Tourists are arriving in record numbers to the safe and delightfully zany, Bjork-loving shores of Iceland. But it’s hard being so hot—especially if your popularity is as meteoric as Iceland’s, finds our featured contributor Paula Froelich. 

“You’re in my waaaay,” an American woman with hair tangled up in the fox fur hood of her Canada Goose down jacket whined to me. “I’m trying to take a picture,” she said, before turning to her boyfriend and stage-whispering, “She needs to move. I want to take a picture and I don’t want her in it.”

I’d just finished exploring the inside of an abandoned Icelandic turf house that was conveniently situated off the Golden Circle section of the country’s Ring Road— which also happened to be on private land owned by a friend of my tour guide, Oli.

I’d come out of the run down building and unknowingly walked straight into the woman’s shot.

“Dude, I’m sorry, but gimme a second here,” I said, explaining, “I’m taking a video to document the old houses… I’m almost done.”

The woman mumbled something that sounded vaguely like “rude” before angling a shot so that I wasn’t in it and stomping away, boyfriend in tow.

“You’re the one on private land without permission!” I said. The two kept walking, got in their car, parked on the side of the road past the property gate, slammed their doors and drove off while flipping me the bird.