Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.07.2009, Qupperneq 16

16
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 10 — 2009
1. infinite universes contain
infinite hitlers. They're all
douchebags.
I’m sitting in what doubles as a séance
parlour in the Icelandic Elf School on
the third floor of an office building in
downtown Reykjavik. The room, hardly
large enough to swing a black cat in, is
crammed to the gills—there must be
close to seventy people. There is someone
from virtually every walk of life here: from
the Goth teenager with the Ankh tattoo to
the Don Juan retiree in the tweed jacket.
The majority are women over sixty, mostly
widows. One of the looks over at me and
says:
‘So, have you seen Them before?’
There’s a long moment of hush. I do of
course know what she’s talking about,
but I hesitate. I don’t like to lie; yet in the
scheme of the supernatural what counts
as a lie and what doesn’t? It’s all about
perception, isn’t it?
‘I mean a spirit,’ she says after my long
silence.
I nod, smile feebly and make to write
notes. Actually, I’m doodling in the
margins; spirally things that look like
little black holes. I daren’t look up until
Magnús Skarphéðinsson, leader of this
motley crew at the Reykjavik Paranormal
Investigation Society, arrives. A shiver
runs down my spine. Perhaps they see
ghostly apparitions in here all the time.
Magnús has to give everyone a run for their
money. You can’t have a séance without
the promise of something interesting
happening. That’s why, I guess, there are
cameras all over the room; why calming
music is being piped in, and why Magnús
has donned a jacket and tie.
First, to get everyone in the right
mood, Magnús cracks all sorts of jokes,
then proudly recounts a story he told
recently on his radio show; all the while
Hildur Clausen, the medium, sits there
slumped as if she is going into trance. He
strikes me almost like a vicar addressing
his flock. After a couple of prayers—or
rather respectful incantations for the
dearly departed—candles are lit. Magnús
has his congregation right in the palm of
his hand.
Ten minutes of silence seem like half
an hour and then, as if by magic, precisely
at the appointed minute (I notice Magnús
check his watch), Hildur is channelling
Ólafur Tryggvason. Most of the questions
are posed by Magnús himself. Meanwhile,
the fingers of his right hand, deftly poised
on a remote control, switch from Verdi to
the Celtic pipes of Enya. Unlike Guðbjörg,
another medium/channeller whom I have
spent time with, Hildur doesn’t really
appear to be any different from when I
saw her in the reception around an hour
ago. When I witnessed Guðbjörg enter
a trance, she visibly looked and talked
like an entirely different person—even
the tone of her voice went down to a low
baritone.
The room itself is crammed to the
rafters with books, all sorts of tomes of the
unexplained, myths and legends, demons,
UFOs and other unlikely phenomenon. It
seems to me that Magnús possibly has the
largest library on the paranormal in all of
Iceland. I am wondering if he has read
them all when suddenly the question and
answer session with Hildur/Ólafur starts
to take an unexpected turn. Apparently,
from what I can gather, Ólafur is quite
familiar with Adolf Hitler; it’s not quite
clear if they’ve taken spiritual tea together,
but he has often conversed with him.
Perhaps since Ólafur was a doctor—
rather than say, a garbage man—before
he joined the spirits, people take him at
his word. They are, after all, the words of a
man of science.
Until now, Magnús and Ólafur have
been rambling on about the so-called
soul thread which, as I have mentioned
before (see Transcendental Iceland Part
3), appears to be exceedingly prevalent in
New Age explanations of the soul and its
interconnectedness with the Universe.
‘Ólafur says Adolf was not really such
a bad guy,’ my neighbour and appointed
translator whispers in my ear. ‘He was a
young soul; he had a lot to learn. He was
seduced over to the dark side by the aliens
that live on the Grey Planets.’ He’s taking
notes too. He’s completely and utterly
serious. ‘You know Adolf wanted to be an
architect, but could not live out his dream,’
he says.
‘And for that, he became the Beast of
Berlin?’ I want to ask. Once or twice, I
can swear I catch a glimmer of a smirk
on Hildur, then Magnús's, face. Not
wanting to disturb Magnús’s train of
questioning—he becomes visibly quite
upset if he is interrupted—I pass two
hand-written questions through my
neighbour. They are questions about
Hitler that most people would not know
the answer to. They are never raised.
Apparently, according to the spirit of
Ólafur, everyone is connected through
this silver umbilical cord, which starts
at the seat of the soul and spreads like a
spider web into the universe and into all
10 billion dimensions on 15 billion worlds
(he’s quite specific about the numbers),
but also to multiple alter egos. This means
there’s something like at least a few
billion Hitlers out there and, according to
statistical plausibility, at least one of them
became a successful architect. I guess in
that universe, there was no Albert Speer.
All of us, you and I included, have
multiple-selves living alternative lives in
parallel worlds. Sometimes, Ólafur says,
it can happen that you meet yourself—
one of your alter egos; in that case, stay
well clear. If you touch yourself, you may
well disappear in a blinding flash of light.
I make a note to check some of the more
recent Big Bang theories—cutting edge
physics talks about ‘super strings’ being
the undercurrent of the universe. Strings
and threads and webs…hmm.
After the séance, Magnús invites me
to join them all in homemade pancakes.
I decline the invitation, but can’t resist
asking one more question:
‘So how far away is the next planet
with life?’
‘Ah,’ says Magnús, popping a hefty
piece of pancake smothered in strawberry
jam into his mouth, ‘Ólafur told us a
couple of weeks ago. It’s not far, only 15
light years away, and it looks precisely like
Earth.’
Outside the stars are blinking, I light a
cigarette and notice just to the right of the
Big Dipper, there is a small group of stars;
if you were to connect them like dots, they
might almost look like a swastika.
Radio To The Other Side
In search of the Real McCoy
Words
Marc Vincenz
Believers come in all shapes and
forms and, mostly, they lead quite
unsurprising, even mundane lives.
For some, talking with the dead, a
hidden being, or sharing life-light
with the Cosmos, is as ordinary
as driving a car to work or taking
a stroll down Laugavegur. And
it isn’t the ones who wear mad
flowing costumes and flowers in
their hair that you have to watch
out for, it’s the ones you least
suspect: the lawyers, doctors,
politicians, and housewives, plenty
and plenty of housewives—some
desperate, others less so—but all
with a special connection to the
world beyond
Marc Vincenz keeps delving into Transcendental iceland.
Next issue: I meet a woman who speaks to beings in flowers, and who tells me
that she once came across dwarves snowboarding on the top of Eiríksjökull.
Transcendental iceland | Part 4: Smoke, Mirrors and Adolf Hitler
‘Ólafur says Adolf was not really such a bad guy,’
my neighbour and appointed translator whispers in
my ear. ‘He was a young soul; he had a lot to learn.
He was seduced over to the dark side by the aliens
that live on the Grey Planets.’
MEDIEVAL MANUSCRIPTS – EDDAS AND SAGAS
The Ancient Vellums on Display
ICELAND :: FILM – Berlin – Copenhagen – Reykjavík
Icelandic Filmmaking 1904-2008
A LOOK INTO NATURE
The Story of the Icelandic Museum of Natural History
EXHIBITIONS - GUIDED TOURS
CAFETERIA - CULTURE SHOP
The Culture House – Þjóðmenningarhúsið
National Centre for Cultural Heritage
Hverfi sgata 15 · 101 Reykjavík (City Centre)
Tel: 545 1400 · www.thjodmenning.is
Open daily between 11 am and 5 pm
Free guided tour of THE MEDIEVAL MANU-
SCRIPTS exhibition Mon and Fri at 3:30 pm.