The Return of the Heathens

Published: March 27, 2017, 10:55 a.m.

The fastest growing religion in Iceland is Norse paganism.

Floating in a hot spring, snow falling from the night sky, John Laurenson meets Teresa Drofn. A 25 year-old Heathen, Teresa describes her return to the religion of her Viking forebears as a renewal of a unique spiritual relationship with nature.

A millennium after it was banned in exchange for Christianity, John explores why Icelanders are returning to the faith. At a \u2018blot\u2019, or sacred ceremony John hears a priestess read aloud from the Eddas, an ancient Icelandic text serving as scripture for the new heathens of Europe. In the old days at a \u2018blot\u2019, there\u2019d be animal, even human sacrifices. Today they share in traditional Viking food, horse and whale, sheep\u2019s head, puffin p\xe2t\xe9 and rotten shark. \n \nVisiting the site of a newly planned Heathen temple John meets high priest Hilmar \xd6rn Hilmarsson. Hilmar has presided over hundreds of weddings and seen his own congregation increase six-fold within a single decade. This new Heathen house of worship, the first in a thousand years, will be aligned with the sun\u2019s path and burrowed deep into a hill near the city\u2019s airport.

(Photo: A priestess raises a bull\u2019s horn filled with beer at a heathen \u2018blot\u2019- a religious ceremony, Iceland. Credit: Silke Schurack / BBC)