Saga - 1984, Page 173

TRÚARLEGAR HREYFINGAR í REYKJAVÍK
171
national society, which was based in Adyar, India. Though theosophy did not be-
c°me a main movement of the proportions of the spiritualists, it was very popular
m Iceland and no other country in the world has had a larger number of theosophists
m proportion to the total population. There had also been in Iceland a society of
Fteemasons, which in 1919 became a separate lodge within the international order
°fFreemasons. Before that time the Icelandic Freemasons had been members ofthe
^anish order. Many of the most prominent figures in polidcs, business and the arts
were members ofthese societies. In those years Iceland was regaining its independ-
cnce after a long struggle with the Danish government and a seperate Icelandic
8°vernment was being formed in Reykjavík. An Icelandic middle-class was devel-
°ping together with an internadonal tradc independent of Denmark.
Throughout the 19th century Iceland had been a rural society, economically
nnderdeveloped, but now a complex modern society was emerging with Reykjavík
as its centre. At this juncture of the old and the new the esoteric movement (com-
Pfised of the Society for Psychic Research, the Theosophists and the Freemasons)
scrved an ideological funcdon within the emerging middle-class, which was assert-
ln8 ttself in the new society: a society in many ways characterisdc of what Durk-
heim calls “anomie". The members of this movement were provided with a set of
high-flown ideas, which was able both to unify otherwise disparatc interests and
8!ve this class a feeling of membership in an internadonal order and unity with the
n'iddle-classes of other countries. This “cult-movement“ served, socially speaking,
'he interests of the society then in formation. Basic to the movement was a concern
Wlth the individual and his spiritual needs and an opcn and posidve attitude towards
Science and progress in all areas, including the spiritual. Thus the individual was
8>ven a certain ideological foothold in society, a kind of “cultural opdmism", so
fecessary if the bourgeoisie was to survive and prosper in this new terrain.
A synopsis of the development undcr consideradon would be as follows:
hi the years around the turn of the century (1890-1910) various new religious
rn°vements found their way to Iceland and gained a foothold in thc society then
cveloping in Reykjavík. Individuals with prophet-like abilides of leadership ap-
Peared on the scene, and had greater influence on the religious life of Icelanders than
at any other time in the 19th and 20th centuries. These movements arc the clearest
CXample of the enourmous sociological change which took place in Iceland at the
cginning of this century. They demonstrate that the role of religion and religious
msdtudons in Icelandic society had undergone a basic change. Where previously the
nccds of spciety as a whole, and its continuadon, had dctermined the nature of re-
'g'ous teachings and formcd the centre of religious life, now the individual and his
c°nciousness became the focal point. This is what the sociologists P. Berger and T.
nckmann have called “privadsation" and “subjectivisation of religion". These
c anges had already taken place in neighbouring countries up to a century earher.
at retarded this development in Iceland was initially the country’s isolation and
8cneral apathy of the people, and later the peculiar way in which Icelandic national-
sm and dogmadc conservadsm in religious matters were ded together.
When these two decades are viewed as a whole, the individuals disappear into the
adow of the social and economic forces which put their mark on the period. The
arher decade is characterised by rapid changes or fluctuations in the sphere of re-