Post-Hipnótico

Vanity Fair tiene un artículo muy interesante sobre el apocalipsis financiero que está consumiendo actualmente a Islandia. Un país que en algún momento valía en papel 3 veces su GDP. Lo fascinante de Islandia sin embargo, es que es una cultura sumamente interesante por su aislamiento (vease Björk), que lo caracteriza como un país casi tribal. El artículo describe de una forma muy simpática, como Alcoa, una compañía de aluminio, tuvo por ley que certificar que no había elfos en una planta que recién había construído.

“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.” 

Wall Street on the Tundra # artículo completo en VF