Since the end of the 19th century, Iceland has been more open to new religious ideas than many other European countries. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, religious life in Iceland, still mostly within the Christian establishment, was influenced by the spread of spiritualist beliefs. Theosophy was introduced in Iceland around 1900, and in 1920 the Icelandic Theosophists formally organised as an independent branch of the international Theosophical movement, though within the fold of the Lutheran belief and led by a Lutheran pastor, Séra Jakob Kristinsson.