The Island Almost Nobody Can Reach, Vestmannaeyjar

For years, one photo has circled the internet: a small white house alone on a green island, surrounded by cliffs and open ocean. It's been called the "world's loneliest house," and the stories about it have grown wilder with every share. It's a billionaire's hideout for the apocalypse. It's a hermit's retreat. It's where Björk lives. None of those stories is true. The island is Elliðaey, the northeasternmost of the Westman Islands off Iceland's south coast. It covers about 110 acres, making it the third-largest island in the archipelago. Its green slopes rise to a central volcanic cone and drop off in cliffs of tuff and lava more than 100 meters high. People did live here once. A handful of families lived on Elliðaey from at least the 18th century, surviving largely on fish and seabirds. Around the 1930s, the last residents left for easier lives elsewhere, and the island has had no permanent population since. What kept people coming back was the puffins. Elliðaey is one of the best puffin-hunting grounds in the islands, and in 1953 the Elliðaey Hunting Association built a lodge there as a base for its members during the summer hunting season. That lodge is the house in the photo. It's not a home. It's a hunters' cabin, still maintained by the association and still private. The Björk rumor has a real origin, though it's attached to the wrong island. In 2000, Iceland's prime minister said he would be willing to let Björk live on an island named Elliðaey. That island is in Breiðafjörður, a bay in western Iceland, on the other side of the country. She never bought that island or built a house there, and she has no connection to this one. Two islands with the same name, and one viral photo, were enough to start a myth that's still going. The lodge still stands alone on its island, and the only regular visitors are the hunters and the birds.