Icelanders, to be honest, live in a fantasy world. It's written into the law. Many roads are designed to take detours, simply to avoid going through the homes of the local elves and fairies. Builders and town planners also bypass that land. There is even a government minister to ensure they adhere to this plan. "Some people are not sure if they believe in it," one of the locals explains, "but they don't trespass on that land, just in case."
Even without such laws, Iceland has a fantasy aspect. Its natural landscape, shaped by millennia of volcanic activity, is like nowhere else on Earth: smoking geothermal geysers, hot springs, countless spectacular waterfalls, treeless green jungles of soft shrubbery, ranges of flat-topped mountains. It has an other-worldly appearance (making it an ideal location to film fantasy movies such as Stardust and Beowulf & Grendel). In the two weeks I was there, however, I saw no elves, while the only fairies I met were kids in fancy dress at the Hofn Lobster Festival, in which most people in the small fishing town (and many visitors) are lured away from the paintball arena and the two supermarkets for an evening festival of dancing, parades and copious amounts of lobster. Read the whole story