Dear Friends,
Ida and I just got home from a trip where we had been offered a stay at a mountain resort near Mt. Hekla, the most active volcano in Iceland. I did not realize that some of my own ancestors lived on this farm and also Snorri Sturluson, the most famous writer and historian of Northern Europe during the Middle Ages.
Our first stop on the way home was at the local country school, way out in the country with no town in the vicinity. In find the librarian is a young mother from Switzerland. She and her Icelandic husband are sheep farmers. The door was open and she did not mind me coming in although the library should have closed 45 minutes ago. As soon as I had told her of my interests, just at the snap of a finger she had found a list of my ancestors in that community during the past 4 centuries. Learning how to count their sheep teaches them other things as well!
We drive on taking pictures of mountains, glaciers, volcanoes, water falls and the spring foliage when suddenly snow whitens the ground for a moment. We are in the arctic region. Soon we get to our own local library. Today there is a librarian I have never seen before. Not our neighbor but an oriental lady. I was amazed how interested and helpful she was. As soon as she sees me writing "Celtic Christianity" on the library computer she exhibits the greatest smile.
- I have just attended a course in that area, she exclaims. And there is no end to the information she is able to supply, starting out by giving me the name of her teacher, a historian, and an archaeologist, and a writer.
To begin with it has now been established that 63% of the initial female inhabitants of Iceland were Celtic women. This new discovery is generating a new interest in studying the life and religion of the early Celts, people who accepted the basic Christianity of the Apostles, migrating through southern Europe to the north penetrating Ireland and probably northern Scotland.
Now that I have links to much material I will be doing quite a bit of research.
What interests certain scholars in particular now is how the Celts were forced to abandon keeping the Sabbath by the Roman Catholics who got to Ireland later on.
There are also strong indications the Celts still believed the words of the Apostle that there is no distinction between male and female and made this real in their Christianity, permitting women to preach. At least one Ph. D. scholar, who is a frequent speaker at the most conservative gatherings of Adventist in Northern Europe, believes they ordained women for the ministry until the Roman Catholics prevented this along with introducing Sunday worship.
More on this later.