whether you want to lay a road,build a house, or construct a dam in Iceland, or there’s one influential group you contain to clear it with first – elves. Oliver Wainwright on the power of the ‘hidden people’
• Rocky elf homes – in picturesHuddled together amid the jagged rocks of the Gálgahraun lava field,a group of nervous onlookers wait with bated breath. Suddenly, there’s a loud crack and a tumble of stones as a 50-tonne boulder is wrenched from the ground, and then slowly raised into the air and eased down nearby,so delicately you’d think it was a priceless sculpture. “I just hope they’re happy in their new domestic,” says Ragnhildur Jónsdttir. “The elves really don’t like being uprooted like this.”Road-builders are used to seeing their plans scuppered by the protected habitats of bats and newts, and sites of special scientific interest and outstanding natural beauty. But in Iceland,there is another hindrance: the world of the hulduflk, as they call them, or the hidden people.
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Source: theguardian.com