Indriði Indriðason

This is an Icelandic name. The last name is a patronymic, not a family name; this person is properly referred to by the given name 'Indriði'.

Indriði Indriðason (born 1883;[1] died August 31, 1912) was an Icelandic medium and Iceland's only physical medium.[2] He was the first medium reported in Iceland and his discovery was a major impetus to the establishment of spiritualism there.[3]

Life

Indriði was raised on a remote farm and was uneducated. At 22, he moved to Reykjavík to work at a newspaper as a printer's apprentice. The wife of the relative at whose house he was living was interested in the Experimental Society that Einar Hjörleifsson Kvaran had established to investigate spiritualist claims; early in 1905 she brought him with her to a session and when he participated in a table-tilting experiment, the table moved "violently".[4]

The Experimental Society was formalized in fall 1905 in order to investigate Indriði. It paid him a salary and he was required not to give séances without its permission.[5] He moved into Kvaran's home,[6] and then in 1907 the Society built an Experimental House for him to provide maximally controlled conditions for observing him. He lived there with a theology student,[7] but after a visit to the Westman Islands in September 1907, he was increasingly troubled by poltergeist phenomena and members of the Society had to spend the night in the room.[8]

Starting in spring 1905, Indriði complained that he did not like the experiments, "and in fact never had, as he felt drained and tired as a result of them. He started to sleep badly, complained about headaches, and became a bit depressed. He planned to go to America and leave the circle for good."[9] He fell ill then, and experienced a sudden serious illness in February the next year.[10] In summer 1909 he visited his parents and he and his fiancée, Jóna Guðnadóttir, caught typhoid fever. She died; Indriði never fully recovered and did not participate in any further research. He married someone else, but their daughter died before her second birthday, and Indriði himself died of tuberculosis in the Vífilsstaðir sanatorium on August 31, 1912.[11]

Achievements as a medium

Indriði had immediate success with automatic writing. He first entered a trance later in spring 1905. He claimed to be able to see shadowy beings, whom he was afraid of.[9]

In November 1905, levitational phenomena manifested[12] - Indriði himself sometimes bumped his head on the ceiling and complained about hurting his head, and on at least two occasions the neighbors' complaints about noise when he crashed back to the floor required relocating the experiments to someone else's apartment[13] - and also a control personality who claimed to be Konráð Gíslason, Indriði's grandfather's brother, who had been a professor of Icelandic at the University of Copenhagen.[14] Knocks on the wall were also heard for the first time in November 1905.

Also in the first year of experimentation, lights manifested, initially as flashes or spots in the air or on walls. There were up to 58 at a time, of various sizes, shapes, and colors. Sometimes light spread across the entire wall behind Indriði, sometimes with circular or net-like patterns, sometimes continuous; in early December 1905, a man appeared in the light. The lights, which "as in all his major phenomena, seemed to cause [Indriði] much pain," so that he would "shriek and scream" and complain after the séances that he "felt as if he had been beaten up," stopped at Christmas[15] but resumed in December 1906, when a man again appeared in the light and claimed to be a discarnate Dane named Mr. Jensen. He appeared several times in a pillar of light that observers described as very beautiful, while Indriði this time sat in a trance.[16] No equipment capable of producing the lights was available in Reykjavík, and the Kvarans attested that Indriði had only a single footlocker with no lock, and they and others searched him and kept him under observation.[6]

On his first appearance, Jensen spoke audibly, asking "in a typical Copenhagen accent" whether people could see him. He was also palpable: he attempted to touch people and let them touch him.[17] But clear voices were rare until January 1908, when a being named Sigmundur manifested, audible at some distance from Indriði.[18] After that there were occasions when several voices were heard around Indriði while he was visiting his fiancée on a farm, including one outdoors in broad daylight when multiple different voices spoke to him and each other, in immediate succession and even simultaneously.[19] An observer who suspected him of ventriloquism reported that he once heard a male and female voice singing simultaneously, in a skilful and trained manner, and that a friend of his tried to trap Indriði by singing a duet with one of the voices and setting the pitch uncomfortably high, and "thought it very improbable that there was in the whole town a singer who could" have sung as well as the voice did. Indriði was an untrained singer but used to sing in the cathedral choir.[20]

Although primarily a physical medium, Indriði correctly reported pieces of information, such as a big fire in Copenhagen.[21][22]

In winter 1906-07, the Society held "apport séances" in Kvaran's home during which Indriði materialized objects from all over Reykjavík.[23] He himself was also reportedly teleported from one locked room to another on one occasion.[24]

One of the most dramatic phenomena associated with Indriði was the dematerialization of his left arm, which happened several times in December 1906. Up to seven witnesses at a time swore that they could not find it, even striking matches and shining lights on his body.[25]

After Indriði's visit to the Westman Islands in September 1907, he was plagued by poltergeist and levitation phenomena that he and his controls attributed to a man named Jón, whom he had seen and made insulting remarks about. Indriði and the wicker chair he was sitting in were carried over two rows of people; the harmonium moved while the organist was playing it; at night, Indriði's bed and Indriði himself were levitated. Observers were unable to hold his legs down or on one occasion to prevent his being dragged into another room.[26] On another he was levitated to chest-height in front of the window and appeared to be in danger of being thrown through it.[27][28] Objects were thrown around the bedroom of the Experimental House and to a lesser extent at Kvaran's house, breaking lamps and wash-basins and causing the observers to grab Indriði and flee.[29][30] Jón and the members of the society eventually reconciled and he participated in séances in February 1908, speaking through a spirit trumpet while swinging it from one side of the hall to the other. Until the manifestation of Sigmundur, his was the most audible voice encountered.[31]

Criticism

Although the Experimental Society and Indriði were the topics of hefty debate in the Icelandic press, because of the careful precautions taken[32] and the eminence of some of the people who examined the room and Indriði's person and witnessed séances involving him - such as Guðmundur Hannesson, founder of the Icelandic Scientific Society and twice president of the University of Iceland, who made a detailed study of Indriði,[33][34] Haraldur Níelsson, a highly educated and influential theologian who was at the time the nephew of the Bishop of Iceland and was to write on Indriði and present on him at international Spiritualist conferences,[35] and on one occasion in 1907 the Bishop of Iceland, the Magistrate of Reykjavík, and the British Consul[36] - there were few accusations that he was a fraud, and none from first-hand witnesses.[37] The majority of the criticism was religious and anti-Spiritualist, accusing Kvaran of founding a new religion[38] and referring to a "Ghost Society" (draugafélagið) and a "ludicrous ghost-religion."[39] The most specific accusation leveled at Indriði was a sight unseen and otherwise unsupported diagnosis of hysteria and epilepsy by a pioneer of psychology at the University of Iceland.[40]

References

  1. ↑ Patrick H. MacNamara, Evolution, Genes, and the Religious Brain, Westport: Praeger, 2006, ISBN 0-275-98789-2, p. 147.
  2. ↑ John Beloff, Parapsychology: A Concise History, New York: St. Martin's, 1993, ISBN 0-312-09611-9, p. 100.
  3. ↑ William H. Swatos and Loftur Reimar Gissurarson, Icelandic Spiritualism: Mediumship and Modernity in Iceland, New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1997, ISBN 1-56000-273-5, p. 79.
  4. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 83-84.
  5. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 84-85.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 88.
  7. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 96-97.
  8. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 97.
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 84. By "America" is meant New Iceland, in Canada.
  10. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 92.
  11. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 153-54.
  12. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 85.
  13. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 89.
  14. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 86.
  15. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 87-88.
  16. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 93-95.
  17. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 93, 94.
  18. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 102-03.
  19. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 150-51.
  20. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 151-52.
  21. ↑ Eliot Weinberger, Karmic Traces, 1993-1999, New York: New Directions, 2000, ISBN 0-8112-1456-7, p. 7.
  22. ↑ Loftur Reimar Gissurarson and Erlendur Haraldsson, The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason, Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research Part 214, 1989, ISBN 0-900677-02-3, p. 76.
  23. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 96.
  24. ↑ Erlendur Haraldsson, Modern Miracles: An Investigative Report on Psychic Phenomena Associated with Sathya Sai Baba, New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1988, ISBN 0-449-90284-6, p. 267.
  25. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 89-92.
  26. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 97-98.
  27. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 100.
  28. ↑ Michael Grosso, Experiencing the Next World Now, New York: Paraview, 2004, ISBN 0-7434-7105-9, p. 210 compares these experiences to those of Padre Pio.
  29. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 98-102.
  30. ↑ See also the account of Herbert Thurston, Ghosts and Poltergeists, London: Burns Oates, 1953, OCLC 566927, pp. 8-10, based on Haraldur Níelsson's account to the Second International Congress for Psychical Research; he adds that Jón was thought to be a recent suicide.
  31. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 103.
  32. ↑ MacNamara, p. 148.
  33. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 120.
  34. ↑ Beloff, p. 101.
  35. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 66-67.
  36. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 95.
  37. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 115.
  38. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 116.
  39. ↑ Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, pp. 107, 109.
  40. ↑ Águst H. Bjarnason, quoted in Swatos, Loftur Gissurarson, p. 110: "What proves to me the truth that this medium was hysteric and epileptic or at least something in that direction, furthermore, is what I have been told about his mother: that she is or had been hysteric, especially at the time when she got married."

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