“The Icelandic State Church and the religious life of West-Icelanders” is the title of Móeiður Júníusdóttir’s research project in her doctoral studies at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies. “The research focus is on the connection between the thriving religious life of the many Icelandic settlers that emigrated to the New World and the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland in its formative years; and the interactive connections between the two. The project thus revolves around two cultures and how they, in their own capacity, define themselves and unite in what could be called Icelandic Christianity,” says Júníusdóttir when asked about the main subject of her research.
“My plan is to focus on this self definition process of West Icelanders, which is characterised by considerable conflict that lead, among other things, to severe criticism of the old country’s church life. I will, furthermore, endeavour to analyse the effects of this criticism on the formation of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland at the end of the 19th century; but the part played by the influence from the New World has not been analysed much in this context,” Júníusdóttir adds.
The research project is a collaborative and connecting venture between the University of Iceland and the Icelandic Faculty at the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. “The objective is to demonstrate how the Christian ideology of Icelanders, in a political as much as a theological sense, was on one hand received differently in Iceland than in the New World, and on the other hand the consequences it incurred,” says Júníusdóttir.
Júníusdóttir hopes to shed new light on an important formative factor in the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland by examining the subject in view of these two cultures; furthermore, the Icelandic Church history in the New world will be described in a novel fashion. She hopes that with this double perspective a clearer picture can be drawn of the characteristics of Icelandic Christianity that can provide a useful “mirror” for the present.
Supervisor: Pétur Pétursson, Professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies.
