The Most Optimistic People in the World, in $1,000 Yurts; At a festival on a disc golf course, on a peninsula in Iceland, waiting for the sky to descend into darkness. (Callie Holtermann, Aug. 27, 2026, NY Times)
The Snaefellsnes Peninsula sticks out from Iceland’s western coast in the shape of a carrot that was peeled during a bumpy bus ride. When I arrived in mid-August, there were 16 hours of sunlight each day. A handsome glacier loomed in the distance, keeping watch over lava fields and clutches of lichen. Arctic terns made lazy circles in the sky. It looked like a cross between Yosemite and Mars.The festival had attracted around 4,200 people who seemed to share an openness to New Age thinking and a degree of financial flexibility. Tickets cost $888 for entry-level participants and $1,444 for V.I.P.s whom festival organizers referred to as “celestial voyagers.” Lodging was extra. I slept in a spacious beige canvas yurt that cost $1,000 for the week.
There were start-up founders and astrologers and eye surgeons and bartenders and literal astronauts. There were Silicon Valley-types in performance synthetics and Icelanders wearing shorts. During a set called “high vibrational fun time abundance of comedy,” the comedian Brent Pella joked that most people in the audience had crystals but no health insurance. In response, a man stood up and waved his hunk of quartz back and forth as if it were a lighter at a Coldplay concert.