Inlooking 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.
Because Iceland is, in fact, a volcanic island that has risen from the seabed, the water deep underground is hot from the energy of the Earth. Icelanders use that water to heat their homes and generate electricity, but a side benefit is that thermal swimming pools…
A mere representation of the Northern Lights created by Icelandic Elves Remember your first date as a teenager? When you finally got to go out in a car rather than be driven somewhere by your parents? The excitement? The anticipation? The possibilities...(maybe more a guy…
Straddling the Continents in Iceland In 2012 I had the pleasure of visiting Turkey to attend a conference as an invited keynote speaker. During that trip, I was able to see awe-inspiring sites, ancient ruins from the Roman Empire dating back three centuries before Christ,…