Iceland

HAFNARFJORDUR, Iceland -- This can be a tough country for blasting out a foundation or constructing a roadbed.Never mind the boiling geysers, wind-blasted precipices or frozen barrens. It's not the razor-sharp lava rock that daunts builders; it's the hidden people lurking below."There are all sorts of beings beneath our stones," says Brynjolfur Snorrason, a folklorist often asked to advise contractors on how best to avoid the lairs of Iceland's elves and other seldom-seen creatures, whose presence nonetheless seems to permeate this far northern island nation.

Anyone could identify the top athletes of the 20th century -- ESPN did just that, and the network is down to a final four of Muhammad Ali, Michael Jordan, Jim Brown and Babe Ruth.The better question is, who will be the most influential sports figures of the 21st century? To fully prepare you for life after Y2K, we've compiled a little list:Zoe Swift, gold-medal figure skater. First to achieve the "spin-my-age" feat, performing a quintuple lutz at the age of 5 at the 2034 Winter Olympics in Reykjavik, Iceland -- the last place on earth with an average daily temperature below 60 degrees.

WASHINGTON -- Iceland has no military. Luxembourg has no air force. Greece doesn't want to bomb a neighbor. And the three other nations not contributing forces to the NATO air war against Serbia have only been alliance members for two weeks.But those six countries, including the new members -- Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic -- bridle at the suggestion that they are not full partners in the allied attack."What Greece is doing," said Alexander Philon, the Greek ambassador to the United States, "and what we decided a long time ago to do with the full agreement of NATO, is to open all of our ports, roads and airfields to the mission but not get involved directly in the actual bombing of our neighbor.

SEE WILLY -- AT HIS NEW HOMEA trip to visit ``Free Willy'' star Keiko at his new home in Iceland's Westmann Islands is being offered by Oceanic Society Expeditions. The killer whale's confinement in a small tank in Mexico City was the inspiration behind both the movie and a rescue effort to place him in a more natural habitat. After rehabilitation at the Oregon Coast Aquarium, he was returned to a sea pen in the waters off Iceland.Besides interacting with the famous whale, visitors on the May 30 to June 9 expedition will whale watch, search for dolphins and see many different species of birds.

Gudrun Katrin Thorbergsdottir,64, the wife of Iceland President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson, died Monday, officials of a Seattle cancer hospital confirmed yesterday.Raymond A. Myles,41, a popular gospel singer recently praised by Billboard magazine as being on the brink of mainstream success, was found dead Sunday of multiple gunshot wounds in New Orleans.Mr. Myles started his gospel career as a child, recording a single called "Prayer From a 12-year-old Boy." Among his recordings was last year's live album, "Heaven is the Place."

For the last month in Newport, Ore., the Money Saver Motel has counted down the days until the departure of Newport's largest -- and most famous -- resident. Today, the number dropped to 1.Keiko, 5-ton star of the movie "Free Willy" and subject of worldwide attention, affection and controversy, will be flown by the U.S. Air Force to Iceland tomorrow to eventually be returned to the wild.Some other key numbers:4,000 Keiko pictures drawn by schoolchildren have arrived at the Oregon Coast Aquarium and are being added to a giant paper quilt to be sent to Iceland.

An arctic tern coasts by at eye level. Against the blue of sky and the black and purple of distant mountains, its feathers glisten in the sun like snow. It rides the wind, tilting to catch invisible puffs and downturns. Then, as I watch, it swoops toward the dark rocks below.Oh, boy. Sometimes it's best not to look down. The horse I am riding is picking her way along a curving trail that forms a narrow, slanted shelf on a mountain created by a volcano. Though she plants her hoofs neatly between stones the color and shape of cooling charcoal briquettes, each step loosens bits of gravel that rattle down the slope and ricochet off the boulders below, falling, falling until they're tiny, black specks and then ... are gone.

REYKJAVIK, Iceland -- You think the Justice Department has it in for Bill Gates and the marketers of Microsoft Corp.? Try an earful from the Icelandic Language Institute."

He's known to the entire crew of the Liberty ship, S.S. John W. Brown, as "Blackie," the man who cheated death four times on the Murmansk run and still goes to sea after six decades.Charles F. Blockston, of Rosedale, Baltimore County, is the third engineer on the Brown, docked at Pier 1, Clinton Street, Canton. Last month, at 78, he helped sail the old freighter up the East Coast to Connecticut."Blackie's" story begins on June 27, 1942, when his ship and 37 others set sail from Iceland to Murmansk in the Soviet Union.

VATNAJOKULL GLACIER, Iceland -- Jim Garvin is working frantically in the bucking cockpit of a NASA research plane, preparing for Earth's next mission to Mars.A planetary scientist from the Goddard Space Flight Center, Garvin is using space technology to survey a landscape scoured by a catastrophic flood, maybe the biggest on Earth in 60 years.He and a team of NASA scientists are trying to study the effects of a rare but immensely powerful natural disaster, the eruption of a volcano under a glacier.