My intention here is to examine two historical events that took place in Iceland about a century apart, both of which provoked a great deal of popular interest. The first is the influence of spiritualismi that arrived on the island at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and that never ceased to increase throughout the development of the independence movement that would free Iceland from the Danish Crown between 1918 and 1944. The second event, closer to us, marks the end of the 1990s, and is still unfolding today. It has to do with the place that research on human genome took in this country, and the craze it generated.