Stolið af Washington Post - Óli Stef.

Stefansson--or "Olie," as he's known--doesn't make a show of mixing his academic pursuits with handball, but they of course intersect.

"It's been a really great tournament; I've been having this medal in my head for a very long time," he told me. "Actually it's an experiment for me, whether thoughts and feelings really can manifest....It's important to visualize. I think nothing can happen unless you have visualized it at some time. It doesn't come by chance."

And magic elves?

"It's not so much a matter of 'believing' in the regular sense of the word, it's more of enjoying the possibility of it actually existing," he said. "And it doesn't matter whether somebody judges you or not for having that possibility in your mind, because it's a funny possibility and it enlightens your life and makes it more colorful."

So I asked him whether he has that possibility in his mind. "Why not?" he said.

Tekið úr viðtalli Dan Steinberg.