Yesterday I saw some people wearing-the-green for St Patrick’s Day which isn’t surprising. Recently genetic studies have shown that Icelanders are more Celtic than Scandinavian, a fact I’ve noted this in earlier entries. First time visitors might think of Iceland as a kind of northern Valhalla but are disconcerted when they see so many people with red and black hair along with freckled skin typical of the Irish. Hitler considered Iceland as a mythical though real Valhalla and because of this never invaded it. He also said accurately that “whoever controls Iceland holds a pistol to the head of America” by reason of its strategic position.

Several members of the weekly Grafavogur prayer group and I were discussing how we try to carry on a spirit of recollection throughout the week, using the Sunday evening meetings as anchor points. Most members are very edifying: they have a daily routine of prayer and spiritual reading (lectio divina). They agreed that this is crucial to start the day off. However, once they go to work or get involved with the normal affairs of family life, that special time of being with God quickly evaporates. Some try to re-establish their connection with the morning late evening which certainly helps. I get the impression that you can bring this recollection to the work place for a limited period but must accept the reality that it doesn’t last…nor should you expect it to last. Still, the memory of that morning’s special time lingers which is as good as one can expect. The person doing it may not feel the results, but those around him or her notice something different they don’t see in other people.

Another bout of snow last evening made more pleasant by reason of the lack of wind. Virtually every Icelander I’ve spoken with doesn’t mind the variable weather as long as it isn’t windy, and wind is part of life in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.

One evening I saw a tv program on a memory experiment. Subjects were taken on a nature walk and were equipped with video cams on their hats which recorded everything they saw. The walk started out ordinarily enough but later passed a staged crash site. The area was roped off and even had an armed military guard. One month later the subjects were interviewed and came up with various stories about the crash site. Some said there were many soldiers and gave various interpretations as to what the site might be, even an alien crash landing. The point? That human memory, even after the lapse of one month, is unreliable. People insert their interpretations and take them as fact not because they wish to lie nor to impress, but that’s how things work. They actually believe they are telling the truth. In fact, it isn’t a matter of truth versus lying at all. I was considering this in light of earlier centuries when so much of cultural transmission depended upon memory, and that gets into the sensitive area of religious tradition. If we were to view earlier uses of memory in light of the experiment I just cited, then everything is thrown open to misinterpretation. I don’t think so because that’s a modern temptation which reveals ignorance of the past in light of so-called advanced means of recording events. People are more careful to preserve accurate observations for future transmission, especially when it comes to things vital to their culture and religion. Their capacity for recalling events was much sharper than today. Indeed, we view that capacity as completely foreign. In the back of my mind I was thinking about the ancient sense of anamnesis or recollection, but that’s another matter though certainly related.