ICELAND

The history of Iceland began around 870 C.E. when Norse settlers arrived from the west coast of Norway, as well as those who had previously settled in Ireland and Great Britain. Some Icelanders would explore eventually the land that came to be known as Greenland; but the majority of the people of Iceland formed a conservative rural society. They were farmers who created a highly-evolved social structure defined by their work with the land. The stories they told, well-known as the Islendinga sogur, or, Iceland sagas, reflected that down-to-earth daily life by which honor was to be measured.

Through the best-known literary character, Odin, Icelanders were not totally without fantasy, myth or fascination with the magical and mysterious. Robert Kellogg, in an introduction to the book, The Sagas of Icelanders, talked about the role Odin as he discussed Egil's Saga, a key story in Icelandic literature:

The patron of all poets was Odin, who was sometimes known as the one-eyed god…Odin gave away his eye in order to drink from the underworld well of the wise god Mimir and thus to acquire wisdom. Egils is not only the beneficiary of Odin's gifts of poetry and magic, but also to some small degree an embodiment of the god.

Iceland has been a Christian country since 1000 C.E., following its ancestral religious roots of Asatru. (An interesting note is that the writings of J.R.R. Tolkein, known best for the Lord of the Rings, emerged from the Codex Regis, the ancient "sacred" manuscript of this pre-Christian belief. While Iceland's citizens currently enjoy the Constitutional benefit of freedom of religion, nearly 95 percent of them are Lutherans, the state-affiliated church. At the end of the twentieth century Iceland's population at 240,000 was about the same size as Cumberland County, Maine, the largest in that state. With the entire country's population occupying only about one-fifth of the land, Iceland is about the size of a medium American city. The people, too, are an interestingly homogenous group. Unlike Americans, all natives have descended from only two groups-the original Nordic and Celtic people who settled there. (Consequently, the population has been the subject of scientific research crucial to the study health and disease throughout the years.) This fact also emphasizes that while statistics might indicate only a small portion of the population engaged in the area of psychical research, or phenomena, it reflects a percentage that in fact might be no lower than many other countries.

Icelandic interest in psychical research goes back many years to the founding of Salarrannsoknafelag Island, the Society for Psychical Research of Iceland in Reykjavik in 1918. The founder was Prof. Einar Hjöleifsson Kvaran (1859-1938), a well-known writer who edited Morgunn, a Spiritualist magazine. A prominent member was Prof. Harald Nielsson (d. 1928) of the University of Reykjavik, who spent five years investigating the phenomena of the medium Indridi Indridason.

Indridi Indridason (1883-1912) was a physical medium, long unknown outside of Iceland. He is believed to be the first Icelander who demonstrated such gifts. When he first demonstrated them in 1905 at a "table-tilting" being held by academic researchers, and reportedly lasted until 1909. The group of investigators were those that later formed the Icelandic Society for Psychical Research. One of Indridason's most chilling communications was the story of a fire in Copenhagen on November 24, 1905. It was not confirmed until a month later when news came by boat from Denmark—the only means the story had of transmittal in those early days of the twentieth century. Other phenomena including materialization s became commonplace during the seances Indridason served.

A prominent Icelandic psychologist and parapsychologist, Erlendur Haraldsson is known worldwide for his work investigations of ESP, and experiences of death. One of his most famous works was, Modern Miracles, based on the life of Indian religious leader, Sathya Sai Baba, known for the miracles that he performed. He serves on the faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Iceland in Reykjavik. In a 1988-989 survey he conducted entitled, "Survey of Claimed Encounters with the Dead," Haraldsson discovered that 31 percent of Icelanders, "…perceived the presence of a dead person." His work continues while he remains a faculty member in social sciences and is perhaps reflective of a few aspects of human daily life that fit into the context their own history and sociology.