Indriði Indriðason
Encyclopedia
Indriði Indriðason was an Iceland
ic medium
and Iceland's only physical medium. He was the first medium reported in Iceland and his discovery was a major impetus to the establishment of Spiritualism
there.
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."
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 séance
s without its permission. He moved into Kvaran's home, 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, 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.
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." He fell ill then, and experienced a sudden serious illness in February the next year. 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.
. He first entered a trance later in spring 1905. He claimed to be able to see shadowy beings, whom he was afraid of.
In November 1905, levitational phenomena manifested - 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 - 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
. 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
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. 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.
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. But clear voices were rare until January 1908, when a being named Sigmundur manifested, audible at some distance from Indriði. 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. 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.
Although primarily a physical medium, Indriði correctly reported pieces of information, such as a big fire in Copenhagen.
In winter 1906-07, the Society held "apport
séances" in Kvaran's home during which Indriði materialized objects from all over Reykjavík. He himself was also reportedly teleported
from one locked room to another on one occasion.
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.
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. On another he was levitated to chest-height in front of the window and appeared to be in danger of being thrown through it. 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. 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.
Iceland
Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...
ic medium
Mediumship
Mediumship is described as a form of communication with spirits. It is a practice in religious beliefs such as Spiritualism, Spiritism, Espiritismo, Candomblé, Voodoo and Umbanda.- Concept :...
and Iceland's only physical medium. He was the first medium reported in Iceland and his discovery was a major impetus to the establishment of Spiritualism
Spiritualism
Spiritualism is a belief system or religion, postulating the belief that spirits of the dead residing in the spirit world have both the ability and the inclination to communicate with the living...
there.
Life
Indriði was raised on a remote farm and was uneducated. At 22, he moved to ReykjavíkReykjavík
Reykjavík is the capital and largest city in Iceland.Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay...
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
Einar Hjörleifsson Kvaran
Einar Hjörleifsson Kvaran was an Icelandic editor, novelist, poet, playwright and prominent spiritualist....
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."
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 séance
Séance
A séance is an attempt to communicate with spirits. The word "séance" comes from the French word for "seat," "session" or "sitting," from the Old French "seoir," "to sit." In French, the word's meaning is quite general: one may, for example, speak of "une séance de cinéma"...
s without its permission. He moved into Kvaran's home, 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, but after a visit to the Westman Islands in September 1907, he was increasingly troubled by poltergeist
Poltergeist
A poltergeist is a paranormal phenomenon which consists of events alluding to the manifestation of an imperceptible entity. Such manifestation typically includes inanimate objects moving or being thrown about, sentient noises and, on some occasions, physical attacks on those witnessing the...
phenomena and members of the Society had to spend the night in the room.
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
New Iceland
New Iceland is the name of a region on Lake Winnipeg in the Canadian province Manitoba which was named for settlers from Iceland. It was settled in 1875.- Background :...
and leave the circle for good." He fell ill then, and experienced a sudden serious illness in February the next year. In summer 1909 he visited his parents and he and his fiancée, Jóna Guðnadóttir, caught typhoid fever
Typhoid fever
Typhoid fever, also known as Typhoid, is a common worldwide bacterial disease, transmitted by the ingestion of food or water contaminated with the feces of an infected person, which contain the bacterium Salmonella enterica, serovar Typhi...
. 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
Tuberculosis
Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...
in the Vífilsstaðir sanatorium on August 31, 1912.
Achievements as a medium
Indriði had immediate success with automatic writingAutomatic writing
Automatic writing or psychography is writing which the writer states to be produced from a subconscious and/or spiritual source without conscious awareness of the content.-History:...
. He first entered a trance later in spring 1905. He claimed to be able to see shadowy beings, whom he was afraid of.
In November 1905, levitational phenomena manifested - 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 - 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
University of Copenhagen
The University of Copenhagen is the oldest and largest university and research institution in Denmark. Founded in 1479, it has more than 37,000 students, the majority of whom are female , and more than 7,000 employees. The university has several campuses located in and around Copenhagen, with the...
. 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
Christmas
Christmas or Christmas Day is an annual holiday generally celebrated on December 25 by billions of people around the world. It is a Christian feast that commemorates the birth of Jesus Christ, liturgically closing the Advent season and initiating the season of Christmastide, which lasts twelve days...
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. 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.
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. But clear voices were rare until January 1908, when a being named Sigmundur manifested, audible at some distance from Indriði. 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. An observer who suspected him of ventriloquism
Ventriloquism
Ventriloquism, or ventriloquy, is an act of stagecraft in which a person manipulates his or her voice so that it appears that the voice is coming from elsewhere, usually a puppeteered "dummy"...
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.
Although primarily a physical medium, Indriði correctly reported pieces of information, such as a big fire in Copenhagen.
In winter 1906-07, the Society held "apport
Apport
According to parapsychologists and ghost hunters, an apport is the paranormal transference of an article from one place to another, or an appearance of an article from an unknown source that is often associated with poltergeist activity or spiritualistic séances. The Skeptic's Dictionary states...
séances" in Kvaran's home during which Indriði materialized objects from all over Reykjavík. He himself was also reportedly teleported
Psychokinesis
The term psychokinesis , also referred to as telekinesis with respect to strictly describing movement of matter, sometimes abbreviated PK and TK respectively, is a term...
from one locked room to another on one occasion.
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.
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. On another he was levitated to chest-height in front of the window and appeared to be in danger of being thrown through it. 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. 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.
Criticism
Although the Experimental Society and Indriði were the topics of hefty debate in the Icelandic press, because of the careful precautions taken 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, 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, and on one occasion in 1907 the Bishop of Iceland, the Magistrate of Reykjavík, and the British Consul - there were few accusations that he was a fraud, and none from first-hand witnesses. The majority of the criticism was religious and anti-Spiritualist, accusing Kvaran of founding a new religion and referring to a "Ghost Society" (draugarfélagið) and a "ludicrous ghost-religion." 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.Sources
- Guðmundur Hannesson. "Remarkable phenomena in Iceland." Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 18 (1924) 239-72. Translation of: "Í Svartaskóla." Norðurland 10, 11 (December 21, 1910, January 21, 1911). Repr. Morgunn 32 (1951), Satt 21 (1973).
- Haraldur Níelsson. "Some of my experiences with a physical medium in Reykjavík." Le Compte Rendu Officiel du Premier Congrès International des Recherches Psychiques à Copenhague. Copenhagen: Secrétariat international des Congrès de Recherches psychiques. 450-65.
- Haraldur Níelsson. "Poltergeist phenomena." Light September 29, 1923. 615.
- Haraldur Níelsson. "Poltergeist phenomena in connection with a medium observed for a length of time, some of them in full light." L'État Actuel des Recherches Psychiques d'après les Travaux du 2me Congrès International tenu à Varsovie en 1923 en l'Honneur du Dr. Julien Ochorowicz. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1924. 148-68.
- Haraldur Níelsson. "Poltergeist phenomena." Psychic Science 4 (1925) 90-111.
- Loftur Reimar Gissurarson. "Indriði Indriðason miðill." B.A. thesis, University of IcelandUniversity of IcelandThe University of Iceland is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern comprehensive university, providing instruction for about...
. 1984. - Loftur Reimar Gissurarson and Erlendur Haraldsson. The Icelandic Physical Medium Indridi Indridason. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical ResearchSociety for Psychical ResearchThe Society for Psychical Research is a non-profit organisation in the United Kingdom. Its stated purpose is to understand "events and abilities commonly described as psychic or paranormal by promoting and supporting important research in this area" and to "examine allegedly paranormal phenomena...
Part 214, 1989. ISBN 0900677023.
External links
- The Mediumship of Indridi Indridason at roswell/seance