|
Who are you?
I was born in Iceland, in 1940. /…/ By the time I was seventeen, I was
speculating on Asatro, or I decided when I was seventeen that I was Asatrua.
This had just haunted me all my life. I just wanted to be Asatrua. I haven’t the
fainted idea why, because both my parents, my grandparents and my
great-grandmother - they all looked at themselves as Christians. But the old
traditions of the wights, the hidden people, the beings that live in every rock
and everywhere in nature were so much part of my upbringing, like most
Icelanders’. I came to the conclusion that this was what I believed, not what I
had been told by the church. Although I was always very much interested in
religion when I took my confirmation - as we do in Iceland when we are
fourteen.
Then I just decided when I was seventeen that ... that’s it ... I was
Asatrua. Nothing much happened, I just felt better that I’d decided. I started
right away to try to get people to form an Asatru association, but without any
luck. In Iceland, especially in those days, you couldn’t go around telling
people about your religion and what you believed in. This is considered to be so
personal that those who speak about religion are considered to be a little bit
crazy. I am in a very envious position at the moment, because I can speak about
religion all day if I want to, because I am Allsherjagodi, so that’s normal, but
somebody else would be considered a little bit crazy! [laughing]
So you were looking for people?
I was looking for people everywhere to join me, because I thought the
Asatru should be reinstated in Iceland, many thought it was a good idea, but as
I said before, Icelanders think religion is a very personal thing and they don’t
want to discuss it. Fifteen years later I was speaking to someone, over a cup of
coffee, he said Ooh! If you’re interested in that, you should speak to
Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson, he has been going around for years saying the same
thing!
The next day I met Sveinbjörn for the first time, and within a week we
had already formed the Asatro association. If I remember correctly, It was on
the first day of summer, according to the Old Icelandic calendar, in 1972. And
then we went on from there. We met, I think, one month later to do the official
work, we were twelve at the first meeting, and thirty-five or thirty-six (a nice
number!) at the second one. Everything was decided at these two meetings, very
spontaneously. I’m not sure, in retrospect, how much we really knew - I’m sure
that Sveinbjörn and some of the others knew much more than I did. But I am not
really sure how much of what we did was based on solid knowledge and how much
was based on instinct and cultural background. When I go over the papers from
this time everything sounds correct and in accordance with what I know today,
but I’m not really sure that we knew that much. We just did what we felt was
right. I think it is actually more important, when you do something like this,
to do what you really feel, than being historically correct. Historical accuracy
is very good. It’s very good to have solid knowledge of old traditions and so
on, but after all, your traditions are what you think they are. You shouldn’t
have to look up your traditions in a book. Things like that have to be.
How, in your opinion, is the situation of the Asatrufelagidh in Iceland
today?
I think they have a very solid position, maybe too easy-going. There is
a steady increase in membership - if that is positive, I suppose it is. In the
last three-four years, the increase has fluctuated from 40% down to maybe
10-15%... Never less than that. If you compare this to the Church - the
National Church it is going steadily down in numbers all the time. Asatru is the
fastest-growing religion in Iceland as in many other countries.
What do you think of the revival of pagan pre-Christian religions, not only
in Europe, but in the rest of the world as well?
I think that is a very important work. It is absolutely necessary for
Europe, because, even though Christianity was at one time part of a very
European tradition, it simply does not work any more, and I think maybe that
United Europe will result in people becoming more local than they were before.
It’s very important that you nourish your local tradition, and the local
tradition is always connected with Asatru or the local paganism. So the best way
to nourish a local consciousness is to nourish the old tradition. They are so
connected together ... If you don’t have any tradition, you don’t have any
identity, and you can’t get identity from a book like the Bible. In Europe, you
can’t build identity from that, because it is based on completely different
traditions. Probably, when Arianism, Catarism etc. was the dominant Christianity
in Europe, it was much more local than the international Roman Christianity,
which was, and to some extent still is, a mock Roman Empire. If we can’t rule
their lands let’s rule their minds.
As people would not accept a completely foreign kind of religion
concessions where made and local traditions twisted around to fit into Roman
Christianity because they realised that you can’t be without those traditions.
So it turns out that you can keep 90 % of the Christian holidays, because they
were Pagan holidays to start with. Yule, the midwinter feast is one classical
example and there are many more. I can recite another one. /…/
We can rediscover all these traditions. You keep the local holidays, and
revert to the original customs. This is very healthy and quite different from
nationalism, which is always made up by somebody. The connection of nationalism
with tradition is usually very shallow: a few words, songs, symbols, which
you’re supposed to believe in, and that’s why it gets out of hand, because
nationalism does not connect to the soul of anybody, and has to be kept alive by
constant propaganda. But local patriotism is a positive aspect of society. I
think this is very necessary for the identity of Europe. Europe should not
become one huge Europe with European nationalism, because that will always be a
fake. But local feelings for the environment, culture and traditions are a very
positive thing. I think that Paganism or Asatro is the best way to go back to
your roots, rekindling the pride of belonging, without hating those that are
different.
You mentioned the importance of going back to your roots in Europe. Now
what’s going to happen to the Americans, I mean the white Americans. How can
they go back to their own roots? Is it possible?
Not in the same way as you can do when you are in Europe, absolutely
not. The groups in America that are trying to do this, they have got it mostly
from books. Not completely, but mostly it is from books. They read about it, and
a lot of the books published in this century are not even very accurate,
although this is changing in the last few years. I have told them in America
that, while it is quite good to examine your roots, family traditions and so on,
you cannot build everything on that which happened hundred or two hundred years
ago in Europe, because both society and nature are different. The environment is
different from Europe and very varied from Alaska to Mexico.
They should look to the Indians, for tradition. Not becoming Indians,
because that would be a fake also, but try to develop their identities
separately. I think that, if you have two extremes: people forming a Pagan group
solely based on what they felt was right, and, on the other hand, someone who
was basing everything on very accurate scientific research on some period in the
past ... doing just what you feel is right, is more correct than the exact
recreation.
Of course, it’s best to have a little bit of both, facts and feelings.
But at least if you make the whole thing up, in other words start from scratch,
then you are doing something, which is in harmony with yourself. Such an
understanding of the divine may not be Isatrs as we understand it in Iceland or
Europe, but if Paganism is, as I belief, half being in harmony with yourself,
and half in harmony with nature, then you are one the right track. If you are
not in harmony with society, yourself and nature you could just as well be
Christian. Notice however one thing however; no one individual can start a Pagan
religion or “sidr”, there can be no prophets in Isatrs, it goes against the
grain of everything Pagans stand for. This is the problem with many groups
outside Europe, (and some in Europe to) you start with a handful of people
around a teacher and when the group expands and the ideas expand, the leader
will not let go, and the whole thing collapses. The Pagan understanding of the
Divine is always a collective understanding. In the Judaic based religions the
reverse is true; there can be only one understanding, the Bible, the Pope or the
Prophet.
It is inherent in the Christianised thinking of the West that, if two
things are not compatible, they have to be opposites. In the older Pagan way of
thinking (circular thought) you can bend around the problem, then, really,
things that seem to be opposite turn out to be just different and fully
acceptable.
All this revival in Europe, at the same time there is a lot of "Neo-Paganism",
lot of "New Age". Do you see it as a danger for real ethnic religion?
No, not really. I have been told that in England especially people who
would really like to be pagans but are a little nervous to go all the way get
involved in New Age thinking, because that is sort of semi-acceptable, maybe
because of the commercial aspect. Those who are really sincere tend to become
Pagan later on and I don’t really see a conflict there. It may be that paganism
will follow a forked road, a traditional one and a neo-pagan movement.
New-Age movement will never be able to gain any momentum if they are not
real.
So, on the long term, they do not make me nervous. Some of them might
possibly bring some damage in the short term. I think that shunning them out
completely, refusing to talk to them, calling them names, will only make them
more eccentric. I am a Pagan and we maintain that we must all find our own way
so I dislike to criticise religious groups, but take scientology for example,
which is in reality set up by one man. It is OK to say that, because they know
this very well themselves. He just made up a new religion and that will newer
work.
What happens with religions like that? When some fundamental
difficulties rise, they don’t have any tradition to revert back to. /…/ When
Sveinbjorn Beinteinsson died and I took over there was no problem. The tradition
in Iceland is so strong that if I had tried to change course completely, I would
have done that alone and left all the others on the main road. In case of a new
made-up religion, when the leader/prophet dies you are left on a roundabout with
many lanes and numerable exits./…/ Even if Christianity is a relatively new
religion, it can fall back on the Jewish tradition, but sometimes I have the
feeling that they are just driving round and around and that it even dos not
worry them very much. We will just wait, the made-up religions with dubious ties
to cultural traditions will eventually disappear, and then is our duty to be
there, waiting.
The full French version has been published in “Antaios” magazine.
|