Christianization of Scandinavia

• 1. Introduction

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  The Christianization of Scandinavia began not with a decree from Rome, but with a monk named Ansgar building two small churches in Birka and Hedeby in the 830s. Those modest structures planted a seed in a region that would spend the next three centuries slowly, fitfully, and sometimes violently transforming its spiritual foundations. What drove Norse kings to trade the old gods for the new faith? How did a religion rooted in Mediterranean soil take hold in the fjords and forests of the north? And why did some corners of Scandinavia remain stubbornly pagan long after the rest of the continent had moved on? The answers range from a man holding a lump of fire-heated iron in his bare hands to a chieftain dragged from his hiding place in a pig sty, from a diplomatic baptism in a German court to a lawspeaker who spent a day and a night in silent meditation before deciding the fate of a nation.

• 2. Ansgar and the Hamburg Mission

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  Willibrord, the Apostle to the Frisians, made the first recorded attempt to bring Christianity to Denmark sometime between 710 and 718. He traveled north from Frisia during the reign of King Ongendus, who was polite but entirely unmoved. The king did allow thirty young men to leave with Willibrord, possibly to be educated and recruited as missionaries, but nothing more came of it.

  A century later, in 826, a political crisis opened a new door. Harald Klak, King of Jutland, was driven from Denmark by Horik I and fled to Emperor Louis I of Germany seeking help. Louis offered Harald the Duchy of Frisia in exchange for abandoning the old gods. Harald agreed, and he, his family, and the four hundred Danes traveling with him were all baptized in Ingelheim am Rhein. The monk Ansgar was assigned to accompany Harald back and oversee the new converts. When Horik I expelled Harald a second time, Ansgar redirected his energies toward Sweden, traveling to Birka in 829. His most significant convert there was Herigar, described as a prefect of the town and a counselor to the Swedish king.

  In 831, the Archdiocese of Hamburg was founded and given responsibility for spreading Christianity across Scandinavia. That institutional footing proved fragile. Horik I sacked Hamburg in 845, and in the same year a pagan uprising in Birka resulted in the martyrdom of a missionary named Nithard and forced Bishop Gautbert to flee. Ansgar returned to Birka in 854 and to Denmark in 860 to rebuild what had been lost. In Denmark he gained the trust of Horik II (Horik I had been murdered in 854) who gave him land in Hedeby for the first Christian chapel. A second church followed a few years later in Ribe, an important trading town on Denmark's west coast, which became the seat of a new diocese in 948 under its first bishop, St. Leofdag, who was murdered that same year while crossing the Ribe River. The mission's grip on the north was always precarious, and as the papacy grew in influence from the pontificate of Pope Gregory VII onward, the Hamburg-Bremen archdiocese's supremacy gradually gave way to a new archbishopric for all of Scandinavia, established at Lund in 1103-04.

• 3. Denmark: Stones, Kings, and Old Spirits

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  King Gorm the Old, known in his lifetime as Gorm the Sleepy, was the first king of all of Denmark. He was described as "hard and heathen", though his wife, Queen Thyra, allowed Christians to live without serious trouble. The double barrow the two shared at Jelling contained both pagan and Christian imagery, including a decorated silver cup. It was their son, Harald Bluetooth, who changed everything.

  Harald had allowed public Christian preaching as early as 935 while still pagan himself. Around 960, his conversion came in a striking way: the Frisian monk Poppo reportedly held a fire-heated lump of iron in his hand without injury. Harald's daughter Gunhilde and his son Sweyn Forkbeard were also baptized. German historical sources record Harald being baptized in the presence of Emperor Otto I, with Sweyn Forkbeard acquiring Otto as his godfather. One practical consequence of the conversion was that Danish kings abandoned the old royal enclosure at Jelling and moved their residence to Roskilde on the island of Zealand.

  Sweyn Forkbeard eventually rebelled against his father. Harald spent lavishly on a great stone at Jelling commemorating his achievements. A traveler told the king he had seen Sweyn drag all of Denmark away from him. Harald left the stone lying in the path. Several battles brought the rebellion to a stalemate, and in 985 Harald was wounded by an arrow and later died in Jomsborg.

  The old spirits did not disappear quickly. Families who farmed the land continued leaving offerings for local spirits, the landvætter. Sacred springs were simply re-consecrated to Christian saints, and their rituals continued much as before. Christian missionaries sometimes used timber from sacred groves to build the very chapels that replaced them. Thor's hammer sign was absorbed into the cross with relatively little friction, because Danish Christians had never worshiped stone or wooden idols the way some of their neighbors did, which meant missionaries could not rely on the dramatic gesture of smashing an idol to prove the superiority of Christ.

  By the early eleventh century, Denmark could be called a Christian country. Canute IV, later St. Canute, was murdered inside St. Albans Church in 1086 after nobles and peasants alike rebelled against his enforcing the tithe to fund new monasteries. His refusal to use the regional assemblies to establish new laws was seen as a foreign imposition, and it cost him his life along with that of his brother Prince Benedict and seventeen other housecarls. His canonization in 1188 is often marked as the moment Christianity truly triumphed in Denmark. When his remains were moved to Odense Cathedral, the entire nation observed a three-day fast. From that moment until 1536, when Denmark became a Lutheran country with the Danish monarch as head of the Folkekirke, the conflict between royal, noble, and ecclesiastical power shaped the country's political life.

• 4. Norway: Force, Conversion, and the Battle of Svolder

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  King Haakon the Good made the first recorded attempts to Christianize Norway in the tenth century. He had been raised in England and brought that Christian background home, but his efforts were deeply unpopular and largely failed. His successor, Harald Greyhide, was also Christian and known for destroying pagan temples, though not for winning hearts.

  Haakon Sigurdsson Jarl then led a deliberate pagan revival, rebuilding temples and restoring old practices. When Harold I of Denmark tried to impose Christianity on him around 975, Haakon broke with Denmark entirely. A Danish invasion force was defeated at the Battle of Hjörungavágr in 986.

  In 995, Olaf Tryggvason became King Olaf I of Norway. His path to Christianity had been unusual: in 986, while raiding, he supposedly met a Christian seer on the Isles of Scilly. The seer foretold that Olaf would be attacked by mutineers on his return to his ships, which proved true. After recovering from his wounds, Olaf was baptized and stopped raiding Christian cities, living for a time in England and Ireland. Back in Norway in 995, he found Haakon Jarl already facing a revolt. He convinced the rebels to accept him as king. Haakon Jarl was betrayed by his own slave and killed while hiding in a pig sty.

  Olaf I used every tool available to convert Norway to Christianity. The kings' sagas credit him with also Christianizing the Faroes, Orkney, Shetland, Iceland, and Greenland. His defeat at the Battle of Svolder in 1000 brought a partial return to paganism under the Jarls of Lade, but the subsequent reign of Saint Olaf stamped out what remained.

  Nicholas Breakspear, who later became Pope Adrian IV, visited Norway from 1152 to 1154 and organized a formal church structure for the country. The papal bull establishing a Norwegian archdiocese at Nidaros is dated the 30th of November 1154. The depth of popular belief remained uneven long after institutional Christianity was established: runic inscriptions from the merchant town of Bergen, dating from the thirteenth century, show little Christian influence, and one of them calls directly on a Valkyrie.

• 5. Sweden: Slow Roots and Sacred Uppsala

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  Ansgar visited Birka in 830 at the invitation of the Swedish king Björn and set up a church, but Swedish interest was minimal. A century later, Unni, Archbishop of Hamburg, made another attempt, also unsuccessful. English missionaries later made progress in Västergötland during the tenth century, and newer archaeological research suggests Christians were already present in Götaland during the ninth century, with Christianity spreading from the southwest toward the north.

  Olof Skötkonung, the first Christian king of Sweden, came to the throne in the 990s but was not strong enough to force Christianity on the pagan cult centered at Uppsala. Instead he negotiated a mutual agreement of toleration and established an episcopal see at Skara in Västergötland, near his own base at Husaby, around 1000. A second see was established at Sigtuna in the 1060s by King Stenkil, as recorded by Adam of Bremen, and was later moved to Gamla Uppsala sometime between 1134 and 1140.

  One of the most violent confrontations in the Christianization of Scandinavia took place in the 1080s between King Inge the Elder and a rival named Blot-Sweyn. Inge attempted to end the traditional pagan sacrifices at Uppsala. Public outrage was strong enough to force him into exile, and his brother-in-law Blot-Sweyn was elected king on the condition that the sacrifices continue. After three years in exile, Inge returned secretly to Sweden in 1087, surrounded Blot-Sweyn's hall at Old Uppsala with his huskarls, set it on fire, and killed the king as he tried to escape. The Hervarar saga says Inge then completed the Christianization of the Swedes, though the Heimskringla suggests he still had to deal with yet another pagan king, Eric of Good Harvests.

  According to historian M. G. Larsson, the back-and-forth between paganism and Christianity in Sweden was not so different from shifts in modern political ideology: when someone challenged ancient practices that were also central to legal processes, newly Christianized Swedes could react strongly in defense of the old ways. Larsson's view is that Inge could not have ruled at all without broad popular support. When Magnus Barefoot of Norway invaded Västergötland, Inge appears to have mustered most of the Swedish leidang, some 3,600 men, and expelled the occupying force. A papal archdiocese for Sweden was established at Uppsala in 1164. Archaeological excavations of burial sites on the island of Lovön, near modern Stockholm, have shown that actual Christianization of the population took at least 150 to 200 years.

• 6. The Faroes and Iceland

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  Sigmundur Brestisson was the first person from the Faroe Islands to convert to Christianity, acting on the decree of Olaf Tryggvason. He initially tried to bring Christianity to the islanders by reading the decree aloud at the Alting in Tórshavn, and was nearly killed by the crowd. He changed approach, arrived with armed men at the residence of the chieftain Tróndur í Gøtu in the middle of the night, and gave him a choice: accept Christianity or face beheading. Tróndur chose Christianity.

  In 1005, Tróndur í Gøtu attacked Sigmundur at night at his yard on Skúvoy. Sigmundur escaped by swimming to Sandvík on Suðuroy, reaching shore at a place called Sigmundargjógv, where a local farmer killed the exhausted Sigmundur and stole his golden arm ring.

  In Iceland, Irish monks known as Papar are said to have been present before Norse settlement in the ninth century. Following King Olaf I's seizure of Icelandic hostages, tension between Christian and pagan factions grew through the tenth century. The crisis was resolved by a single decision at the Althing in 1000 AD. The arbitration was given to Þorgeir Ljósvetningagoði, the leader of the pagan faction. After a day and a night of meditation, he ruled that the country would convert to Christianity as a whole, while private pagan worship would continue to be tolerated. No blood was shed, and Iceland became Christian by the vote of its own assembly.

• 7. Why Kings Converted

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  Historian Anders Winroth has argued that Christianity was not forced on Scandinavians by foreign powers or foreign missionaries, but was willfully adopted by Scandinavian kings who saw it as politically useful. The cases support that reading. Harald Bluetooth converted partly to preserve his independence from the Germans, who posed a greater threat at the time than the Franks had previously been. The missionary bishops who came with the faith were literate men, and those who had experience in royal government in Germany or England were potentially valuable political advisors.

  There were also material incentives. Pagan kings were drawn to the visible wealth of Christian Europe, and conversion could open doors to that wealth. Some converts appear to have wanted nothing more than the fine white baptismal garment handed out by Frankish nobles, who served as their sponsors. Harald Bluetooth's baptism in the presence of Emperor Otto I, with Otto serving as Sweyn Forkbeard's godfather, was as much a political alliance as a spiritual commitment.

  Mass emigration played a role that formal missions did not always achieve. Thousands of Danes settled in east-central England and northern France during the Viking age, mixing with local Christian populations. Once part of a Danish clan converted, the rest of the family's attitude toward Christianity often softened on its own. Bringing Christian slaves or wives back from raids introduced ordinary Danes to Christians for perhaps the first time, not through preaching, but through daily life. The Sámi of Norway and Sweden remained pagan long after their neighbors converted, and some were not Christianized until the eighteenth century, more than eight hundred years after Ansgar built his first church in Birka.