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I usually share descriptions of the churches I visit with Café readers, but sixteen days in Scotland, Iceland, and the Netherlands did not present many opportunities to see Roman Catholic Churches. We had hoped to attend Mass in Amsterdam before our ship set cruise, but inclement weather cost us that opportunity; you don’t want to board your ship soaking and shivering.
Our voyage called for stops in Scotland coming and going, with a week in Iceland in between. Thus, our first visit to a Roman Catholic Church was on the Island of Lamb Holm, in the Orkney Islands chain. The edifice is known as the “Italian Chapel” because of its unusual history. The chapel/church was built during World War II by Italian prisoners of war, who were put to work by the Allies building fortifications again possible invasion from the north by Hitler’s armies. Given that the church’s construction was undertaken by volunteers with limited material, it is a very worthy site of worship. I asked a guide if the church was still in use and was told that it was packed every Sunday for the single Mass. Wikipedia has more detailed history and several photos. During our visit day to Edinburgh, Scotland—the rainstorm that thoroughly soaked us—we did manage to visit St. Giles Cathedral. St. Giles was originally a Roman Catholic cathedral. However, its fiery priest-pastor John Knox, converted to the Protestant reform movement of the 1500’s, early Presbyterianism, and evidently the crown and the congregation went along. Knox is a pivotal figure in Reformation history, including the process of the British Empire adapting to established religion. Britannica has an excellent summary of his life, and I plan to take a new biography of Knox to read in Ireland. My visit to St. Giles impressed upon me the challenge of Protestant reformers with their message of simplicity and biblical worship attempting to conduct worship in Catholic edifices with medieval art and grandeur. I have a photo of St. Giles’ pulpit, which illustrates the change, I think. Iceland is a story unto itself. The size of Kentucky, Iceland has seven Catholic Churches in the country. This is not surprising, as Catholics make up 3% of the country’s population. The archdiocese has a colorful webpage. I did several AI searches on religious distribution in Iceland; one entry stated: “Iceland is predominantly Lutheran Christian, with growing secularism and a revival of Norse paganism.” The general report says that church attendance is not a major priority. Something of a late bloomer in terms of social and economic establishment in the European family of nations, Iceland has a different feel. Climate and geography may have something to do with that. Straddling the Arctic Circle and given the limited population—700,000 in the entire country—my guess is that there is a hardy individualism, possibly akin to the American settlers past the Mississippi. Given that we were on a cruise ship making multiple stops and taking multiple tours, it was hard to do much face-to-face conversation, though Icelanders have marvelous mastery of the English language. On our return home we were successful in hunting down a functioning Catholic parish in Lerwick, Scotland. We had found St. Olaf’s in a printed guide, and we walked a bit from the busy shopping district only to discover that, as in the United States, many churches are closed. But a kindly pedestrian told us to proceed around to St. Margaret’s Church, which was open and provided us some time for Eucharistic Adoration. I will put several photos on Facebook; Linked In only accepts six, so I will see what I can do. The church’s web page notes that there is coffee and tea for Sunday worshippers [my kind of church] and an effort is made to provide Mass several times per week. As it turned out, we were there for the Feast of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and Mass was scheduled for 5 PM, but our cruise ship was leaving at 4. Next week we head to Ireland, beginning with two weeks in Galway. I was there in 2024, and I would bet that there are more Catholic churches in Galway than in the entire country of Iceland. As we are lodging, not sailing, there is no excuse for me to skip frequent daily Mass, except on excursion days we have booked. If my memory of the history of Ireland is correct, one of the giants of the Irish hierarchy in the latter 1800’s was Cardinal Paul Cullen. An energetic leader, I seem to remember a quote attributed to him: “A Catholic church within three miles of every Catholic Irishman.” When I travel through Ireland, it really feels that way. Of course, the Café will publish periodically during this next trip on Facebook and Linked In.
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I had hoped to write more about my summer vacation [part one] during the actual trip to Iceland and Scotland while on the scene, so to speak, but this experience in the far north taught me, among other things, that I am not a kid anymore. It takes me longer to digest one intriguing experience after another, and I go to bed earlier. Age wise, I am just behind President Trump who turned 80 yesterday. I have no idea what he feels about ageing, though The New York Times has an interesting piece suggesting that talk of age and death makes him uncomfortable. Tucker Carlson opines that the proposed victory arch for Washington is the President’s battle against dying and being forgotten. I have watched enough HGTV restoration stories to know that no one will want my detritus when I die, including the cap I bought twenty-four hours ago in the Amsterdam Airport.
We spent two days in Amsterdam before launching forth on the Celebrity Eclipse for points north, very north, and returning to Amsterdam to fly home through Boston yesterday [Sunday]. I have a certificate from our ship’s captain awarding me for crossing the Arctic Circle. [I don’t think I’ll leave that to my posterity, either.] Our destinations were Scotland and Iceland. As a kid, I had a globe of the world, and I imagined Iceland as a snowy landscape with polar bears. In fact, Iceland has no large mammals. Its weather makes tree survival minimal, and its weather and geography—mountainous in places, with rivers and thermal bubbling pools—is not conducive for large mammals to survive in the wild. Cows and sheep are herded and cultivated. Our tour guide on one trip also worked as a school bus driver and rancher, no easy routine when one considers that daylight lasts two to four hours per day through the winter at best. We, on the other hand, visited Iceland when the sun was up for all but 90 minutes of a twenty-four-hour day. I should reword that to say there is continuous daylight, not continuous sunshine. You are more likely to get windburned than sunburned. At certain of the country’s national parks the lasting tourist memory is of an olfactory nature: intense bubbling pits of sulfur. You probably know what that smells like…particularly if you went to an all-boys’ high school. I quietly remarked to our guide that I was going to need a lot of Old Spice before presenting myself in the ship’s dining room that night. The capital of Iceland is Reykjavik, a city about the size of Pittsburgh at 425,000 when counting its expanding suburbs. The entire country’s population is under 700,000. Reykjavik is a modern city surrounding an old, quaint neighborhood. It possesses universities and cultivates the arts. Our time was somewhat limited by the ship’s schedule; we spent an entire day exploring natural wonders within two hours of the city. The next day we completed a walking tour of the city itself, climaxed by a visit to the country’s most famous church, the Lutheran Cathedral Hallgrímskirkja, completed in 1986. The Roman Catholic Cathedral is Christ the King; the Diocese of Reykjavik encompasses the entire country. Catholics number 3% of the country’s population. We did not have an opportunity to visit any Catholic church in Iceland, there being only seven. The web page of the Diocese is quite interesting; it includes a map of all seven churches spread around the country. I was curious about immigration and the country’s policies and sentiments. Evidently the government is concerned with a falloff in applications: 3,000 in 2024, 1,500 in 2025. Apparently, there are efforts underway to assist immigrants in adjusting to Iceland’s life and community services. Most applications come from Ukraine, Venezuela, Palestine, Nigeria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. After we left Iceland, I learned that the United States is remembered fondly in Icelandic history. Given its vulnerable location, Iceland declared itself neutral during World War II. In 1940 a combined force of British and American armies “invaded” Iceland, which was delighted to see them and assisted in their settlement. The presence of these allied soldiers provided a boost to the nation’s economy, helping Iceland recover from the Depression and enter the postwar Western economy. The United States built what would become the nation’s hub for regional and international air traffic, Keflavík International Airport. |
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June 2026
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