Iceland’s Sweet Groveling

Iceland wants you to visit it so badly, and so adorably. For instance, from the welcome page of its Iceland Wants to Be Your Friend campaign:

Halló humans on the Inter-net.

My name is Iceland. I am an island, full of mountains and glaciers and hot water and sheep and many nice Icelandic people, who like to make music, and who are sometimes cold.

It also has a quiet little Tumblr that it started in June of last year (“I am Iceland and this is my Tumblr”), a pretty Vimeo page, and a Twitter account with 6,788 followers. (65K like it on Facebook, where “I know you are probably very busy doing important things,” it says, “but if you want to be my friend, you can. Just klikk on the nice button up there that says ‘Like.’” Aw.)

As Hairpin pal Lindsey Weber discovered, there’s also Every Word in Icelandic, a blog that taught me I want some rabarabarasulta and also a timbur-menn. The farther you fall down Iceland’s calculatedly modest PR rabbit hole, though, the more it feels like you’re being followed by a servant who will one day kill you in your sleep. According to Kayak, tickets from NYC to Reykjavík start at $515 in June.