Lögberg-Heimskringla - 08.06.1984, Side 5

New Study Throws Light on Icelandic thinking:
WINNIPEG, FÖSTUDAGUR 8. JÚNÍ 1984 5
Few doubt life after death
by Haraldur J. Hamar
Few books published recently in
Iceland commanded as much media
attention as one whose title might be
translated as Of This World and the
Other. It is a statistical study dealing
with psychic experiences among
Icelanders as well as their views on
religion and folklore — based on ex-
tensive surveys conducted under the
leadership of Dr. Erlendur
Haraldsson, a psychologist who is a
faculty member at the University of
Iceland in Reykjavík. The findings
show that Icelanders, despite their
reputation for limited church atten-
dance, are very religious people —
that they are deeply interested in
various aspects of the occult and that
amazingly many claim to have had
some experience of psychic nature.
That a large number of Icelanders
are preoccupied with the beyond is
something that has been acknowledg-
ed all along — for books dwelling on
psychic phenomena are read avidly
in this country, and they become
topics for discussion. In the ranks of
churchgoers (almost all Icelanders
are Lutherans, at least nominally),
there is always some controversy
over what position to take on the
hereafter. Spiritualists are a fairly
vocal group. From time to time, the
debate of the general issue flares up
into a public skirmish with ordained
ministers jumping into the fray —
which consists of heated exchanges
appearing in newspapers and
periodicals. If all that was more or
iess routine, the surveys of Dr.
Haraldsson have demonstrated that
belief in the reality of psychic ex-
periences is much more widespread
than might have been expected.
The ambitious scope of the data col-
lection lends an unusual degree of
crediblity to the Icelandic findings:
what emerged seems to be a reliable
statistical map of attitudes nation-
wide. By contrast, foreign studies of
the same type have been limited to
specific regions or cities. Still, if Dr.
Haraldsson deserves praise for the
relative size of his sample and the
distribution of the polled group, it
must be added that conclusions about
a whole population are easier in
Iceland than in most other countries.
Erlendur Haraldsson was dealing
with a tiny national community; the
foreign findings he made use of by
way of comparison derive from the
most comprehensive studies
undertaken.
Religion — Still Important to
Most
Against the background of
materialism and declining influence
from the church on daily life here,
the cited research demonstrated, for
one thing, that 97% of Icelanders
believe in a Supreme Being. Which
is a much higher figure than those
reported from the other Nordic coun-
tries — and this despite Iceland's
close historical and cultural links to
the region, despite extensive sharing'
of values and lifestyle, even today.
The proportion of believers in Nor-
way and Sweden is 73% and 60%,
respectively — while the Icelandic
statistic calls to mind those for the
U.S. (98%), Greece (96%) and Nor-
thern Ireland (96%). Based on peo-
ple's outlook, Iceland ranks among
the most religious nations in the
Western world (Table 1), though this
is not reflected in church attendance
here. Dr. Haraldsson comments:
"It has been widely presumed that
declining church attendance is
evidence of retreating faith, but that
line of reasoning has also been ques-
tioned. In the light of the recent
Icelandic study and earlier ones . . .
there is a good reason to conclude
that the Icelanders' limited interest in
public worship stands in no relation
to their general religious outlook.
Even though participation in organiz-
ed religion ,has been very much on
the wane here since the turn of the
century, no evidence on hand per-
mits one to infer that private faith . . .
is significantly less widespread now
than long ago. There is no way of set-
tling the issue once and for all, but
it seems safe to assert that the pro-
nounced drop in the Icelanders'
churchgoing is far from being the
right yardstick for measuring their
religious outlook, or even their
religious practices."
Do You Read the Bible?
At one point in the book, the
author mentions how 182 of his
Icelandic university students
responded to the question Do you
pray? — an item that was part of a
poll not otherwise concerning
religious views, with no signing of
names required. As it turned out,
well over half (54%) of the total said
they prayed.
There were no theology students in
the group, but it was rnade up frorn
whole classes of five university
departments. In the study that is the
main subject of Dr. Haraldsson’s
book, the questionnaire used contain-
ed just one item relating to conven-
tional religious practices: Do you
read the Bible? The author describes
the responses as follows:
"Only 8% said they often read in
the Bible, while a third reported that
they never did. No difference was
observed between men's and
women's fondness for the Bible,
though it seemed that the reading of
it increased slightly as people grew
older. It was noteworthy that of those
who considered themselves quite
religious, only 10% said they fre-
quently read in the Scriptures. But of
those claiming to be not very
religious or entirely without religious
convictions, 5% also said they oftén
read the Bible. It might be mention-
ed in this context that 5% of the total
often read works on the religions or
mysticism of India — which must be
seen as a large proportion, for just 8%
were found to be frequent readers of
the Bible.
"Discovered, too, was that there is
little reading of the Scriptures com-
pared to literature dealing with
psychic phenomena; a fourth of those
queried said they often read
materials of the latter type, while on-
ly 22% stated that they never did.”
As Dr. Haraldsson points out, there
appears to be a good deal less reading
of the Bible in Iceland than in the
U.S. He cites a 1973 Gallup poll fin-
ding that 73% of Americans had read
in Scriptures at home at least once
that year — adding that 12% of
Britons say they read regularly in the
Bible.
Widespread Belief in Afterlife
The study showed that belief in
afterlife runs deep in Iceland, with
comparison revealing an astonishing
sharing of pattern with findings for
the U.S. on this point, while such
belief is much less widespread in
other populations where polls on
religious outlook have been con-
ducted (Table 2). By the account of
Dr. Haraldsson, belief in life after
death seems to have been waning in
Europe generally over recent
decades; as an illustration, he cites
6-nation surveys from 1948 and 1968
that indicate a drop of 11-23% as well
as a Norwegian slide from 71% to
54% during the 20-year period.
Meanwhile in the U.S., he s^ys, the
figure for belief in afterlife went up
by 5% — adding that American views
on the issue have changed very little
since the first research on them took
place, in 1936.
In the words of Dr. Haraldsson:
"But let us turn to findings from dis-
tant countries. A short time ago, the
results from Gallup surveys in
several Third World countries were
made public, and it became clear that
belief in afterlife in those parts is a
good deal more pronounced than
among European populations. In an
article appearing in Journai for the
Scientific Study of Religion, a resear-
cher named Lee Siegelman calls at-
tention to the interesting congruence
of opinion on afterlife between the
U.S., the most industrialized nation
on the globe, and Third World coun-
tries of modest technological
development — and as he points out,
other similarities in religious outlook
emerge from such comparison.
Iceland seems to belong to that
strange group. For some reason,
religious attitudes here are more akin
to those of Americans than to what
has been attested for Europeans."
And Dr. Haraldsson goes on to say
the following:
"From Plato to Schopenhauer, the
idea of afterlife has been associated
by some with pre-existence and rein-
carnation — a reasoning along the
line that the soul, if it endures for all
time to come, cannot have had any
beginning. Anyone who believes that
birth is the real beginning for a per-
son, writes the German philosopher
Table 1 Belief in God (findings from opinion polls) Table 2 Belief in afterlife (findings from opinion polls)
Yes No Yes No No Comment
% % % . % %
United States 98 2 United States 73 19 8
Greece 96 2 Greece 57 28 15
N-Ireland 96 2 Finland 55 23 22
Austria 85 10 Norway 54 25 21
Switzerland 84 11 Holland 50 35 15
Finland 83 7 Switzerland 50 41 9
West Germany 81 10 Uruguay (cities) 42 36 22
Holland 79 13 West Germany 41 45 14
Britain 77 11 Britain 38 35 27
France 73 21 Austria 38 56 6
Norway 73 12 Sweden 38 47 15
Sweden 60 26 France 35 53 12
Iceland 97 3 Iceland 78 17 5
Table 3 Tablc 4
Percentage of Icelanders who hold that Percentage of Icelanders who have
seeing communication haunting
deceased with the dead by
one is: at seances is: ghosts is: Visited a fortune-teller 52
Visited an astrologer 3
Inconceivable 2 3 10 Attended a public seance 30
Improbable 5 8 23 Attended a private seance 32
Possible 31 34 34 Attended a seance of either type 40
Probable 31 21 12 Visited a faith healer 41
Certain 31 21 9 Personal knowledge of some
No opinion 5 13 12 psychic activity 70