I wish I were Icelandic. It would be like living in Asgard, everyone was pagan, no Semite religion...

I wish I were Icelandic. It would be like living in Asgard, everyone was pagan, no Semite religion, and Thor were my king

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icelandmag.is/article/heathens-against-hate-exclusive-interview-high-priest-icelandic-pagan-association
wildhunt.org/2015/07/asatruarfelagid-threatened-with-vandalism-over-lgbtq-support.html
grapevine.is/news/2015/05/15/old-norse-weddings-becoming-more-popular-for-same-sex-couples/
icelandmonitor.mbl.is/news/politics_and_society/2015/05/14/pagan_and_humanist_gay_weddings/
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didnt they have the highest suicide rate in the world?

Priest Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson rummaged around in his blue woollen robe and fished out two cans of warm Icelandic lager.

“Beer?” he asked, handing me one of the tepid tins, which frothed violently as I pulled the ring.
“Skál,” said the priest, a mischievous glint in his pale blue eyes.
“Skál,” I repeated, and we slurped our overflowing lagers.

Earlier that afternoon, Hilmarsson had poured pilsner into a bull’s horn and passed it around his congregation; a motley crew of characters, some of whom looked like they were extras from Game of Thrones, others straight off the stage of a heavy metal concert. Most, though, were dressed in regular clothes befitting of a breezy day in Iceland.

The congregation had gathered near a sandy beach on the outskirts of Reykjavik, next to the city’s domestic airport, to celebrate the first day of the Icelandic summer. It was 25 April, slightly chilly and mostly overcast. Rain looked likely.

The ‘blót’, as the changing-of-the-season ceremony is known, began with the lighting of a small fire, which flickered in the breeze as the congregation listened to Old Norse poetry and raised the beer-filled horn to honour the Norse gods. Elsewhere on the island, similar ceremonies, I was told, were taking place.

The blót had been organised by the Ásatrú Association of Iceland, a pagan faith group that is currently one of the country’s fastest growing religions, having almost quadrupled its membership in a decade, albeit from a low base of 1,275 people in 2009 to 4,473 in 2018.

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>tfw an Icelander believed in elves, married his cousin, built 10000 indoor soccer stadiums, used patronymic surnames and based his entire economy on Game of Thrones near me

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Hilmarsson is the faith’s leader. A warm, charismatic man in his early 60s, he cuts a debonair figure with his white hair, white beard and nicotine-stained white moustache. Hilmarsson was elected as high priest in 2003 and jokingly claims to have been “stupid enough to say yes”. He also works as a prominent musician, and has collaborated with some of Iceland’s best-known artists, including Björk and Sigur Rós.

“The high priest and the composer work hand in hand,” he told me, puffing on a cigar. “There’s a search for harmony in both.”

The Ásatrú Association is tricky to define because it has no fixed beliefs (“The suspension of disbelief is more accurate,” Hilmarsson explained, somewhat surreally). The group does, however, subscribe to local folklore, and meetings typically involve recitals from the Sagas of Iceland, a literary canon written during the 13th Century, but based on fantastical tales of love, loss and heroism from as far back as the 9th Century.

“People in the year 950 didn’t have a lot to do, so they sat around fires telling stories,” explained Haukur Bragason, a young, well-coiffed Ásatrú priest who was attending the blót. “They were the Netflix of old times.”

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Its because of tax reasons. If you are registered as a Christian you must pay taxes to the church, this is the same in Switzerland, Finland etc. If they didn't do that then churches wouldn't survice. So Icelanders declared paganism to not pay the Christian tax.

The Ásatrú faith also celebrates Old Norse mythology and its pantheon of morally ambiguous deities – gods such as Odin, Thor and Loki – that came to Iceland during the Viking Age, when the island was settled by Norwegian famers looking for new pastures. These deities were worshipped across this ‘land of fire and ice’ until the year 1000, when, under pressure from the influential Norwegian crown, the country abandoned heathenry and adopted Christianity.

But in 1972, a group of artists, led by the late sheep farmer and poet Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, cooked up a plan to reboot the old pagan faith. Over meetings in cosy Reykjavik coffee shops, the group established the Ásatrú Association and the following year successfully lobbied Iceland’s government to recognise it as an official religion.

The story goes that while the minister of justice and ecclesiastical affairs, Ólafur Jóhannesson, considered the matter, a powerful storm hit Reykjavik. “Lightning struck the power station and there was a black out,” Hilmarsson explained. “People thought it was Thor showing his might [and so] the minister relented.”

A new faith was born.

“Respect for nature is also important. You have to make sure you live in harmony with nature,” said Hilmarsson.

The association has been concerned with the environment from the beginning. “[Beinteinsson] was into ecology before most people were familiar with the concept,” said Hilmarsson, who believes increased awareness of climate change and biodiversity loss is attracting more people to the faith.

The association campaigns against a series of hydro-electric dams, which were built despite concerns about their impact on the environment. The faith supports the Icelandic Forestry Association's plan to reforest parts of the country, where three million trees are being planted annually.

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>soccer

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Some of the older trees in the scheme will be used to make a roof for the Ásatrú Association’s new hof (temple), which is currently being built on the outskirts of Reykjavik. “It will be the first building made from Icelandic timber,” Hilmarsson claimed proudly, as he gave me a tour of the site. “It’s only in the last few years that we’ve had trees big enough to produce timber in Iceland.”

The hof will be the first pagan temple to be built in Iceland for almost 1,000 years, and will primarily be used to conduct marriages, funerals and name-giving ceremonies – events that are currently conducted outdoors. The building, which sits below ground level, is partially hewn from rock and descending into it, Hilmarsson claimed, will “symbolise a journey into the underworld”.

The hof has been partially funded by Iceland’s taxpayers, who have to pay the government a religious tax, which is then distributed to official faith groups (hence why recognition was so important).

But it is the blóts that offer perhaps the most vivid insight into the Ásatrú faith. Held six times a year, the main ones – Sigurblót, Þingblót, Haustblót and Jólablót – happen in April, June, October and December, respectively. Then there’s Þorrablót and Vættablót, in January/February and December.

“Þorrablót is about getting drunk to celebrate making it through the winter,” said Hilmarsson. And Vættablót? That was introduced, he said, as a response to the Icelandic banking crash in 2008. “The nation was in trauma,” he explained, claiming the blót was started as a social event to cheer people up and encourage collective soul searching. “Although soul searching is not a national pastime,” he added, dryly.

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I'm certain their one rabbi will be strongly offended by this.