For the past thousand years or so, the country that gave birth to Björk has been a Christian nation, but a new group has announced that they would be building a new Iceland Norse temple in the country to honor their traditional deities like Odin, Thor and Loki.
Ever since the first "Thor" movie came out in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, the rise of the Avenger character has turned people to find out more about the mythology the comic book is based on, reading up more about the folktales surrounding the figure - but there's at least one group of people in Northern Europe that take things seriously enough to build a new Iceland Norse temple.
According to The Independent, Asatruarfelagid, a new pagan organization similar to religions such as Wicca, has announced its plans to build a new Iceland Norse temple in the country's capital city, Reykjavik.
The Huffington Post reports that the City Council of Reykjavik donated a piece of land for the building of the new Iceland Norse temple, though they will not be handing the organization the money to do so, as they have to raise it themselves. In any case, they need a further $1 million for the construction of the actual building, which will be circular in shape, 13 feet down into a Reykjavik hillside, and will host its own dome to let the sunlight in, in an effort to have it "paint the space" for followers of the movement.
"I don't believe anyone believes in a one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet," said Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson, the high priest of Asatruarfelagid, to Reuters, in a recent interview about the construction of the temple. "We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology."
The construction of the new Iceland Norse temple is part of a rising tendency of support towards Asatruarfelagid, an organization that has tripled its numbers in the Northern European country over the past decade.
