Cassandra Voices

Tag: mythology

  • Nordic Mythology & Iceland’s Sustainable Transformation

    Renewable energy transitions have increasingly been recognised not only as technological and environmental imperatives but also as drivers of community resilience, socio-economic innovation, and energy security. In the Nordic region, ambitious renewable energy policies and high shares of renewables in energy consumption reflect a shared commitment to sustainability that encompasses social participation, democratic engagement, and community-level agency (Nordic Energy Research, 2023). The Nordic energy tradition, where energy systems are deeply intertwined with the social and economic fabric of society, resonates with themes from the region’s oldest cultural narratives.

    Norse myth repeatedly ties elemental forces to human life and transformation. In the Poetic Edda, the prophecy of Ragnarök depicts fire as both destructive and transformative: “Hot you are, and rather too fierce… the fire scorches the fur” (Grímnismál, stanza 57; Bellows, 1936). Beyond mere destruction, the myth narrates the rebirth of the world, where a new earth rises green from the waves and life begins anew (Völuspá, stanzas 59–62). This cycle of destruction and renewal provides a compelling metaphor for contemporary energy transitions: they are not only technical shifts but societal transformations that reshape communities, economies, and regional identities (Norsetraditionschurch.org, 2024).

    The Norse concept of the Three Norns – Urðr, Verðandi, and Skuld – who weave the threads of past, present, and future can inspire the context of energy planning, they serve as a symbolic reminder that decision-making must consider historical legacies (Urðr), current conditions and needs (Verðandi), and future consequences (Skuld). This framing underscores that sustainable energy transitions are not only about technological deployment but about long-term societal foresight, learning from experience, and anticipating intergenerational impacts.

    Within this broader Nordic and mythological context, Iceland’s renewable energy experience exemplifies how energy-based enterprises can act as agents of both environmental sustainability and inclusive socio-economic development, reflecting the kind of long-term, multi-stakeholder foresight highlighted by Mukhopadhyay and Ianole (2018). The organisational strategies and governance mechanisms observed in Icelandic initiatives reflect wider regional patterns of collaborative planning, community-centred engagement, and long-term resilience building. Together, the insights are central to understanding how energy systems can function as mechanisms of sustainable transformation and shared prosperity.

    Turf houses have been constructed since Iceland was settled in the 9th century.

    Linking Myth to Practice: Iceland’s Energy Enterprises

    Iceland’s renewable energy sector exemplifies the ‘destruction > transformation > renewal’ paradigm. From the early, state-led hydropower and high-temperature geothermal projects to today’s community-integrated industrial strategic enterprises, energy has served as a tool for economic revitalisation, social equity, and environmental stewardship. The foresight suggested by the Three Norms is evident in multi-generational planning, which considers historical reliance on fossil fuels (Urðr), present community and industry needs (Verðandi), and future sustainability and climate obligations (Skuld). Iceland’s energy-based enterprises demonstrate that technological innovation must go hand-in-hand with social licence, governance structures, and community integration to achieve long-term success.

    Case 1 – Baseload Power Iceland: Decentralised Geothermal for Local Development

    Baseload Power Iceland focuses on small- to mid-scale geothermal plants designed to tap underutilised low and medium-temperature resources. Unlike large-scale national utilities, Baseload develops modular and flexible plants situated close to local demand centers. A prominent example is the Kópsvatn geothermal plant, which generates both electricity and heat for surrounding communities. The enterprise’s community-integrated approach ensures partnerships with municipalities, landowners, and local utilities, creating strong stakeholder alignment and minimising opposition.

    Socio-economic impacts are wide-ranging: the project generates local employment across drilling, construction, and ongoing maintenance; it provides affordable energy access for households, farms, and small businesses, reducing heating and electricity costs; and it supports productive energy use in sectors such as greenhouses, aquaculture, and fish-drying facilities, securing local food security and small business resilience.

    By reducing reliance on fossil fuels, the initiative also strengthens household economics and insulates communities from global energy price shocks. Baseload’s model strongly contributes to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 8 (Decent Work and Economic Growth), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities) by embedding energy provision within social, economic, and ecological frameworks. The community governance structures enhance local agency, demonstrating how small-scale renewable initiatives can empower residents, encourage participatory decision-making, and stimulate multi-sectoral growth. Baseload thus offers a replicable blueprint for integrating energy entrepreneurship with social and environmental objectives in other geothermally active regions (Baseload Power Iceland, 2024).

    Case 2 – Fjarðarorka: Wind-to-Green Ammonia for Regional Industrial Transformation

    Fjarðarorka is spearheading one of Iceland’s largest renewable industrial initiatives, combining a 350 MW onshore wind farm in Fljótsdalshreppur with a green ammonia production facility projected to produce 220,000 tonnes annually. The ammonia targets maritime decarbonisation while positioning East Iceland as a hub in the global green fuel economy. The project carries significant regional development implications: East Iceland has historically faced economic marginalisation and population decline, and the Fjarðarorka initiative offers a pathway toward reversing these trends. The project supports high-skill employment in construction, operations, logistics, and chemical processing; drives infrastructure improvements, including roads, grid capacity, and data systems, which have spillover benefits across other sectors; and stimulates diversification in local industry.

    The Orkugarður Austurland platform, which engages landowners, municipalities, and businesses in planning and benefit-sharing, exemplifies community-centered governance and anticipatory planning. Environmental and social sustainability are central: the project is expected to avoid approximately 500,000 tons of CO₂ emissions annually, supporting Iceland’s climate commitments. These outcomes align with SDG 9 (Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure) and SDG 13 (Climate Action), illustrating how large-scale, export-oriented renewable energy projects can simultaneously drive regional equity, stimulate regional economy boost, and maintain environmental sustainability (Fjarðarorka, 2024; Daily Northern, 2024).

    Case 3 – Geothermal District Heating System: Public Infrastructure and Socio-Economic Equity

    Iceland’s geothermal district heating system provides energy to over 90% of households, representing one of the world’s most advanced examples of public energy infrastructure. Its socio-economic benefits are long-term and multi-dimensional. The system provides affordable energy access, dramatically reducing household heating costs and enhancing quality of life. Macroeconomic resilience is also strengthened, with estimated contributions of 7% of GDP through fuel import savings and support for energy-intensive sectors such as greenhouses, tourism, aquaculture, and fish processing (Atlantic Council, 2022).

    Social equity is embedded, as coverage spans income levels and geographies, while public ownership and regulatory oversight ensure that clean energy benefits are widely shared. These outcomes contribute directly to SDG 7 (Affordable and Clean Energy), SDG 10 (Reduced Inequalities), and SDG 11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities). The system exemplifies anticipatory planning consistent with the foresight symbolised by the Three Norns: past experience (Urðr) informs present operation (Verðandi), while future sustainability (Skuld) is safeguarded through careful governance and long-term investment. Iceland’s geothermal district heating demonstrates how public infrastructure can simultaneously promote community wellbeing, industrial competitiveness, and sustainable energy transition.

    Table 1: Organisational Approach, Community Impact, and SDG Relevance of Icelandic Energy-Based Enterprises

    Enterprise / Project Organisational Approach & Strategy Key Community & Socio-Economic Impacts Relevant SDGs
    Baseload Power Iceland Modular, decentralised, community-integrated; partnerships with municipalities and cooperatives Local job creation; affordable energy; support for productive uses (greenhouses, aquaculture); regional economic diversification 7, 8, 11
    Fjarðarorka Wind-to-Ammonia Large-scale, export-oriented; multi-stakeholder governance; industrial transformation focus High-skilled employment; regional infrastructure; stakeholder participation; regional economic revitalisation 7, 8, 9, 13
    National Geothermal District Heating Publicly owned; long-term planning; robust governance; operational efficiency Affordable universal energy; industrial co-benefits; macroeconomic savings; social equity; population retention 7, 8, 11

     

    Gullfoss, an iconic waterfall of Iceland.

    Takeaways… Cross-cutting Policy and Business Insights

    The Icelandic experience demonstrates that decentralised and community-integrated energy systems, such as those pioneered by Baseload Power Iceland, can empower local economies by providing reliable, affordable, and clean energy backed by strong social license to operate. Embedding projects within community priorities and governance structures enhances resilience, encourages local stakeholder engagement, and aligns long-term economic development with sustainability objectives. For policymakers, this underscores the importance of regulatory frameworks that not only enable smaller-scale projects but also incentivise partnerships between public authorities, private enterprises, and local communities. For business leaders, the lesson is clear: energy investments are more sustainable and viable when they are socially embedded, responsive to community needs, and designed to generate local value alongside financial returns.

    Large-scale, export-oriented renewable projects, exemplified by Fjarðarorka’s wind-to-green-ammonia initiative, highlight the strategic potential of renewables to drive regional industrial transformation. By stimulating diversification in historically mono-industrial areas and generating high-skilled employment, such projects can reverse patterns of outmigration and economic stagnation. Their success, however, depends on transparent stakeholder engagement, governance mechanisms that ensure equitable benefit sharing, and careful environmental stewardship. For business leaders, these projects illustrate that commercial competitiveness increasingly requires balancing economic ambition with social and environmental accountability. Policymakers, in turn, are reminded of the need for frameworks that integrate industrial, energy, and regional policy, enabling innovation without compromising equity or environmental protection.

    The geothermal district heating network further reinforces the critical role of sustained public investment in achieving equitable, inclusive, and resilient energy systems. By providing near-universal access to low-cost heat, the system has stabilised household expenditures, supported energy-intensive industries, and reduced dependence on imported fossil fuels. The macroeconomic benefits are substantial, but equally important are the social gains, including improved energy security and reduced exposure to energy poverty in rural and urban communities alike. For businesses, reliable, low-cost energy inputs facilitate operational planning, encourage competitiveness, and encourage innovation. For policymakers, the Icelandic experience signals the value of maintaining public oversight or strong regulatory safeguards for critical infrastructure, ensuring that energy transitions advance both economic and social objectives.

    A cross-cutting lesson across all examples is the imperative of multi-stakeholder governance. The Icelandic model shows that energy transitions are as much socio-political undertakings as technical or economic ones, requiring inclusive institutional arrangements that integrate energy planning with land use, regional development, and community priorities. Platforms that bring together communities, governments, investors, and academia not only enhance legitimacy but also improve project outcomes by anticipating and mitigating potential conflicts. For both business leaders and policymakers, the emphasis is on designing systems where commercial ambition, social license, and sustainable development objectives are mutually reinforcing rather than in tension.

    Conclusion

    Iceland’s energy-based enterprises exemplify how clean energy can be a lever for both economic and social development, balancing technological innovation with community empowerment and sustainability. From small-scale, community-embedded geothermal projects to large industrial wind-to-ammonia initiatives and long-standing public heating systems, the country demonstrates that energy transitions are not only technical but deeply social and economic endeavours.

    By linking these practical examples to Nordic mythic narratives, the analysis highlights the importance of foresight, resilience, and intergenerational thinking in energy planning. The cycle of Ragnarök ‘destruction > transformation > renewal’ together with the guidance of the Three Norms, emphasizes how past experience, present action, and future consequences must be integrated to achieve socially, economically, and environmentally resilient energy strategies. Iceland’s approach thus offers a practical blueprint for designing energy systems that are technically sound, socially inclusive, and economically transformative, with lessons extending well beyond the Nordic context.

    Feature Image: Francesca Ungaro

    References

    Atlantic Council, 2022. A geothermal leader: The case of Iceland. [online] Available at: https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/energysource/a-geothermal-leader-the-case-of-iceland [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Baseload Power Iceland, 2024. Projects & community energy. [online] Available at: https://www.baseloadpower.is [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Bellows, H.A. (Trans.), 1936. The Poetic Edda. New York: American-Scandinavian Foundation.

    Daily Northern, 2024. Fjarðarorka plans large wind farm in Fljótsdal to reduce emissions from Iceland’s fishing fleet. [online] Available at: https://www.dailynorthern.com [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Fjarðarorka, 2024. Wind-to-Ammonia Project Overview. [online] Available at: https://fjardarorka.is/en [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Larrington, C., 1999. The Poetic Edda. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Mukhopadhyay, B. & Ianole, R., 2021. Community level impact of solar entrepreneurs in rural Odisha, India: the rise of women led solar energy‑based enterprises. International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 42(4), pp.472–503. [online] Available at: http://www.inderscience.com/link.php?id=114240 [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Nordic Energy Research, 2023. Nordic energy statistics 2023: Renewable transition and societal impacts. Oslo: Nordic Energy Research. [online] Available at: https://www.nordicenergy.org [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    Norsetraditionschurch.org, 2024. Ragnarök: The fate of the gods in Völuspá. [online] Available at: https://www.norsetraditionschurch.org/post/ragnar%C3%B6k-the-fate-of-the-gods-in-v%C3%B6lusp%C3%A1 [Accessed 17 March 2026].

    ThinkGeoEnergy, 2021. GeoENVI: The many economic benefits Iceland got from using geothermal energy. [online] Available at: https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com [Accessed 17 March 2026].

  • The Mythology of Blood

    In this second article Lorcan Mac Mathuna discusses his An Bhuatais & The Meaning of Life a book and CD collection of contemplative songs and essays.

    The past is a foreign country, they do things differently there.
    L.P. Hartley

    The earliest written accounts of war portray a merciless and vicarious world where the deeds of men are steered by the caprice of malicious gods, and the deeds of warriors are frequently elevated to the plane of the gods. Indeed one of the first historical accounts of war, the battle of Megiddo 1479 BC, portrays the Pharaoh, Thutmose III, as a sort of indestructible God figure.

    The deific depiction of the ‘hero’ is similarly featured in the mythological portrayals of conflict in the Celtic epic of The Táin and the Trojan epics of the Greeks. The extraordinary feats of CúChullain and Achilles raise the archetype of war to the plane of the supernatural.

    The Greeks, under the bloodthirsty warlord, Agamemnon, despoil the plains of Troy and relish the viscera of indiscriminate slaughter. All the while the gods entwine fate and death in a mythological fabric.

    The Táin, an Irish epic set in the time of Christ, has the same archetypical representation of the supernatural personality of death and slaughter that the Trojan epic portrays, including a vain and capricious God: the Morrigan.

    The 12th Century accounts of The Battle of Clontarf (track 8) again represents the battlefield encounter with mortality as a supernatural narrative containing a mythological manifestation, or personification, of Death.

    Excerpt from Njáls saga in the Möðruvallabók (AM 132 folio 13r) circa 1350

    An intriguing metaphor of death is given in an Icelandic account of Clontarf, in Njáls saga. It describes a scene of Valkyries meeting in a cottage to weave the fate of the champions of the battle with a warp and weft of the entrails of the fallen. This is witnessed by a farmer named Dörruðr who describes the scene:

    “Men’s heads were the weights, but men’s entrails were the warp and weft, a sword was the shuttle, and the reels were arrows.”

    In the Gaelic account, ‘The Badb’ [baw -v] (the Raven of Death) hovers over the battle. Into this visceral arena, demons and spectres cram, tearing at the warriors, while The Badb decides which souls to pluck from the slaughter.

    This representation of a supernatural fate directed by the hands of capricious gods is the mythological embodiment of violence – what some psychologists have termed ‘the death instinct’.

    It is the opposite of reason. It is an attempt to feed our imaginative understanding, and an attempt to give an essentialist grasp of the cruelty of nature. It stipulates that man and nature are entwined, and that man is therefore slave to unpredictable nature.

    The ‘heroic’ mode of being in these epic poems has been described conversely as role fulfilment, and as an assertion of will. The latter is encapsulated by Nietzsche as an individual existence that struggles toward the ‘Overman’. Nietzsche represented this in the extraordinary scene in Thus Spoke Zarathustra where the acrobat walks between buildings on a tightrope.

    Friedrich Nietzsche

    In, Nietzsche, and the Myth of the Hero, Nikos Kazantzakis states:

    it is the process that makes the hero – the adventurous space between his departure and his return. He stands firmly only on the towers, but what defines him as a ‘skilful’ or a ‘clumsy’ acrobat is the walk. The ‘fabulous forces’ that this Nietzschean hero must encounter are the “spirit of gravity,” the ‘nausea,’ and the figure of the ‘jester’.

    The role of the jester is essential in this heroic model.’ The acrobat, by living outside of the constraints of history; by transcending through his heroic struggle in the uncertain space between the buildings, is given a greater horizon and an insight that is not open to the watchers in the square. By assuming the heroic role he ascends to the place of the ‘Overman’. The same is true of the ‘Hero’ in the epic poems of the Táin and the Trojan Epic. It is not so much that they transcend linear history, but that they transcend an archetype that is ever present in a parallel view of history. In this view, the past, the present, the future, are simultaneous.

    In the ‘heroic’ society, death is a form of defeat but not necessarily so. The ceremonies of burial bridge between the role of the hero and the immortal afterlife; whilst a desecrated corpse is a supernatural death. Sophocles took this idea and created the tragedy of Antigone where King Creon punishes the dead Polyneices by prohibiting his burial. In doing so he is murdering the corpse of the hero. The consequence of this are societal-shattering, as were the new ideas of philosophy for the ancient Greeks.

    In the ancient Homeric world, as in the Celtic heroic world described in The Táin, the slave is symbolically dead, because the Slave cannot take the heroic course of action (this notion was carried through to the first conceptions of democracy in ancient Athens where only citizens could take part in civic life).

    In this world-view, to supplicate oneself is death in the same sense, as it is a relinquishing of the role of the warrior. There is an intriguing paradox told in The Iliad after Achilles desecrates the corpse of Hector by dragging it behind his chariot on the plains below the city wall. Priam, the king of Troy and father to Hector, supplicates himself before Achilles so that he may tend to the corpse of Hector.

    The role of Hector as a heroic character is at stake here. If he is accorded the funerary rights of the heroic, his heroism remains symbolically alive, whereas the desecration of his corpse is the death of his heroic character. We see the remnants of this psychology in honour cultures.

    Priam, Hector’s aged father, gives up his own heroic life by becoming a supplicant. Priam dies, so that Hector lives.

    Priam killed by Neoptolemus, detail of an Attic black-figure amphora, ca. 520–510 BC

    But, if we were to look at this episode through Christian eyes we would say that Priam has gained eternal life by relinquishing his public role as king, for that of grieving parent. This is a new concept of virtue, where virtuous action is not defined by role, but is universal and objective.

    In the heroic poem a virtue is a quality which enables a person to act in their well-defined social role: the warrior king, for instance. The Homeric idea of virtue can only be determined after we know the roles expected of the character. The concept of what anyone filling that role ought to do is a-priori to what is virtuous.

    In Njáls saga – the Icelandic account of the Battle of Clontarf – we are given another alternative on the conception of virtue and the way to act in the world.

    During the rout of the Viking host, one of their warriors, Thorstein Hallsson, stopped running and tied up his shoe-thong. An Irish warrior, Kerthjalfad, asked him why he was not running.

    “Because,” said Thorstein, “I cannot reach home tonight, for my home is out in Iceland.”

    This was seen as a very human assessment of the facts, and so Kerthjalfad spared his life.

    It’s interesting that as the modern era of reason progressed, along with the ability to control our conditions of living, the mythologising of death and the representation and acceptance of cruelty has declined. It seems that the death instinct so often remarked upon, is not an innate part of the psychology of man. The Gods in these ‘heroic’ stories are projections of deep social adaptations of their age.

    Compare this search for a mythological “will to power” with Solzhenitsyn’s search for truth and what he termed the dividing line between good and evil “that runs through every human heart”. Solzhenitsyn clarifies something revolutionary, which was earlier echoed by St. Paul in his letter to the Romans: That hell is created within the corrupted soul.

    Hell is the perversion of human nature through the unfettered feeding of the darkest of human propensities. The Russian cartoonist Danzig Baldaev dealt with his immersion in hell by recording the casual sadism he witnessed daily as a gulag camp guard.

    Image from Danzig Baldaev’s Drawings from the Gulag.

    Danzig had to deal with two terrors: The sadism of his fellow guards, which was inflamed by a malevolent system corrupted to its very core by the philosophy of Marx. And secondly; his complicity within this network of evil.

    Danzig dared not make the slightest protest against the evil in which he was immersed, because to do so would have placed him within the ranks of the victims. One way to survive was to live a demoralizing lie as Danzig did.

    Danzig fought the lie by recording his images in coded hieroglyphs that only he could understand. He redid his drawings with all their horrific realism when the danger of discovery abated after the death of Stalin.

    His drawings from the Gulags are testimony to observations made by both John Paul  Sartre and C.S. Lewis. While Sartre said that “hell is other people”, Lewis more astutely observed that  “the door of hell is locked from the inside.

    What all these have discovered is that evil is separated from good by a philosophical perversion. There is nothing irrational in going from the acceptance of nihilism to becoming a guard of the gulag. It’s the fundamental values we hold that determine the morphospace of possible social relationships and systems. Solzhenitsyn went further than Danzig in his exploration of the ethics of deception. He determined that the only way to combat untruth was to live truthfully. His greatest achievement, The Gulag Archipelago, is a monumental testimony to his realisation.

    The evolved ethical sense in the age of Gods and Heroes is different to that in the modern age of reason. What is adjudged ‘good’ in the heroic age – the act of slaughter in battle for instance – has no common fundamental with the modern ethic of ‘good’; where moral pre-eminence is given to an empirical view of the world. These fundamental psychosocial understandings of the correct way to behave – for which we sometimes use the intangible proxy of ‘good’ – shift with philosophical revolutions. This shifting of the perspective is a constant feature. It is hard to say that the perspective of the age is the definitive and final destination. The postmodern ontological view has shifted the view of ‘good’ away from empiricism and reason, and may yet have catastrophically regressive effects. One thing for sure is that we have not reached “the end of history.”

    Band Photography | Musicians | | Holst Photography Ireland

    An Bhuatais & The Meaning of Life is available through:

    Website:
    www.lorcanmacmathuna.com

    Bandcamp:
    https://lorcanmacmathuna.bandcamp.com/album/an-bhuatais-the-meaning-of-life

    Spotify:
    https://open.spotify.com/album/4ughUTW4jIawqVLiY8D5am?si=p6hJeIqsS0yr_3HgPBv2Kw

    Feature Image: William Blake