Building in Iceland? Better Clear It With the Elves First
“[A] port on the outskirts of Reykjavik prides itself on its unusually high elf population. Tourists are invited to tour the known elf locations, including a large rock whose reputation as an elf habitat meant that a nearby road was diverted some years ago so as not to disturb its unseen residents. Recently, the planning committee considered a resident’s application to build a garage. “One member said, ‘I hope it’s O.K. with the elves,’” Ms. Erlingsdottir related. Should the council determine that it is, in fact, not O.K. – usually this happens when a local mystic hears from the elf population, directly or through a vision – the town would consider moving the project, or getting the mystic to ask the elves to move away, she said.
Such occurrences are not unusual. In nearby Kopavogur, a section of Elfhill Road was narrowed from two lanes to one in the 1970’s, when repeated efforts to destroy a large rock that was believed to house elves were thwarted by equipment breakdowns. The rock is still there, jutting awkwardly into the road, but it is unclear whether the tenants are.
In the same town in 1996, a bulldozer operator, Hjortur Hjartarson, ran into trouble as he tried to raze a suspected elf hill to make way for a graveyard. After two different bulldozers repeatedly and inexplicably malfunctioned, and local television cameras failed when trained on the hill, though they worked elsewhere, the crew halted the project. ‘We’re going to see whether we can’t reach an understanding with the elves,’ Jon Ingi, the project supervisor, told Morgunbladid, a Reykjavik newspaper, at the time. Local elf communicators were called in to arbitrate, and after a while, work resumed.”
See also: Hafstein, Valdimar (2000) “The Elves’ Point of View: Cultural Identity in Contemporary Icelandic Elf-Tradition”, Fabula 41(1/2): 87-104.