Paging Mr. Tolkien: I have to admit that before the total collapse of Iceland’s banking industry–and with it, very nearly, the collapse of the country itself–I thought that their principle export was Björk. How wrong I turned out to be.
There’s another story that’s been playing itself out that’s only recently come to light in the media, involving Alcoa, some nutty environmentalists, and some stubborn holdouts from Lord of the Rings. File this one in “Stranger than Fiction.”
We take it more or less for granted that if you’re going to undertake a major construction project, certain preparations have to be made. Plans are drawn up, workers hired, materials gathered. Nobody bats an eyelash when the time comes for an environmental impact study, for instance. All well and good. Standard operating procedure. Nothing wrong with making sure that certain endangered species and mythical–wait a minute, what the hell?
Here’s where the story starts to go off the rails. It’s probably predictable enough that ELF–the Earth Liberation Front, the ones who make the fringe elements of Greenpeace seem rational–has tossed its hat into the ring over this, but there’s more. Apparently, along with the standard boilerplate about impact studies, there’s also an Icelandic law dealing in the protection of “Hidden People.” Not ELF, Elves. An expert on all things elfin had to be called in to declare the area free of elves.
Even the aforementioned Ms. Guðmundsdóttir has gotten in on the game. Can PETE (People for the Ethical Treatment of the Elfin) be far behind?
Read more in Michael Lewis’s piece here at Conde Nast Portfolio, or in full in Vanity Fair. There’s also an eerily prescient piece in the New York Times from 2005 located here, and a mini-documentary on elves on YouTube.