Just Saturday I returned from a week and a half trip to Iceland with my dearest friend and fellow pagan, a trip we have both been excitedly planning for some time with our shared interest in the positively jaw dropping landscapes and vistas, and with our mutual pagan interests as Norse-Celtic pagans.

Something I remarked about on the trip was how connected I felt to my gods and the land there. Perhaps it’s the history of the land and my own biases, the fact that I’ve spent years fascinated by Icelandic linguistic history and the broader Scandinavian histories of the Viking Age.

Or perhaps, just perhaps, it’s the closeness of the land to the spirits and gods themselves, and the purity of that connection. Perhaps purity is a poor choice of words, so let me explain.

Iceland has been inhabited by the Icelanders for over a thousand years, and before that, no one. They brought their gods with them to that island, and likely so did the celts (brought over often as slaves), where they prospered for years before Christianity took its footing and converted the nation in 1000CE (a slow process). Even after conversion, the Icelanders maintained many of their pre-Christian superstitions and beliefs, to include that of the hiddenfolk, and undoubtedly the ways of the wisewomen (volvas, witches) endured for years as in other parts of the world.

The land of ice and fire had no peoples before them, no native indigenous population with spirits and gods that ruled the land and claimed it their own.

In the United States, the land we live on is not ours. Not long ago this land belonged to a different people, indigenous tribes with their own spirits and ancestors that lived and yet dwell in the land. Those spirits are still here, and so to me, my gods, though present, seem almost distant at times.

Surely those I pray to dwell here as well, their presence borderless and essence boundless, such as Jord or the Sun and the Moon. But in Iceland I felt the power of my gods like I had never felt them in America, and for that I am grateful.