by hilzoy
"Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called "hidden people" — or, to put it more plainly, elves — in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, "we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people." The other, more serious problem was the Icelandic male: he took more safety risks than aluminum workers in other nations did. "In manufacturing," says the spokesman, "you want people who follow the rules and fall in line. You don’t want them to be heroes. You don’t want them to try to fix something it's not their job to fix, because they might blow up the place." The Icelandic male had a propensity to try to fix something it wasn't his job to fix.
Back away from the Icelandic economy and you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. There are, of course, a few jobs in Iceland that any refined, educated person might like to do. Certifying the nonexistence of elves, for instance. ("This will take at least six months — it can be very tricky.") But not nearly so many as the place needs, given its talent for turning cod into Ph.D.'s. At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it.
Enter investment banking."
Indeed.
"Builders of the country's first shopping mall took care to lay electrical cables and other underground installations well away from the suspected homes of gnomes and fairies. Couples who are planning a new house will sometimes hire "elf-spotters" to make sure the lot is free of spirit folk. Such broadmindedness might be just self-protection. Tales abound of broken limbs, busted equipment and other woes befalling builders daring to go where elves and hidden people traditionally tread.
The Iceland road authority typically responds with sensitivity, routing roads around hallowed boulders or delaying construction long enough to give non-human constituents time to find new accommodations.
When bulldozers kept breaking down during work on a new road a few years ago at Ljarskogar, about three hours drive north of Reykjavik, road crews solved the problem in an unorthodox way but one which is fairly common in Iceland. They accepted an offer from a medium to find out if the land was populated by elves and, if so, were they causing the disruptions.
Viktor A. Ingolfsson, a spokesman for the road agency, says, "When Native Americans protest roads being built over ancient burial grounds, the U.S. listens. It's the same here. There are people who believe in elves and we don't make fun of them. We try to deal with them.""
Possibly the Icelandic banks should have made sure there were no hidden people lurking in their balance sheets, waiting to take revenge on anyone who disturbed them.
// Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free but, as he put it, “we couldn’t as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.” //
We have this situation in another form. Native american tribes can veto a project if the site is not xxx-free (I don’t want to say elf-free because that would be disrespectful).
In Hawaii they have a menehune myth. Menehune are elf-like little people. They were the precursors to the polynesian race. It seemed a myth until they found theskeletons of little persons on Flores Island in Indonesia.
We do indeed have a menehune myth, but we don’t need permission from them to build. We do typically have a traditional Hawaiian blessing before the building opens, though. You shoulda seen the faces on the Target officials when the first one of their stores opened out here a few weeks ago.
Well, d’d’d’dave, I’m not aware of any Native American project vetoes (Hawai’i may be a different story) specifically based on elves. I was on a dig where they brought in/worked with/gave access to someone who certified (iirc) that the site was free of ancestral remains – a genuinely contentious and understandably fraught issue, and one best handled respectfully, even if the particular methodology wasn’t one I can comfortably get behind.
See also NAGPRA, etc.
____
I’ve seen some research on the role of the sacred/supernatural/etc. in terms of conservation – sounds like it’s mostly not applicable in the Icelandic case, though? Although perhaps some of that rerouting . . .)
“The other, more serious problem was the Icelandic male: he took more safety risks than aluminum workers in other nations did.”
“Tales abound of broken limbs, busted equipment and other woes befalling builders daring to go where elves and hidden people traditionally tread.” (emph. added)
Noted without comment.
This is my favorite ObWi post of all time. Certifying the non-existence of elves has got to be the best job I ever heard of.
I did have the idea, once, of writing to the CEOs of the Fortune 500 and offering, for a reasonable fee, to pray for a doubling of their share price. But I worried that if enough of them took me up on it, I’d end up in a higher tax bracket.
–TP
//When Native Americans protest roads being built over ancient burial grounds, the U.S. listens. It’s the same here. //\
Except, of course, that Native American burial grounds actually exist.
Until fairly recently similar issues used to arise in Ireland regarding the building of roads through “fairy forts” etc. Now we’re all modern and stuff, and we and bulldoze our way through priceless sites once a few archaeologists have been given a brief opportunity to take a look.
Perhaps we should have listened to the old people?
The writer Michael Harding wrote in his Irish Times column recently,
i don’t think the elves took down iceland’s banking system.
but we certainly can’t rule out goblins.
so far as I know, gringotts is the only major banking house that has been completely unscathed by the recent catastrophes.
looks suspicious….
Elsewhere in the world is the need to take feng shui into account.
The great thing about Christianity is that the words “shopping mall” and “shadow banking system” are in the Bible, thereby permitting the desecration of the entire physical world for short-term gain because the long-term reward is in the hereafter.
I would suggest to Iceland the distribution of tiny elf-blankets and shawls infested with the small-pox virus. Bank lending would revive and the bulldozers can break ground.
It’s worked other places.
American magical thinking (the stock market in an unregulated system will be the key to wealth and retirement, for example) MUST supplant all other magical thinking in the world, or the world will be a simpler, happier place, and that’s just not profitable enough.
On MSN today, it’s reported a woman called 911 when McDonald’s ran out of McNuggets.
WE are the nation of realists.
No. It was the Gnomes of Zurich. Everybody knows they’re to blame for problems with the banking system. Especially everybody who’s played Illuminati.
Certifying the non-existence of elves has got to be the best job I ever heard of.
And just think how great it would be if you met some.
The gnomes live in Zurich and the trolls infest the intertubes.
…and the ‘hidden people’ include not just elves but gnomes, trolls, fairies, and others
Well, I’m glad to read this. Until I got to this part, it all sounded so silly.
“Back away from the Icelandic economy and you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. There are, of course, a few jobs in Iceland that any refined, educated person might like to do. Certifying the nonexistence of elves, for instance. (“This will take at least six months — it can be very tricky.”) But not nearly so many as the place needs, given its talent for turning cod into Ph.D.’s. At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it.”
I want to complain about this, but I can’t quite articulate my thoughts. I guess it’s along the lines that Icelanders are apparently expected to serve the Icelandic economy, rather than the other way around.
And I don’t know that elf-checking is more irrational than, say, Christian blessings upon opening a gas station, getting ready to play a football game, etc.
I don’t remember there being any elves in it, but Halldor Laxness’s ‘The Fish Can Sing’ is a pretty beautiful novel about Iceland’s relations to modernizing and the outside world.
And I don’t know that elf-checking is more irrational than, say, Christian blessings upon opening a gas station, getting ready to play a football game, etc.
These things may be equally fantastical or senseless, but the irrationality, I think, depends on the costs.
Icelanders believe in elves the way Americans believe in UFOs. It’s just part of the modern mythological world in Iceland.
There is a lot of truth in this article. The financial analysis is spot-on. However, it’s buried in some stunningly offensive rhetoric:
“Icelanders are among the most inbred human beings on earth”
What.
I have a hard time imagining how anyone thought that was an okay sentiment to put into an article like this.
Also, Michael Lewis wins the prize for least self-aware bit of text I’ve read recently not written by a right-wing blogger: “When Neil Armstrong took his small step from Apollo 11 and looked around, he probably thought, Wow, sort of like Iceland—even though the moon was nothing like Iceland. But then, he was a tourist, and a tourist can’t help but have a distorted opinion of a place: he meets unrepresentative people, has unrepresentative experiences, and runs around imposing upon the place the fantastic mental pictures he had in his head when he got there.”
When I read this I thought: “Oh wow! I’ve been taken for a ride. What a clever angle, filling an article with the worst stereotypes about Iceland only to pull the rug from under them and show something closer to reality. But nope, two sentences later we get the business about Icelanders being “among the most inbred human beings on earth” and I had to pick my jaw off the floor.
The shame is that there’s a whole lot of interesting analysis. The problems with male culture are very interesting, though anyone who’s gone to, say, a planning meeting for a protest knows that ignoring women isn’t exclusive to Icelandic males. Another angle I wish he had gone into more is the recency of urban culture in Iceland (until 1900 there were barely even any towns in Iceland and Reykjavík didn’t start becoming a city until after World War Two). And one absolutely glaring omission is not going into the colonial history of Iceland. Distrust of what foreigners say about one’s country is higher when the country was a colony for nearly eight centuries. Especially when that foreigner is the largest bank of the former colonizing nation (Denmark and Danske bank). I’m not saying that DB wasn’t correct in its analysis (they were).
the trolls infest the intertubes
When they’re not in DC, lobbying Congress for bridge loans . . .
Kári – isn’t being inbred an objective condition which can be measured? If Icelanders are, in fact, inbred (which seems likely – they are not getting much new blood in, I shouldn’t think), then how is it prejudiced to report this?
witless
// All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. There are, of course, a few jobs in Iceland that any refined, educated person might like to do. Certifying the nonexistence of elves, for instance. (“This will take at least six months — it can be very tricky.”) But not nearly so many as the place needs, given its talent for turning cod into Ph.D.’s. At the dawn of the 21st century, Icelanders were still waiting for some task more suited to their filigreed minds to turn up inside their economy so they might do it.”
I want to complain about this, but I can’t quite articulate my thoughts. I guess it’s along the lines that Icelanders are apparently expected to serve the Icelandic economy, rather than the other way around.//
An economy is the expression of peoples willingness to buy things and sell things to each other. It is neither a servant nor a patron. A ‘filigreed mind’ may be willing to sell it’s output put if no one wants to buy than no trade will occur. It is not the duty of the economy to serve by buying something no one wants. Except in a command economy for a brief period before it fails.
Hey, here in San Francisco, we have to certify the non-existence of San Bruno Elfin Butterflies before we build homes on hills. And we’re just as refined as the Icelanders.
No Salt Marsh Mice were harmed in the production of this comment.
I did have the idea, once, of writing to the CEOs of the Fortune 500 and offering, for a reasonable fee, to pray for a doubling of their share price.
You might have some competition.
rea,
Very funny. Thanks.
Excellent comparison MobiusKlein… so similar. They both use the word elf!. That must have taken forever.
Elsewhere in the world is the need to take feng shui into account.
The HSBC building in Hong Kong is
legendarywell known in architectural circles for this reason (amongst others).John: Kári – isn’t being inbred an objective condition which can be measured? If Icelanders are, in fact, inbred (which seems likely – they are not getting much new blood in, I shouldn’t think), then how is it prejudiced to report this?
First of all, inbreeding is a very loaded term that implies mental deficiencies and other mutations. It’s not an accusation to throw around lightly. Second of all, Icelanders are not all descendants of Norse who moved there in the 9th and 10th centuries. For starters, the Norse had a lot of Gaelic slaves which were quickly set free and became part of the population. Non-Icelanders have moved to Iceland for shorter or longer periods, adding their genes to the population. In my family-tree there are both Danish and Dutch-Jewish merchants (which is why I have a family surname as well as a patronym) and I’m sure that if I actually looked at my genealogy I’d find more. Yes, Iceland is an island nation but that doesn’t mean it’s completely isolated from the rest of the world. Finally, Iceland used to have incredibly strict incest laws. It was a punishable offense to marry your fifth cousin (there are examples of this being enforced, so this wasn’t just dead letter).
It is true that Icelandic genealogical records are very extensive and that Icelanders are more homogenous than a nation in a region that has had more trade but to call it inbreeding is, frankly, offensive.
“Back away from the Icelandic economy and you can’t help but notice something really strange about it: the people have cultivated themselves to the point where they are unsuited for the work available to them. All these exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people, each and every one of whom feels special, are presented with two mainly horrible ways to earn a living: trawler fishing and aluminum smelting. There are, of course, a few jobs in Iceland that any refined, educated person might like to do.”
What’s odd about that passage is that normally we’re told that education is the ticket to a stronger economy, the gateway to the 21st century (a phrase that needs to be retired since we’ve gone through the door) and so on. Sounds like Iceland did just what it was supposed to do. And now it seems a fancy education just gets in the way of aluminum smelting and commercial fishing.
Donald Johnson,
I was waiting for someone to note the education issue. Iceland’s situation shows what can happen when a context requiring occupational diversity fails to produce workers to meet that requirement. In the U.S. we have for some time now many leaders pushing for universal college education for our young population. This includes President Obama. Our nation has a requirement for diversity in our workforce and many very productive occupations do not require college educations. We also have many young individuals who will not succeed in the college environment and many who will be graduated from college but the effort will not have been a significant contribution to their subsequent career. Where do we get this notion that somehow if everyone does not go to college our society has failed in its education responsibility?
As an aside, I agree with the objection to the use of the inbreeding terminology. Lack of genetic diversity might still be a contributing factor. These two things are different.
GoodOleBoy,
Its not that everyone in our society has to go to college whether they are suited or no. Just the opposite. Progressives think that a good education, right through college, should be available to all hard working students regardless of their parents financial status or educational history. I, personally, back vocational schools of all kinds –especially for the ineducable sons and daughters of the very wealthy who I met when I was teaching at the college level.
aimai
On MSN today, it’s reported a woman called 911 when McDonald’s ran out of McNuggets.
Just to squelch something that’s going to become an urban myth:
The woman paid for McNuggets. McDonalds told her they were out and she could have something else at the same price. But they refused to give a refund. She phoned the police when they had accepted her money for something, and refused to either provide it or refund her.
In short she phoned the police because McDonalds was in the process of committing an (admittedly minor) criminal act. It wasn’t the not having McNuggets. It was the taking the money, finding they didn’t actually have what she’d paid for, and then refusing to refund the money taken under false pretenses.
“First of all, inbreeding is a very loaded term that implies mental deficiencies and other mutations. ”
Generally it’s considered ill-mannered, not to mention a little silly, to lecture natives speakers on the nuances of what is after all, their lexicon and not yours.
Secondly, “in-bred” is both an denotationally accurate and connotationally “loaded” term for a population that is so genetically homogeneous that geneticists have provoked a controversy with their effort to study the entire genome of that population.
Thirdly, if the fact that you have a surname proves that there is some degree of genertic diversity, and you also point out that having a surname is an anomaly, then you are really saying that the genetic diversity you represent is anomalous.
If you want real genetic diversity, you should ask to have some American troops stationed there for a couple of generations. That’ll fix you right up.
WRT “most inbred,” the term is technically correct for this population, with less genetic diversity than almost any other of its size. However it does lend itself to (mis)understanding as insulting, so it would probably be best avoided. Here I see no reason whatsoever to assume that insult was intended, so I don’t believe insult should be taken. Breathe deeply; walk away.
WRT “feng shui” and the HKSB building in Hong Kong (which I have frequented many a time), note that this building was later threatened – in the eyes of many believers – by the virtually adjacent “cleaver building” of the Bank of China. What feng shui giveth, feng shui can taketh away!
No one has yet commented on two of the most salient observations in the article:
1. Icelanders told themselves their bankers were better than the average run because they were culturally accustomed to closing deals quickly. More experienced bankers observed that they way to close a deal quickly was to pay top dollar.
2. One of the ex-bankers interviewed had a prior life as a fishing boat captain. To rise to the top of that profession he had crewed in difficult circumstances for years, studied hard, and finally apprenticed (in effect) at the foot of best regarded fisherman in the Icelandic fleet. But to become the top currency trader in one of the banks, he essentially walked in, sat down, and started winging. The contrast in expertise between the one and the other was breathtaking.
About the Icelandic gene pool, if you’re curious, this is a nice chunk of technical detail. I’m not sure it supports dr ngo’s claim that Iceland has “less genetic diversity than almost any other [population] of its size” – that may be true but I haven’t found anything quantitative. I’d imagine it also depends on whether you include immigrants; 2007 figures from Wikipedia say 13% of the population is foreign-born, although that includes children of Icelandic emigrants.
One of my favorite Icelandic anecdotes is that if you become a naturalized Icelandic citizen, you have to change your name to an Icelandic one. This rule was waived for Vladimir Ashkenazy and after the rule was waived, several Icelandic citizens sarcastically petitioned to have their name changed to Ashkenazy on the grounds that it was now an Icelandic name.
Good ole boy–
I wasn’t arguing against education, but it did strike me as a little ironic that these Icelanders were being described as exquisitely schooled, sophisticated people and in the current situation this is apparently a bad thing. Not at all what we’re usually told–get more education, learn more, improve yourself, in short become the sort of person Michael Lewis is ridiculing here.
Kinda makes me wish I was one of those guys who is handy with tools, in case things go really really bad here.
Donald Johnson,
And I didn’t think you were arguing against education, neither was I. It just seems the American perspective is a little askew. For decades I have observed the push to get high school graduates to go on to college. There does not always seem to be a relationship to academic credentials, although that will affect which schools offer admission. Aimai commented on having always been supportive of vocational schools of all kinds, when appropriate. But I cannot attest to the fact that there is an emphasis on this option at the high school level for students who wind up dropping out and for those graduates who are not interested or not really capable of college level academic work.
Here’s what I think. Since higher education in modern American society is at the top of the heap of ‘essential’ services whose costs are increasing at rates that wind up ruining many lives, I’ve concluded that this is just another racket in which its hawkers can rip-off its customers. And since there is so much money to be made, it behooves those making the money to get as many as possible enrolled, whether they belong there or not. And, of course and as usual, the progressives want the taxpayer to pick up the costs where necessary. The Icelanders seem to do well with high percentages of the population going to college and graduating and we have discussed the possible genetic aspect of that. Not applicable in the U.S.
“The Icelanders seem to do well with high percentages of the population going to college and graduating and we have discussed the possible genetic aspect of that.”
We have? Let’s discuss that some more.
Gary,
Since the Icelanders are not genetically diverse, whatever factors are important to their academic success are likely present across large numbers of the population.
Fwiw: I should say that the part of the quote that made me wonder “is that true?” was not: that Icelanders believed in elves etc. — people believe in all kinds of things, and I can’t see why Icelanders should be any different — but the part about Alcoa having to certify that its site was elf-free.
I don’t think Native burial sites are a good comparison. I would hope we don’t routinely build on either actual cemeteries or actual sacred sites (e.g., that we route roads around churches, synagogues, mosques, etc.) Feng shui (from what I know of it, which is not enough) seems like a better comparison.
I see the half-elven are getting short shrift, as usual.
GOB – perhaps what you mean to say is “Since the Icelanders are not genetically diverse, whatever [genetic] factors [might be] important to their academic success [(if any)] are likely present across large numbers of the population“?
Incidentally, there was a fairly recent study in Iceland which found that couples “related to the level of third cousins” ended up giving rise to the largest number of descendants by the time you got to the grandkids’ generation, compared to couples that were either more closely or more distantly related.
hilzoy: but the part about Alcoa having to certify that its site was elf-free.
No, that is certainly not true. Now, someone may have done this, whether they actually believe in elves or just because, in the proud tradition of locals everywhere when faced with high-status idiots “not from around here,” someone conned Alcoa into giving them money to do this. But no, the Icelandic government does not require construction companies to certify that building sites are “elf-free.”
I see the half-elven are getting short shrift, as usual.
What we need here is an ASCII representation of a drum roll followed by a cymbal crash. 🙂
………!*