This strange news item from Iceland has already been circulating the internet, concerning a solitary foreign woman who visited the volcanic canyon of Eldgjรก as part of a bus tour through the southern highlands, but I think the idea is pretty intriguing and bizarre. After a hike, she freshened up and changed her clothing and jacket. This act, which went unnoticed and made her unrecognisable to her fellow travellers, and a miscounting of the number of passengers on board by the driver and guide, caused a panic to ensue. The woman, draped now with the cloaks of something other than mistaken identity, did not recognise herself in the description of the missing passenger and certainly did not consider herself lost. Maybe, like in another historic case in Iceland mentioned in the article, she even participated in her own search-party.
I am glad everything turned out fine and it is starting to sound like an urban legend, but I think it begins to highlight some important questions. Of course, this is a rare and frightening occurrence but I do wonder if there is not some mechanism responsible that’s a contemporary cog of inattentiveness and private, not shared perceptions. Like people saying, “without pictures, it didn’t happen,” and the ability to readily tag and label everything for processing and easily convey under most circumstances, documentary evidence, I wonder if our senses and personas are somewhat spoilt and skewed. I wonder if that means there will be more such incidents in the future.
I am glad everything turned out fine and it is starting to sound like an urban legend, but I think it begins to highlight some important questions. Of course, this is a rare and frightening occurrence but I do wonder if there is not some mechanism responsible that’s a contemporary cog of inattentiveness and private, not shared perceptions. Like people saying, “without pictures, it didn’t happen,” and the ability to readily tag and label everything for processing and easily convey under most circumstances, documentary evidence, I wonder if our senses and personas are somewhat spoilt and skewed. I wonder if that means there will be more such incidents in the future.
