ABSTRACT
The concern of this preliminary investigation is an extraordinary increase in the membership of the officially recognized neo-pagan denomination in Iceland, the Ásatrú Association (Ásatrúarfélagið).1 It is suggested that the Icelandic “national narrative” is the variable of interest to explain this increase. The results are discussed in the context of the cognitivist critique of the concept of “culture” (e.g. Pascal Boyer) and Jesper Sørensen’s “immunology of cultural systems.” It is argued that a cognitive account of the salience and relevance of cultural phenomena is insufficient to account for a bias found in the data and that a theoretical account of culturally-based salience and relevance is needed.
