In looking at the landscape around Iceland–volcanic, barren, remote, sparsely populated–it is abundantly clear that if ever there was a place on earth where elves could exist, this would be the place.  The landscape is like the setting for a fairy tale…other worldly.  One can just imagine the little “hidden” people, as the Icelanders call them, hanging out in such places and creating their mythical mischief.  From mysteriously halting construction projects (true) to breaking the fall of a little boy from a cliff that surely would have resulted in injuries, yet he had not a scratch.  According to legend, the boy reported seeing “little hands” reach out to break his fall.  The belief in the existence of elves seems to be more widely accepted than you might think.

No joke.  There are actually road signs to warn you about elves.  If the pie chart above can be believed, 37% of Icelanders think that elves are a possibility, 17% deem them likely, and 8% think there definitely are elves.  That’s 62% that are somewhere in the vicinity of thinking that a trip to Rivendell, the home of the Elf King Elrond in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings, is a possible excursion.

The girls in the picture look like the kind of elves you might find in the hills of Iceland.  Of course, with those ears, they also look like they could be Vulcans, related to Spock, and have just come from a Star Trek Convention.  You’ll have to be the judge or go visit Iceland in search of the little “hidden” people yourself.