The only thing that hints at the weirdness widely attributed to her is this : Bjork believes in elves. Fairies too.
We think nature is a lot stronger than man, she explains, sipping a cappuccino at Vid Fjorubordid, a restaurant on the ocean that is virtually the only commercial enterprise in Stokkseyri, Iceland, a town so small that the road entering it has a sign of geometric symbols with a line through them, meaning "no town here." The road also has a waterfall with a rainbow over it and graffiti mowed into the hills, so you can see where the elf thing came from.
My family hunts half the food we eat. A relationship with things spiritual hasn’t gone away, Bjork says, in defense of elf-faith. In a lot of Western cities, they lost that and had to buy it again with meditation courses.
In fairness, despite the fact that Icelanders have a 99.9% literacy rate, most believe in elves. In fact, the government had to reroute a planned highway because it would have passed over elf territory. It appears that elves, while remaining hidden, somehow manage to hand out their maps.
The hard wheather of Iceland made people learn that nature is a thousand times stronger than men. For icelanders, ghosts are just natural beings. Not that I take gnomes serious, but I believe in them.
I think what hopefully will happen is people will rediscover pop music as one of the strongest forces in the world, up there with religion, sex, food, politics.
So you think music can change the world.
Definitely. It does every day. It’s just the biggest nurse in the world. Because it sorts out people’s heads, it makes them braver and happier and sadder or whatever. It’s one of the most important emotional forces in the world, I think.
I’ve got my own religion. Iceland sets a world-record. The United Nations asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked what do we believe, 90% said, ’ourselves’. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.
The United Nations did a survey, some years ago, to a sample of people in all the countries in the world. They asked them 100 very basic questions. One was, ’what do you believe in ?’. Everybody, I mean 90 per cent of the universe, said ’Allah’, or ’God’ or ’The Virgin Mary’, or ’Buddha’, or whatever. In Iceland, they said ’myself’.
Another question was ’are you happy ?’. And people all over the world were like ’no, not yet’, or ’I used to be’, or something. But Iceland went, ’yes... of course... and fuck off’.
I’m very religious, yes. But I have my own religion. In Iceland it doesn’t makes sense two people be in the same religion. It’s like have the same fingerprint.
