Dearly loved
friends,
With eager hearts we
hail the convocation of this first of the twin Arctic Conferences inaugurating
the series of eight International Bahá'í Conferences to be held during the
middle part of the Five Year Plan. The northern regions of the world were alluded
to by Bahá'u'lláh in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, the Mother Book of this Revelation.
Their names were recorded in the Tablets of the Divine Plan by the pen of
'Abdu'l-Bahá, Who, in one of His other Tablets, supplicated God to "raise
up sanctified, pure and spiritual souls in the countries of the West and the
territories of the North, and make them signs of His guidance, ensigns of the
Concourse on High and angels of the Abha Kingdom." These lands received
the constant attention of Shoghi Effendi, who repeatedly urged the friends to
carry the Faith to their uttermost inhabited areas, and who joyfully announced
every advance of the Bahá'ís that established a centre closer to the North
Pole.
Already touched by
the morning light of God's Cause by the nineteen-twenties, the lands of the
North were blessed by visits from the indomitable Martha Root, whose love
warmed and encouraged the hearts of the handful of believers then labouring in
a few scattered centres in Scandinavia and illumined the soul of Holmfridur Arnadottir, Iceland's first Bahá'í. Bursting into blossom under the impact of
the rays of the second Seven Year Plan, these communities received a major
impetus from the Ten Year Crusade, of which the European campaign was launched
at the never-to-be-forgotten conference in Stockholm in 1953, and which
established centres as far north as Thule in Greenland and Sassen in the
islands of Spitzbergen. Yet another stage of growth was reached with the Nine
Year Plan and the convocation of the North Atlantic Conference in Reykjavik,
which marked the opening of a new phase in the collaboration between the
northern communities on both sides of that ocean.
