ICELANDERS *DIGITAL-FREE* PENINSULA

THE passenger boat arrives at the bottom of Veidileysufjousur, a short inlet with a long name, to drop-off back packers for a multi-day trek.

A weather-beaten group that's completed the trip waits to board, eager to get back to a part of Iceland  where they can reconnect to with the world via Wi-Fi.

By boat that will take about half hour. No roads leads to the Nordic country's northernmost peninsula, a rugged glacial horn that reaches for the Arctic Circle.

Making a phone call requires walking up a mountain for a cell signal so weak, clouds seem capable of blocking it.

But Internet service soon could be reaching the Hornsstrandir Nature Reserve, one of the last digital-free frontiers in what might be in what might be the world's most wired nation.

The possibility has most hikers, park rangers and summer residents worried that email, news and social media will destroy a way of life that depends on the absence of all three.

''We seeing a growing appreciation for the lack of online connection,'' Environment Agency of Iceland ranger Vesteinn Runarrson, who patrols the peninsula's southern end on his own.  ''Looking to the future, we want to keep Hornstrandir special in that way.''

The area has long resisted cell towers, but commercial initiatives could take the decision out of Icelanders hands and push Hornstrandir across the digital divide.

Companies such as Elon Musk's Space X are racing to deliver high-speed Internet service to every inch of the world by putting thousands of small satellites into low earth orbit. Their success would have global implications, bringing the benefits and downsides of Internet communication to places that are off the grid because of poverty or war, Internet access is reserved for the wealth.

That's not true for sparsely populated communities and far flung destinations in Canada, Russia, Alaska and elsewhere in the vast Arctic region, where broadband service generally is prohibitively expensive.

Yet in Iceland, the prospect of a constant connectivity has called up an old debate on whether  Hornstrandir's wilderness should stay unwired. [Agencies].

The honor and serving ''Digital free'' areas continues.