimes invite me to her farmhouse for dinner, even long after the tourist season had ended. Her husband, Arnþór, didn’t speak English, so it was a good opportunity to practise my Icelandic. I played the recordings to her, but she seemed quite confused.

“Is your friend from Iceland?” she asked

“No”, I replied.

“He speaks like an old Icelandic man. He sounds a bit like Arnþór, nei? And his dialect seems very old, things even I would call Arnþór an old grandpa for saying”.

Some of the things he would say in Icelandic would be nonsense words, but old nonsense words. The equivalent of anyone my age saying, “good heavens”, or “rascals”, or “scallywags”. But what was stranger would be the random comments he would make. He once slipped on the ice, and I asked him if he was alright, and I thought he was just grumbling out of annoyance. But according to Friða, it sounded like he was saying, “I forget this body can fall down.” His mother called once, but he just stared wide-eyed at his phone until it stopped ringing. He asked me why ‘that box’ was sounding on its own. I told him it was his mother calling, probably because she hadn’t heard from him in days. But he continued to stare and mumble something along the lines of “a mother, finally, I have been calling for a mother for many a day now”.

It was the very last phrase Friða translated that was what made me decide to leave Ísafjörður, to leave Iceland for good, never to return. I was once complaining on our walk home about how miserable the dark, sunless winter was making me. But I heard Trevor whisper something out of earshot. Though the wind roaring in the background stained the recording, she could very clearly make out the words that still haunt me to this day: “Worry not, we will come for you next”.

I left Ísafjörður the very next day, and I never returned. I hitchhiked a lift with someone who had come to visit for the weekend and was on his way back to Reykjavik. The man who was driving was happy to take me as long as I split the cost of fuel. I told him I would pay for the entire journey if he would leave before dark. I hadn’t even packed any bags. We set off just as the streetlights were beginning to come on. I looked back as we rolled over the mountain pass, and just before the town slowly disappeared in the distance, the lights faded all at once, as Ísafjörður was plunged into another blackout.