posted January 14, 2016 02:03 AM            

I also liked this part:

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By law the city of Reykjavik must allocate a plot of land for religious purposes, and for a long time the Christian church has commandeered it. More recently the Icelandic government decided that in order to discourage discrimination it would also give land to a handful of other religions. In general though, Hilmar says that Icelandic people aren’t too religious. “We seem to all recognise that there is something greater than us, but we don’t really put words on it. My parents were deeply spiritualistic and believed in the afterlife very passionately, and my grandparents thought that there was something there. So I think that’s more or less how Icelanders are. You know that there’s something greater than us, and you’re constantly being hounded by nature and the earth moving around us. We have storms and crazy weather that lets us feel that we are actually small and insignificant compared to those great forces.”

I know from personal experience that the Icelandic weather is constantly turned up to 11, and the landscape is a rocky, lunar expanse punctuated with icy waterfalls and exploding geysers. Perhaps this is why the Pagan community in Iceland is so strong. “Paganism is very much based on nature worship, and living in harmony with nature as opposed to, say, monotheistic religions where nature is subdued and man is the crown of creation and can do more or less what he wants with it. I think this is going to kill us if we don’t do anything about it.”

Everything about the new temple is designed to honour nature. After a competition to choose an architect for the project, Magnús Jensson was selected (he’d actually designed a Pagan temple for his graduation project).

When I met Magnús they were only a week away from the solar eclipse, which was to be the exact moment the first shovel broke ground. Magnús is tall with a twinkling grin emerging from beneath a very Icelandic beard. His enthusiasm for the temple was as infectious as Hilmar’s, albeit more focused on its design and construction. “There’s the entrance then a gallery space, then you go downwards into the rock. You’re going against the slope of the hill, to be faced with bedrock that will be cut to be part of the walls. Then we have the cafe, bar, kitchen and storage room. And a small space for people working, and the toilets.”

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I also liked the holistic approach (though I know some of the more traditional "Folkish" may not care for it):

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They are also working with famed Sri Lankan engineer Cecil Balmond who worked on ArcelorMittal Orbit in the London Olympic Park and the famous CCTV building in Beijing. But Hilmar also wanted Cecil on board because he wrote a book called Number 9: The Search for the Sigma Code which tells a story of solving complicated mathematical problems through symmetry, mythology, philosophy and ancient imagery. “He’s frightfully busy,” says Hilmar, “but he’s offered to lend us some advice. Because we’re basing the design on very sacred geometry and sacred proportions, nothing is by coincidence – everything in that building will be designed.”

Surely every building is designed? Hilmar explains: “If you look at how temples were built in India, and some of the sacred architecture in Egypt and Greece and into the Middle Ages, they usually used something that is known as sacred geometry – numbers that always come up in designs. We’ve been using this very consciously, and so instead of starting out with aesthetics we have been starting with the numbers and then working them into the aesthetic. We are using something called The Golden Section (also known as The Golden Ratio), which is a mathematical formula that you find in the make-up of plants, leaves, or a seashell. In a way it’s how nature builds things, so we’re trying to do it in harmony with that. If you go back 100 years this method of design was very common, and then architecture kind of forgot it,” Magnús says.

So the natural world will shape almost every aspect of the new temple, but that’s not to say it will feel archaic. “I think the idea was to have a strong natural and local atmosphere in the building but not necessarily the old traditions,” Hilmar says.

My favourite element, and one that both Hilmar and Magnús were both particularly animated about, is the raw bedrock that will be exposed in the temple, inspired by the Church of the Rock in Helsinki. It epitomises Hilmar’s true quest, to bring everything back to nature. “It will be a symbolic descent into the underworld,” he says. “You are coming into the temple, moving into the elements, surrounded by the rock, there is a sacred fire. You have water dripping from the walls because it is a natural environment. And so you have the four elements, earth, wind, fire and air. All around you. In a way it will be a beautiful, artistic expression of these four elements. Hopefully the fifth element, spirit, will be with people as well.”

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And a bit on the why:
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/05/why-iceland-is-building-a-temple-to-its-pagan-gods.html

posted February 12, 2016 01:58 PM            

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Originally posted by Randall:
What comics were you checking on?

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