GRÝLA

Exhibited at the OXO Tower Gallery, London 2015
Sculptural Costume

The Icelandic mythical Giantess Grýla resides in the highland mountains in Iceland where no one else lives and no one visited for ages. Grýla is first mentioned in in Snorra Edda, a part of the 13th century Icelandic Sagas. She is really portrayed as a dreadful and horrendously ugly creature that moves around farms and villages, stealing children and other food and values that she stumbles up on.

In the 17th and 18th century Iceland went through its hardest times as combined forces of volcanic eruptions, epidemics, stormy weathers that wrecked havoc on the sea side, hunger and the cold years of the “little Ice Age” eroded the country and its people. In those ages, stories of the infamous Grýla and her evil deeds flourished among the common people.

I see Grýla as an embodiment of the natural forces in these ages that killed large portions of the common people in Iceland and robbed people of their livelihood and descendants.

In my opinion, Grýla is the original symbol that embodies the dark, merciless forces of the Icelandic nature that through the ages has at times devastated the very foundations of life of its people and is still very capable of doing so.

I interpreted the shape of one of the Icelandic national costume “Skautbúningur” into Gryla’s costume to connect the people with the nature symbols in her costume as we are all created and moulded by nature’s forces and thus a part of its erratic dance of devastation and renewal.

Costume Designer / Alexía Rós Gylfadóttir