Howdy there. My Name is Frank M. Taylor. I am not the author of this blog — just the translator.

A few years ago I saw an episode of Destination Truth where Josh Gates went hunting for elves in Iceland. I learned from that episode that over 50% of the population of Iceland believes in elves.

Yeah. 50% of a first-world country with cell-phones and internet access. They believe in Elves.

So about two years ago we (me and my wife)  went camping all around Iceland.

Then we camped out at a place called “Alfborg”, which was supposed to be the “City of Elves”.

I didn’t see a single. Friggin. Elf. 

I woke up early in the morning and just walked around my campsite and I came across a guy that was just a bit taller than the regular Icelandic folk. He was remarkably good looking for a population that has to rely on an app to keep the incest to a minimum. I could tell he was really angry about something and I figured he could use someone to talk to, so I tried to strike up a casual conversation. 

Most Icelanders speak English but this guy didn’t. Not even a little bit. He spoke some flavor of German I hadn’t heard before (I’ve got a bit of an ear for languages). I can fight my way a few different languages, and eventually we settled in on Spanish, and then he really opened up. 

This dude started rambling on about his bosses and how he got fired and started blaming his problems on the printing press and I thought this dude was messing with my head. Then he started asking me what I knew about the printing press and I’m like, “uhhhhh. It was all the hawtness like a million years ago.”

Then he got really curious and asked me about books. Y’all…It’s like he’d been living under a friggin’ rock or something. So I had a book on Iceland and another on Icelandic and this guy lost his ever-loving-mind when I showed him. He’d never seen a printed book before.

I asked him where he was from and he said, “right here,” and I’m like, “nuh uh bro,” and he’s like, “yuh huh” and it was…tense. Then he started asking me about a bunch of stuff I’d vaguely recalled reading about in Spanish folklore and I thought, “ok, this dude’s high AF.”

He tried to tell me all about these people of trow or throw or something and I’m like, “yeah, I think there’s an episode of Destination Truth about that and then he got suuuuper excited and told me it’s all true and I’m like, “dude are you trolling me right now,” and he got this serious look on his face and started looking over his shoulder like the thought the cops were coming.

So, he tried to tell me he was some sort of historian and I’m like, “How the hell are you a historian but you don’t know about the printing press?”

So then he showed me this notebook he had in his bag and it was written in some weirdass language I’d never seen before. Like some weird combo of like Icelandic and Latin and Greek or something. 

So, I whipped out my phone and tried to take a picture of it and my phone battery died and I’m like, “dude WTF,” and he just shrugged. 

Here’s the thing though, I’m a bit of a language nerd and I was really curious about this weirdass language so I asked if I could maybe have a copy of it and he said, I kid you not, “I signed a non-disclosure agreement.”

And I’m like, “But you got fired, right,” and with that, I’M NOT LYING HERE, he said, “yeah, f**k those guys and the unicorns they rode in on.” Except he didn’t say “unicornio” which is the typical Spanish word for unicorn, he said “monoceronte” which is this super old word for it. 

So he said, “I’ll make a copy of it and send it to you.” So I gave him my address and then had to explain what an address was, and what the United States was, and then what postage was, and how the mail system worked, and then I just said, “Screw it. Just scan it and email it to me and HOLY CRAP HE DOESN’T KNOW WHAT THE INTERNET IS.”

So we probably talked for like four hours and I’m just like, “dude I can’t help you. Cool story, though.” That was over two years ago and I just kinda figured there are really good drugs in Iceland. 

So a few weeks ago I got a package in the mail from Iceland. Inside was a hand-written copy of his book. 

I tried to take a picture of that and, I kid you not, my phone died.

There was a little note inside that said, “Que sean jodidos esos trasgoses y seus monocerontes” which means, “ May those elveses and their unicorns be f**ked”

He wrote some stuff in the margins that I don’t remember seeing before and they’re some mix of what looks like Galician, Hebrew, Spanish, and Latin. They read like translation notes.

So. There it is. I think this is the diary of one seriously pissed off elf.