Why So Many Icelanders Still Believe In Invisible Elves

The Hraunavinir, or Friends of the Lava, believe that any benefits from a project that snakes through Gálgahraun are cancelled out by its cultural and environmental costs. According to protester Ragnhildur Jónsdóttir, the thoroughfares would destroy some of the “amazingly beautiful lava formations” and spoil a habitat where birds flock and small plants flourish. One of Iceland’s most famous painters, Jóhannes Sveinsson Kjarval, once worked on his canvases there, perhaps magnetized by the charm of the terrain’s craggy natural relics.

Not all of the arguments against the development are so straightforward. At least a few believe it will displace certain supernatural forces that dwell within the hallowed volcanic rubble, and fear the potentially dark consequences that come with such a disturbance. Jónsdóttir, a greying and spectacled seer who also operates an “elf garden” in nearby Hafnarfjörður, believes that the field is highly populated by elves, huldufolk (“hidden people”), and dwarves, many of whom, she says, have recently fled the area while the matter is settled.

One of the many oddly shaped rocks at the lava field houses “a very important elf church,” which lies directly in the path of