The Icelandic Canadian - 01.06.2000, Page 46

Vol. 55 #4
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
344
Book Reviews
Icelandic Spiritualism:
Mediumship and Modernity in Iceland
by 'William H. Swatos Jr., and Loftur Reimar
Gissurarson
New Brunswick, New Jersey; Transaction
Publishers, 1997
Hardcover, 270 pages
Reviewed by Stefan Jonasson
Family tradition has it that my great-
great-grandfather's farmhouse burned to the
ground not long after he emigrated to Canada.
Convinced that the fire had been the work of
huldafolk, those who farmed the land in suc-
ceeding generations assiduously avoided till-
ing the plot where the farmhouse once stood,
lest they raise the ire of its paranormal inhab-
itants. Icelandic lore is so full of accounts of
spiritual and paranormal phenomena that a
scholarly study of their impact on Icelandic
religion is long overdue. In Icelandic
Spiritualism, William H. Swatos, Jr., and
Loftur Reimar Gissurarson relate the story of
"mediumship and modernity" in Icelandic
religion.
In their introduction, the authors indicate
their desire to challenge and their "hope at
least to wound" the Durkheimian model of
religious development, which holds that pre-
modern societies were communal in nature
and held together by deep religious convic-
tions, whereas modern societies are largely
associational in nature with a corresponding
rise in secularism. The result is a rather pre-
tentious essay that bears little obvious rela-
tionship to their account of Icelandic spiritu-
alism. While the introduction offers some
interesting background material, including an
account of the conversion of Iceland to
Christianity and an argument for understand-
ing Icelandic society as a "shame culture"
rather than a "guilt culture," its thesis is essen-
tially unnecessary and somewhat unconvinc-
ing. One of the more insightful observations,
however, is the description of Icelandic reli-
gion as "a matter of the hearth" in which the
church was "the pilgrimage centre of family
life." When understood in this light, Icelandic
society may be far less secular than is com-
monly supposed, since the balance between
home and church, when it comes to religious
matters, differs from that which prevails
throughout most of Christendom.
Swatos and Gissurarson show that the
Icelandic context offered fertile soil for the