Elves and Environmentalists Halt Road Project

(Reykjavik, Iceland) People on a fairly isolated volcanic island in the middle of the ocean should not be faulted for believing in strange stuff.

Elf advocates have joined forces with environmentalists to urge the Icelandic Road and Coastal Commission and local authorities to abandon a highway project building a direct route from the Alftanes peninsula, where the president has a home, to the Reykjavik suburb of Gardabaer.

They fear disturbing elf habitat and claim the area is particularly important because it contains an elf church.

The project has been halted until the Supreme Court of Iceland rules on a case brought by a group known as Friends of Lava, who cite both the environmental and the cultural impact — including the impact on elves — of the road project. The group has regularly brought hundreds of people out to block the bulldozers.

This episode arguably demonstrates that environmentalists are dedicated political opportunists rather than defenders of the pristine.