© Reuters High priest Hilmar Orn Hilmarsson and fellow members of the Asatru Association attend a ceremony at the Pingvellir National Park near Reykjavik.
Worship of the gods in Scandinavia gave way to Christianity around 1,000 years ago but a modern version of Norse paganism has been gaining popularity in Iceland.
"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, high priest of Ásatrúarfélagið, an association that promotes faith in the Norse gods.
"We see the stories as poetic metaphors and a manifestation of the forces of nature and human psychology."
Membership in Ásatrúarfélagið has tripled in Iceland in the last decade to 2,400 members last year, out of a total population of 330,000, data from Statistics Iceland showed.
The temple will be circular and will be dug 4 metres (13ft) down into a hill overlooking the Icelandic capital Reykjavik, with a dome on top to let in the sunlight.
"The sun changes with the seasons so we are in a way having the sun paint the space for us," Hilmarsson said.
The temple will host ceremonies such as weddings and funerals. The group will also confer names to children and initiate teenagers, similar to other religious communities. Iceland's neo-pagans still celebrate the ancient sacrificial ritual of Blot with music, reading, eating and drinking, but nowadays leave out the slaughter of animals.
Source: Reuters
Apparently the Icelanders must be ROLLING in dough to afford a (ridiculous) shrine built to Nordic Dogs that their own leaders openly disparage as utterly 'unbelievable'.
The Icelanders are doubly wrong here:
1.) They are NOT rich and should NOT be pissing away ANY funds on such 'religious' idiocies; and
2.) People ARE so stupid and gullible that they WOULD believe in such a deity as a, ".....one-eyed man who is riding about on a horse with eight feet", as long a religious monument is erected to that effect, thereby giving a concrete, tangible legitimacy to the belief system. The bigger the monument, the more believable the mythology. (Monkeys are impressed by bigness.)
In fact, these Icelandic leaders must live on another planet than we do, as most if not all SOTT readers already know well the literally incredible myths and legends that 'modern' peoples still cling to, believe in, and enthusiastically (read: murderously) support. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are all chock-full of such mind-boggling TRIPE, not to mention countless other religions of the world that suppose some of the most insane beliefs as commonly accepted historical 'facts' amongst their followers and 'true believers'.
The horrifying "Jonestown Massacre" and the Heaven's Gate mass suicides are only just two examples of this social insanity, and are more than proof enough of the murderous power of mythology on a bunch of mind-fucked semi-hairless APES!
America's endless "War On Terror" is yet another.........