Iceland lures tourists with kooky social media campaign

[Crow]

The country that brought us volcanic ash clouds and financial meltdowns is using social media to pluck up its bruised image and successfully lure tourists. Visit Iceland's Facebook page and you won't be disappointed by travelers' sub-zero holiday snaps to Thor's native land. Check out the lightning-laced volcanic eruption, a sky blue glacier, and this unreal black beach. The frozen land's tweets could be written by Icelandic huldufólk: "Halló, I am Iceland. I am an island in the middle of the ocean, and I tweet on your Inter-nets." In response to a twitpic of a Reykjavik flight departure board, Iceland replies, "That's nice. I will meet you at the airport. I will be wearing snow, moss and lava."

A friendly human called nancydrewtheantichrist wrote to me:

Dear Iceland, I fell in love with you today. I wish I could afford to visit you, and maybe live with you someday. You are very beautiful, and I wish my arms could momentarily be big enough to hug you. I think your peoples' language is very nice, do you know if there is a good place online for me to learn it?

— nancydrewtheantichrist

Here is my reply:

Halló dear Nancy Drew the Antichrist,

I was glad to learn of our newfound love affair. I would also like to hug you and tell you that you are probably not the anti-Christ, and that everything is going to be fine - but I have no arms (that is because I am an island, and not a human like you).

The good humans at my university offer a free online course in Íslenska. If you take their course, you will probably learn to say words like “kjötsúpa” and “þarfagreining”, and even put them together in a sentence, like “þarfagreining fyrir kjötsúpu”, which means “needs assessment for meat soup.”

Then we could speak with each other in íslenska.

Bless bless,

- Iceland

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http://www.icelandwantstobeyourfriend.com

[lxskllr]

I want to be Iceland's friend, but I don't want a facebook. I'm so conflicted...

[Snusdog]

See............why can't America get a face book account and hug people all around the world.............


but on a positive note.........I see stupidity is making a comeback worldwide

[Crow]

I want to be Iceland's friend, but I don't want a facebook. I'm so conflicted...

I don't have one either, but I was looking at the Tumblr page. Have you checked it out? Some of the responses are pretty witty.

http://icelandwantstobeyourfriend.tumblr.com/

[YfirBaggari]

I knew those voices in my head were coming from somewhere!