Page 4431 – Christianity Today (2025)

What’s a Viking?

To the Franks, they were Northmen or Danes (no matter if they were from Denmark or not). The English called them Danes and heathens. To the Irish, they were pagans. Eastern Europe called them the Rus. But the Norse term is the one that stuck: Vikings. The name probably came from the Norse word vik, meaning “bay” or “creek,” or from the Vik area, the body of water now called Skagerrak, which sits between Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In any case, it probably first referred only to the raiders (víkingr means pirate) and was later applied to Scandinavians as a whole between the time of the Lindesfarne raid (793) and the Battle of Hastings (1066).

Thank the gods it’s Frigg’s day.

Though Vikings have a reputation for hit-and-run raiding, Vikings actually settled down and influenced European culture long after the fires of invasion burned out. For example, many English words have roots in Scandinavian speech: take, window, husband, sky, anger, low, scant, loose, ugly, wrong, happy, thrive, ill, die, beer, anchor. … The most acute example is our days of the week. Originally the Romans named days for the seven most important celestial bodies (sun, moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn). The Anglo-Saxons inserted the names of some Norse deities, by which we now name Tuesday through Friday: the war god Tiw (Old English for Tyr), Wodin (Odin), Thor, and fertility goddess Frigg.

Equal-opportunity pagans.

Around the sixth or seventh century, Buddha statuettes were made in north India. As the Viking era came to a close, a traveler brought it to the trading island of Helgö, Sweden (a Celtic bishop’s crozier was also found nearby). Scholars believe the statue may have been used as an amulet since it was discovered with a leather strap around its neck. Such lucky charms were apparently popular among Vikings, who were eager to incorporate other religious symbols to make them luckier. Icelandic amulets, made in the 900s, incorporates the Christian cross neatly into the hammer of Thor. The earliest known Scandinavian crucifix, found in Birka, Sweden, also dates from the 900s.

The truth about Hagar’s helmet.

Though it may not come as a shock that Hagar the Horrible isn’t historically accurate, he reinforces the most widespread myth about the Vikings: they had horns on their helmets. Actually, Vikings weren’t depicted with horned or winged helmets until the 1800s. The only examples of any helmet ornaments is from the late Bronze Age (800-400 B.C.), and these are bird beaks of bronze, not anything like cattle horns.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

This issue, more than any other we’ve published, raises the awkward matter of forced conversions—”Be Christian or die.” There’s no sense in pretending this was an exceptional missionary tactic; for many centuries, it was the method of choice among Christian rulers and missionaries. The conversion of much of Europe and of Latin America is unimaginable without the sword.

It is not a pleasant aspect of our heritage, but one that nonetheless teaches us a great deal about human nature and what, in fact, solidifies Christian faith.

To explore this topic, Christian History spoke with Richard Fletcher, history professor at the University of York, England. Professor Fletcher has spent a lot of time researching medieval Europe, the era when forced conversions were the rule, and his The Barbarian Conversion: From Paganism to Christianity (Henry Holt, 1997) is one of the splendid results.

When did Christians first begin to use force to convert people?

Soon after the conversion of the Roman emperor Constantine, though the first use of force was not designed to convert pagans but to correct dissident Christians. Augustine, the great bishop of Hippo in North Africa in the late fourth and early fifth century, was faced with a dissident sect, the Donatists. Augustine wanted to bring them back in the orthodox fold, and he agonized about whether it was permissible to use coercion to do so.

Eventually he decided it was, and one biblical text that persuaded him was the parable of the great banquet (Luke 14:16-24). A rich man gives a feast, and when no one he invites shows up, he tells his servants to go out and “Compel people to come in.”

It isn’t until the Frankish kingdom of Charlemagne in the eighth century that we see force used to coerce conversions, specifically in the campaign against the Saxons.

Why did Charlemagne move in this direction?

First, the concept of Christian kingship had developed the previous century, and the duty of expanding Christendom, if necessary by force, became part of a king’s duty. It’s partly based on an Old Testament model of kingship.

Second, an adviser at the highest levels of Charlemagne’s government pushed this particular policy. Scholars think the real hard-liner was a man named Lull, who was of Anglo-Saxon origin, had traveled with Boniface, and had succeeded Boniface as archbishop of Mainz. He’d given his life to the conversion of the Saxons, and nothing had worked. In essence he said to Charlemagne, “These stubborn people will never convert on their own. We’ve got to force them to submit.”

This policy of using violence to motivate conversion in Saxony was not supported by all the king’s advisers. Another Englishman at Charlemagne’s court, Alcuin, had grave doubts. In the 790s, when the Franks conquered the Avars on the eastern frontier (in modern Hungary), Alcuin wrote letters to Charlemagne, saying essentially, “Don’t make the same mistakes you made with the Saxons. You can’t force Christianity upon people.” There are some signs that Alcuin’s advice was heeded; the proposals to convert the Avars by force were slightly toned down.

But by the 1300s, no one objects anymore. The chronicles of the Viking kings, for example, laud them for using the sword to convert pagans. What happened in medieval Europe to solidify this view?

Robert Moore, author of The Rise of the Persecuting Society, argues that from the eleventh to the fourteenth century, European Christian society became much less tolerant. This is the era when we see persecution of Jews and heretics, crusades against Muslims, and the increasing acceptance of forcible conversion—especially in the only area of Europe that remained unconverted: Scandinavia and the Baltic region. I don’t agree with Moore’s argument in all respects, but more people were being persecuted in Europe in 1250 than were in the Europe of 1050. That’s a fact. One can’t get away from it.

Is this a product of Christian theology—an insistence on Jesus Christ as the truth—or of political strength—Christians finally have the military force to insist on their way?

Both. On the theological side, there is an unprecedented emphasis upon the humanity of Jesus Christ, especially upon his sufferings. Coming closely behind is a feeling of enmity toward those who were identified as his persecutors, especially the Jews, and by extension, all those who were perceived as not fully Christian. Though Christians lived peaceably with Muslims in the Holy Land for centuries, during this era, Muslims become identified as the enemies of Christ who must be booted out of the Christian holy places.

Yet we should also emphasize the sheer power of Western Christendom, which blossoms during this time. There is an upsurge in technology, in military organization, in state power, in the ability to raise taxes and hire armies. This put Western European states at a decisive advantage over the remaining pagans in the Baltic, for example. Given the climate of intolerance, it’s irresistible to use the power at your disposal to clobber pagans and make them Christian.

Were forced conversions successful?

Yes and no. The problem is semantic. The definition of conversion has changed over the centuries.

Charlemagne or Olaf Trygvesson would have said, “I defeat my enemies, and a priest then sprinkles water over them and says some words in Latin, and they become Christians. They’ve been converted.”

Today, we don’t regard that as conversion—nor would some early medieval people, like the Venerable Bede (c.673-735) or Alcuin (c.740-804). They wouldn’t have thought people converted until they were taught the creeds, Christian morality, and the like—which may take two, three, or four generations.

Nonetheless, because of the initiative of coercive kings, Christianization was now possible in a way it hadn’t been possible before.

In the end, medieval pagans seemed more willing to submit to forced conversions than Christians under similar circumstances. Why is that?

The common factor in paganism all over medieval Europe was polytheism. Pagans had lots and lots of gods—gods of weather, of harvest, of the sea, of the sky, of beer making, of battle, and so on. Anthropologists who’ve studied conversion in polytheistic culture in Africa, for example, have found that such peoples think they can just add Christ to their existing pantheon. This is what seems to have happened in medieval Europe. The exclusive claims of a monotheistic faith didn’t sink in at first. That’s why even after “conversion,” we find a long period in which ideas about gods and goddesses, spirits and fairies, elves and goblins coexist with faith in Christ.

Another reason was that pagans were impressed with the sheer material power of Christendom. Paganism was a faith that was largely geared to gaining material prosperity. There were gods for the crops because they wanted their crops to grow. They had gods for cattle so that they would produce more milk. When these pagans looked at the wealth and power of Christian Europe, they were impressed: the Christian God was obviously one who could deliver the goods. Christians built bigger buildings, made more beautiful jewelry, possessed better ships, and so on. Many pagans were not adverse to converting to Christianity because they believed it would, in fact, give them more material prosperity than had their gods.

To appreciate this point, note how Christian missionaries fared in sixteenth-century China. Here was a non-Christian culture that was in many ways superior to the West. In that context, Christianity makes practically no headway.

In Europe, we see evidence that this wasn’t a by-product but a deliberate tactic of missionaries. When the bishop of Winchester sent his pupil Boniface to evangelize Germany, he stressed that Boniface should remind the pagans just how rich and powerful the Christians were.

Were there any cases in which forced conversion didn’t work?

Yes. With pagan polytheists, I don’t think there were any failures. But with the monotheists—Jews and Muslims—coercion had little success. They understood it wasn’t a matter of adding a new god but choosing a different one. They also come out of cultures that were sophisticated in their own right.

Though the first generations converted for less-than-pure motives, in subsequent generations, Christianity seems to “stick.” That is, as the centuries unfold, these formerly pagan societies sincerely adopt Christianity. Why is that?

One significant reason is the Christian teaching that took place after the formal acceptance of Christianity. It’s easy to point out the many abuses of the medieval church, even in what it taught. On the other hand, it did an awful good job at instilling knowledge of Christianity into people who had been pagan for centuries.

One good example of this is seen in Anglo-Saxon England. The Venerable Bede, in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, tells the story of King Edwin, who had embraced Christianity primarily because he thought he would become a great and powerful king as a result. And Bede says, in fact, he did.

But he also noted that Edwin was, and always had been, a thoughtful man who would sit by himself hour after hour pondering the deep mysteries of life. Before he had become a king, in fact, he had a vision in the middle of the night, in which a mysterious stranger said to him, “I will tell you about a God who brings salvation.” Later on, after Edwin had become king and was growing in power, he ran into a missionary who was this same mysterious stranger whom he’d had seen in his vision years earlier.

There was in Edwin a desire for salvation, and he felt that beyond the wealth and power Christianity gave him, it also helped him settle this issue in his own heart and mind. For Bede, this seems to illustrate the need for Christian teaching—to instruct especially rulers and the elite on the meaning of Christianity, of salvation, and other key theological concepts.

Today using force to convert is unthinkable. Why did this idea, that was used for centuries, pass away?

A couple disclaimers: this is an immensely complex topic, and I’m not an expert on post-medieval missionary history. That being said, my hunch is that it’s largely due to the rise of Protestant evangelical movements, especially the Great Awakening. Here we see a new stress placed upon the individual soul and upon religious experience. Conversion becomes a voluntary, individual turning to God. Once you have that understanding, the idea of forcing someone to convert becomes absurd.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

“Are you intending to sail to Greenland this summer?” Norway’s King Olaf Trygvesson asked Leif Eriksson, whose father had founded the island colony.

“Yes,” Leif replied, “if you approve.”

“I think it would be a good idea. You are to go there with a mission from me, to preach Christianity in Greenland,” said the king credited with the conversions of Norway, Iceland, Orkney, Shetland, and the Faroes. “Your good luck will see you through.”

But on his way home Leif was blown off course, landing far southwest of Greenland, in a land now known as Newfoundland.

So says Erik’s Saga, which, like other such stories, is part truth and part fiction. What is known is that the story surrounding Erik the Red and his son Leif Eriksson (or “Leif the Lucky”) spans many generations. It begins during the ninth century with political violence in Norway and ends in fifteenth-century Greenland as one of the unsolved mysteries of medieval Europe.

A cunning outlaw

Erik and Leif traced their origins back to Norway and Iceland. After a series of bloody campaigns, the ninth-century Norwegian King Harald Fairhair consolidated all of Norway under his rule. Unwilling to submit to Harald’s authority, provincial rulers and district strongmen emigrated to establish farming settlements in Iceland. Though formally devoted to the rule of law, these Icelandic farmers were often governed by relentless family feuds and their own violent passions.

In the late tenth century, Erik the Red and his father, Thorvald, left their home in Norway “because of some killings” and settled in Iceland. When Thorvald died, Erik married and established a farm.

Blood troubles soon caught up to them across the Norwegian Sea. As Erik’s Saga tells us, Erik’s slaves “started a landslide that destroyed the farm of a man called Valthjof . …So Eyjolf Saur, one of Valthjof’s kinsmen, killed the slaves . …For this, Erik killed Eyjolf Sauer; he also killed Hrafn the Dueller . …Eyjolf’s kinsmen took action over his killing, and Erik was banished.”

After even more bloodshed during his exile in the early 980s, Erik and three followers sailed westward to the previously sighted but yet unnamed Greenland, where they spent three summers and winters exploring the land.

Though forbidding to modern readers, such rigors seem not to have fazed the expedition members. Viking voyagers loved nothing more than a challenge. In addition, modern studies of core samples from the Greenland ice sheet show that during the Viking era, North Atlantic regions were undergoing a warming phase, a so-called climatic optimum, which allowed for animal husbandry and some agriculture in areas where they are now unthinkable.

In 985 Erik led a full-scale migration of Icelanders to the world’s largest island, which he named Greenland, “for he said that people would be much more tempted to go there if it had an attractive name.” Of 25 ships filled with settlers, only 14 completed the stormy, 200-mile journey.

The Norse colonies they set up in the new land were pagan, devoted to the Viking deities, known as Aesir (Odin, Thor, etc.). Though ethnically and religiously similar, the settlements were geographically separate. Located in southwestern Greenland, they were known as the Eastern and Western settlements, an adventurous brave new world at the very limits of Viking expansion.

As the colonies’ leader, Erik built his farm on choice land at Brattahlid in the Eastern Settlement, where he lived until his death (possibly of an epidemic) sometime around the year 1000.

We catch glimpses of his personality: Greenland Saga says “he commanded great respect” and people “recognized his authority.” He was most likely temperamental, as the aforementioned killings suggest, and certainly a devout follower of the pagan gods, especially the thunder god Thor.

Versions of conversion

While Erik’s flight to Greenland gave his public life a stability he had not known in Norway or Iceland, the introduction of Christianity divided his family. Though the story from Erik’s Saga credits Olaf Trygvesson, the new faith probably spread to Greenland via Iceland, which had been Christianized under Olaf’s influence.

As elsewhere in Scandinavia, the Christianization of Greenland was likely a gradual process urged on by monarchs and clergy from abroad as well as by local leaders. Pagan and Christian practice existed side by side for decades: we read the numerous tales of pagan witchcraft and superstition in the Vinland Sagas, many taking place supposedly after the conversion to Christianity.

Other sources insist that Leif Eriksson himself introduced the faith. Greenland Saga describes Leif as the opposite of his father: “tall and strong and very impressive in appearance” and “always moderate in his behavior,” characteristics clearly in line with Christian virtues.

Furthermore, Leif represented the new order, the younger generation that introduced Christianity and replaced the pagan ways of Erik’s generation. In Erik’s Saga we read, “Erik was reluctant to abandon his old religion, but his wife, Thjodhild, was converted at once, and she had a church built not too close to the farmstead . …Thjodhild refused to live with Erik after she was converted, and this annoyed him greatly.” Following this episode, Erik slowly fades from the sagas, the implication being that he is isolated in the new dispensation.

Separating fact from fiction is difficult. In the twentieth century archaeologists have excavated the Norse settlements in Greenland, including Brattahlid, where they discovered the remains of a chapel that may correspond to “Thjodhild’s church.” Likewise, excavations in Newfoundland prove that Vikings indeed later settled in Leif the Lucky’s Vinland, even if only for a short time. Were they the first Christians in the New World? We’ll likely never know.

By whatever process Christianity reached medieval Greenland, it remained a potent force there for over 400 years. After Leif’s time, the Catholic Church sent clergy to the distant island, and the Norse settlers built numerous stone churches. But by the 1400s, the Norse settlements had mysteriously languished as the population dwindled and disappeared, leaving only their stone buildings as testimony to a once thriving Christian community, estimated at 4,000 to 6,000 souls.

In the Icelandic annals, the last notations from Greenland tell of a wedding held there in the early 1400s. After that, all is silent.

Roger McKnight is a professor at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, where he specializes in Scandinavian literature.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Ever since a Celtic monk spotted the first Viking longships approaching from the horizon, these medieval Northmen have been associated with murder, theft, and destruction. But their greatest sin in the eyes of some is that they didn’t write anything down.

Apart from a few runic inscriptions, no texts were written before the eleventh century either in Scandinavia or in most of the areas they settled. What we’re left with is archaeological artifacts and the biased accounts of writers centuries after Scandinavia converted.

“In portraying this dark and illiterate age, the oral tradition is the stuff of our history,” says James Reston, Jr., who “embraces” the old sagas. “We cannot discard virtually everything except the broken shards of pottery, the worm-eaten swords, the beads and horn combs of the archaeologists.”

Oh no? Peter Sawyer disagrees. “Few scholars today still accept these texts as reliable sources of information about the Viking Age,” he says. “Historians … now rely more on archaeology and numismatics … for they cast light on many topics about which the texts are silent.”

In this issue, we’ve included articles by both Reston and Sawyer because we find each perspective helpful.

The saga and the sword

The most complete and readable book about Scandinavia’s conversion is The Hammer and the Cross by Michael Scott Rohan and Allan J. Scott (Alder, 1980). Indeed, it remains the only book specifically about the conversion of the Vikings directed at a general, nonacademic readership. Unfortunately, it is out of print and difficult to find—but well worth the effort of seeking it out.

James Reston’s The Last Apocalypse (Doubleday, 1998), just released in paperback, is the most accepting of the oral traditions (which offer a painting, not a photograph, he suggests), and perhaps for that reason it is the most exciting book on the subject. Reston is also master journalist and storyteller; his eye for the fascinating makes this book a must-read even for the most skeptical.

For the most scholarly take on Scandinavia’s conversion, track down The Christianization of Scandinavia (Viktoria Bokförlag, 1987), edited by Birgit and Peter Sawyer and Ian Wood. The Sawyers’ Medieval Scandinavia (University of Minnesota, 1993) is a bit more readable but does not deal as fully with the conversion stories.

The conversion of “Scandinavians at home and abroad” fills an entire chapter of Richard Fletcher’s ambitious and landmark book The Barbarian Conversion (Henry Holt, 1997). Both easy to read and academically solid, Fletcher’s book deserves the attention of those interested in the history of evangelism, the history of Europe, and fascinating stories from church history.

General books about the Vikings seem to be legion. We found The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings (1997) and the Cultural Atlas of the Viking World (Facts on File, 1994), edited by Peter Sawyer and James Graham-Campbell respectively, most helpful in our research.

If you want to judge the sagas for yourself, most of the ones mentioned in this issue are available for free online, such as Snorri Sturluson’s Heimskringla (Chronicle of the Kings of Norway), which is at http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/OMACL/Heimskringla/

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

By age 21, Olaf Trygvesson had grown into a superb Nordic specimen. In climbing and swimming and leaping, he was unmatched, and it was said that he could juggle five daggers in the air, always catching them by the handle. A favorite of his warriors, he went west to Holland with a fleet of nearly 90 ships, manned by Swedish Vikings from Russia (where the Norwegian had been serving in the court of Vladimir I). When he had finished with the Dutch, he went to France, then back to Jutland, leaving in his wake a great harvest for the ravens and wolves.

And then to England, the greatest prize of the northern pirates. At the mouth of the Thames, he fought the battle of Maldon, extorting the tribute of 10,000 pounds of silver from the weak Anglo-Saxon king, Ethelred. From there, he moved north, plundering in Northumberland and Scotland, then to the Hebrides and to fight other Vikings on the Isle of Man. After that, he turned south to Ireland, Wales, and Cornwall before he jumped over the Channel to taste again the pleasures of France. “The young king drove a bloody game,” a poet wrote. “The Irish fled at Olaf’s name, fled a young king seeking fame.”

With his fleet now fortified to 94 ships, he came back to England and joined forces with the Danish king Svein Forkbeard. Together they raided England, “burning villages, laying waste the lands, putting numbers of people to death by fire and sword, without regard to sex, and sweeping off an immense booty.” Seizing horses, they rode wildly through many provinces and slaughtered the whole population with savage cruelty, “sparing neither the women nor children of tender age.” This time Ethelred offered 22,000 pounds.

In the weeks it took to consummate this shabby deal and to refurbish his fleet, King Olaf lay off the Cornish coast, fatigued and fretful. Biding his time in the Scilly Islands, off Land’s End, the Viking heard of a local fortuneteller who was said to possess the gift of prophecy. Rowing off to the hermit’s rocky retreat, Olaf asked if the prophet could foresee Olaf’s future. Would the prince be successful in battle? Would he regain power in the north?

“Thou wilt become a renowned king and do celebrated deeds,” the hermit replied. “And that thou not doubt the truth of this answer, listen to this.” And then he predicted that Olaf would soon suffer a mutiny among his men. In the ensuing fight, he would be wounded and carried to his ship on his oblong shield. After seven days, he would recover and thereafter would allow himself to be baptized a Christian.

“Many men wilt thou bring to faith and baptism,” the prophet said, “and both to thy own and others’ good.”

Shortly afterward, the mutiny took place precisely as the hermit had predicted. After his recovery in seven days, Olaf hastened back to the seer and asked him how he had gained such wisdom.

“The god of the Christian has blessed me,” the hermit replied, “so that I can know all that I desire.”

At that, Olaf allowed himself to be baptized.

When King Ethelred heard about this, he sent his bishop and his high reeve (local administrator) to Olaf, proposing a glorious confirmation at Andover. Ethelred presented his tormenter with royal gifts and, in return, Olaf promised never again to visit war upon England. To Ethelred, Christianity was more effective than gold, and to Olaf, his new faith conferred upon him a dignity and stature among kings that he had lacked.

Double Betrayal

Early in 995, more news reached Olaf from Norway. A merchant from the north spoke of dissatisfaction in Norway with the current leader, Earl Hakon—the murderer of Olaf’s father. While the earl had consolidated his rule over coastal Norway, he had degenerated into a lecher in middle age, seizing the comely daughters of gentlemen, keeping them as his concubines for a week or two and then discarding them. This was causing an uproar in the land, although few dared to criticize the earl to his face.

The merchant told another story that raised the ire of Olaf even further. Earl Hakon had accepted Christianity under threat from the German emperor, Otto, but then had reverted to heathenism when he was safely home (see page 33, “Power Evangelism Checked”). He had been busy restoring many heathen temples to their honored place in the provinces. When the earl fought a terrible battle whose outcome was in doubt, he prayed to his personal heathen goddess, offering her his best horses as a sacrifice. But she seemed angry, for she did not respond. The earl offered more valuable things without any supernatural deliverance until he offered his youngest son, a handsome and promising 17-year-old, as a sacrifice. The boy was given to a slave, who broke the boy’s back on the sacrifice rock in the usual manner. Afterward, the tide of the battle turned in Hakon’s favor, and the court propagandist wrote his encomium, for the earl “restores Odin’s temples to Norway’s shores.”

“To tell the truth,” the merchant told Olaf, “many brave men would rather see a king of Harald Fairhair’s race come to the kingdom. But we know of no one suited for this, especially now when criticism of Earl Hakon is so pointless.”

The time was ripe, this great-grandson of Harald Fairhair decided, for his triumphal return to his homeland. He outfitted five ships and closed the English chapter of his life.

As Olaf sailed across the North Sea toward home, he must have felt the nobility and the grandeur of his holy mission. He was a hybrid of Odysseus and Michael the archangel, avenger, exile, and zealot all in one. He was coming, in justice and in glory, as the royal scion of Harald Fairhair, as the king of whom great deeds were predicted in the name of Norway and in the name of Christ.

He was returning to avenge the death of his father, the exile of his mother, the slavery of his youth— all the doings, directly and indirectly, of Earl Hakon. His passion was to convert his heathen homeland, and he was prepared for holy war. By his athletic stature, by his superior skill in the martial art, by his campaigns across the Baltic and through England, and by his zealot’s faith, he was the Viking warrior non pareil: bold, cruel, and skilled.

When Olaf finally approached the nose of Norway, he touched land offshore on Moster Island, pitched a tent, and held a great mass, and moved quietly to the mouth of the Trondheim fjord. On its southern point, he sent a few spies inland, and they came back with excellent news. Earl Hakon was indeed in the area, and he was up to his old escapades. He had just tried to seize the wife of a respectable farmer and had been turned back by a rabble of the farmer’s friends.

He then sent his slaves to seize the beautiful wife of another freeholder named Orm. But Orm was no more compliant. He delayed the earl’s messengers with food and drink while he sent a call to arms, and the farmers were gathering in great anger, ready to kill Earl Hakon. Olaf could scarcely have wished for better intelligence.

But word reached Hakon that Olaf was on his way, so he escaped to the home of one of his mistresses, who dug a pit beneath her pigsty. Logs were placed over the hole, and manure on top of the logs. With his slave named Kark, the earl crawled into the poke, hoping to wait out the trouble, if he could stand the smell.

Olaf’s rebels searched the house inside and out, and when they could not find the earl, Olaf climbed up onto a large rock next to the pigsty and gave a speech to his troops, promising great reward and honor to anyone who could find the earl and kill him. Hakon and Kark heard the speech through the seeping timbers, and the earl turned on his slave suspiciously.

“Why are you so pale?” he whispered. “Do you have a mind to betray me?”

“By no means, master,” Kark replied.

“Remember this,” the earl said. “We were born on the same night. The time between our deaths will be short.”

After Olaf went away and the night came, the earl and his slave tried to sleep. But Kark had a bad dream, and at his moans, Earl Hakon woke him up. “What on earth is the matter with you?”

“I had a bad dream,” the slave replied. “Olaf Trygvesson was laying a gold ring around my neck.”

“It will be a red ring Olaf lays around your neck if he catches you,” the earl snapped. “Take care. From me you will enjoy good things, so do not betray me.”

They tried to go back to sleep, but each was now so suspicious of the other, they tried to keep an eye open. Eventually, the earl dropped off, and he too slept so fitfully that he cried out in his sleep. Horror-struck, Kark woke up with such a fright that he pulled a knife from his belt and plunged it into Earl Hakon’s throat, killing him. Then thinking of the reward and honor that Olaf Trygvesson had promised from the rock, Kark cut off the earl’s head and presented it proudly to Olaf.

Olaf thanked him, gave him a gold ring, and then had him beheaded.

“Be Christian or die”

In 996 a national assembly was held, and Olaf Trygvesson was proclaimed the king of all Norway. One by one, the petty earls and chiefs of the country paid him homage, even the leaders of the Uplands and the Vik, who before had been in league with Svein Forkbeard, the king of Denmark. In his first winter and summer as king, Olaf traveled along his rocky coast to consolidate his realm, as the heirs of Earl Hakon, full of vengeance, fled to Sweden.

Toward the end of the first millennium, Norway was a sparsely peopled kingdom. It was ruled by a motley group of petty lords and cultivated by self-reliant freeholders who farmed and fished along the coast and the riverbanks and took orders from no man. The total population of the country did not exceed 50,000, and it was spread along the rocky, crenellated coastline. Even the trading towns had no more than about 500 people in high season. The greatest concentration of people was in the Vik, that region encompassing Oslo’s fjord which was the domain of Olaf’s martyred father, King Trygve. It was there that Olaf began his crusade to Christianize his land.

In the Vik, during the summer and fall of 996, he had easy sailing. Many of his relatives were still powerful, and the supporters of his father were legion. In the preceding decades, when the Christian king of Denmark Harald Bluetooth held sway over the area, many had converted to Christianity. But when the Thor-loving Earl Hakon took over, the converted reverted, and once again, the gods of Aesir were transcendent. King Olaf burned with messianic fire, however, and the days of choice were over. Olaf gathered his relatives together and deputized them as Christ’s captains.

“I shall make you great and mighty men for doing this work,” he told them. “All Norway will be Christian or die.”

The east and west shores of the Oslofjord acceded immediately to the king’s demand, but in the northern part of the Vik, the resistance was greater. He treated the holdouts without mercy, killing some, mutilating others, and banishing the rest. By the end of the year, between his sword and his axe, he had claimed all of the Vik for Christ and dared anyone to claim otherwise.

The king moved on, west, then north to the fjord country. Sometimes he began whimsically, challenging a heathen to a swimming race or a shooting contest, and to the winner’s faith goes the loser. Once he is said to have shot a chess piece off the head of a boy to impress the child’s agnostic uncle. Generally, however, the challenge was more direct: Christianize or fight. Few were ready for the latter.

And so they did what he asked. They pretended to convert and wept battle tears at their loss. The heathen gods were proclaimed to be evil spirits: anyone who trafficked in such evil was to be banished, especially the sorcerers. Once, at a place on the river Gota, he gathered all the wizards and high priests of the region in a longhouse for a great feast, then closed the doors and burnt the building to the ground. But their leader escaped through the smoke hole, and when he was caught, King Olaf marooned him and his fellow incorrigibles on a rock far offshore at low tide.

When he came to Trondheim, the lair of the late Earl Hakon, he took more extreme measures, burning heathen temples and desecrating heathen idols. At one temple, he found a gold ring of Earl Hakon, hung it on the door of the pagan temple, and when the crowd gathered, he torched the place. This caused anger in the fjord and again, the local chiefs rose against him, sending out the war arrow through the region as a message to prepare for battle.

Faced with this unrest, King Olaf went away to the Vik for the winter but returned the following summer with a larger army and 30 ships, weighing anchor in the river Nid. Inviting the local chiefs to a fine feast, as an apparent gesture of peace, he indicated his willingness to attend a heathen sacrifice.

At the feast, the guests got quite drunk on Viking ale. The following morning, King Olaf attended a mass and then gathered the hungover chiefs together. “It has been agreed between us that we would meet and make a great sacrifice,” the king said. “If I am to return to making heathen sacrifices, then I will make the greatest sacrifice of all. I will sacrifice men, not slaves. I propose to take the greatest men only and offer them to the gods.” And he named the 11 most prominent leaders of the opposition. When the horrified farmers howled in protest, instead of killing them, he took the 11 hostage until everyone was baptized. Finally, he set the eminent men free only when their sons and brothers were swapped for their prominent fathers.

In nearby Trondheim, King Olaf employed another method. Again at the assembly of the local farmers, he appeared open to attending a heathen ritual. “We want, King, that you should offer sacrifice, as other kings before you have done,” said the leader, whose name was Iron Beard. The king agreed readily, and the crowd went to the local temple. Once the door was closed, Olaf raised his golden axe, struck the image of Thor and ransacked the niches of the other gods, and then killed old Iron Beard. After the survivors agreed to be baptized, King Olaf took Iron Beard’s comely daughter as his wife.

As the king moved still farther north, the population of potential converts grew sparser and more obstreperous. None was more obstinate than a rich farmer and devout heathen named Raud the Strong, who was the chief of the region, had a large company of Laplanders at his disposal, and commanded a formidable long ship, larger than the king’s flagship, with a gilded dragon head on its prow and an upturned serpent’s tail in its stern. When Raud heard that the king was coming with his bitter message, Raud mobilized his force, and a fierce sea battle was fought, with predictable results.

Raud, however, escaped and took refuge in his island hideout in the Saltenfjord. The entrance of the fjord was protected by a narrow throat through which the tidal water gushed in torrents, and only the most skilled sailor could navigate it. For more than a week, King Olaf lay offshore, waiting for the wind to calm and the high seas to slacken, trying to figure out when to make a run for it. The problem was greater, we are told, because Raud was expert in witchcraft and had placed a hex on the king.

Countermeasures were called for, and so King Olaf summoned his bishop, who laid his holy robes on the stern of the king’s ship, sprinkled holy water over the ship, read the Gospels, and then gave his blessing to proceed. By some miracle, it is said, the Christian ships passed through the narrow passageway, the water curling gently around the keels, while a few paces away the waves raged so furiously that the nearby mountains were obscured.

Once in the fjord, the royal men quickly apprehended Raud and brought him to the king, who ordered the chief to accept baptism.

“I will not take your property from you but instead will be your friend,” said Olaf sweetly, “if you make yourself worthy to be so.”

Raud declined and even made fun of Christ and the Christian God. This enraged Olaf, and he declared that Raud would die “the worst of deaths.” The blasphemer was bound to a wooden beam, his mouth was forced open with a wooden pin, and the king’s henchmen tried to force an adder down his throat. But Raud’s breath came from the pits of hell, and the adder recoiled at the first whiff. So the king took a horn, placed it in Raud’s mouth, stuffed the reluctant adder in again, and put a hot iron to the snake’s tail. The treatment of Raud was a powerful lesson, and the region, feeling the heat of Olaf’s poker, quickly came to Christ.

By the end of the millennium, Olaf Trygvesson, as Christ’s supreme hatchet man, had conquered all of Norway for Christianity. To say that Norway was conquered for Christ did not mean that the country was converted. Conversion is a slower process. Still, in Olaf’s violent way, the process of conversion was begun. To hasten it, the great pope at the hinge of the first millennium, Sylvester II, was in touch with his rough instrument. Eliminate the runic script of Norway, the pope commanded, and teach your scribes to write in Latin. For the runic script underpins the pagan era that must end.

Olaf Trygvesson did not live to make the change. In the year 1000, he was killed in a spectacular sea battle called the Battle of Svold, where he was trapped off the coast of Denmark by two pagan kings and a tough old pagan queen called Sigrid the Haughty whom Olaf had jilted.

But that is another story.

James Reston is the author of The Last Apocalypse: Europe at the Year 1000 A.D. (Doubleday, 1998), from which this article is adapted.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Two years ago, I walked around Sweden’s Gamla Uppsala, where old Swedish kings are buried beneath mounds of earth and where the holiest site in Scandinavian paganism was razed to build a Christian church. I was struck by the degree to which Scandinavia still feels its slow, sometimes painful conversion today.

Some Scandinavians, like those in Moster, Norway, participating in this year’s reenactment of the lives of Olaf Trygvesson and Olaf Haraldsson, celebrate. Others, like the neopagans who torched 22 historic Scandinavian churches (including several 900-year-old stave churches) between 1992 and 1997, lament. Scandinavia’s everpresent link between cross and crown, a legacy of its conversion process, is again a hot topic as the Church of Sweden readies to disestablish itself as the state church in January.

The conversion of the original Vikings is a painful, complicated story. The conversion of each Scandinavian region was due to a variety of factors: missions, politics, miracles, and the like. We’ve opted, somewhat arbitrarily, to focus on one key factor for each region. For example, we’ve emphasized the role of missionaries in telling how Denmark converted, though Christianity’s spread in that country also strongly depended on political support. And we’ve concentrated Norway’s story on its conversion by the sword, though scholars emphasize other factors, such as economics and missions.

Many of these top scholars (and writers) have helped us put together this issue. Birgit and Peter Sawyer (“Why Trust the White Christ?“) are the world’s leading experts on the Viking world, especially when it comes to its encounter with Christianity. Richard Fletcher’s The Barbarian Conversion (“Converting by the Sword“) is being hailed as a landmark book on the subject (“No book on such an important and demanding subject combines entertainment, information, and stimulation more judiciously,” wrote the New York Times). James Marchand (“Althings Work to the Good“) is a well-respected translator of primary source material, like the Islendingabók he wrote about for us. Michael Scott Rohan and Allan Scott (“Dead Man Converting“), award-winning science-fiction writers, have written the only book for a popular audience completely about Scandinavia’s conversion. And journalist James Reston, Jr. (“‘Be Christian or Die‘”), has proven himself a master at retelling the old sagas.

Even with such a premier list of guides, Scandinavia’s conversion is a challenge to digest at points, filled as it is with strange names and troubling moments. But the story is nonetheless fascinating and revealing, like the living monument of Gamla Uppsala, of the ongoing conversion of the world to Christ.

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

In July 1030, at the lonely moorland farm of Stiklestad, Norway, a dispossessed king perished beneath the spears and axes of his former subjects. Olaf Haraldsson, known as Olaf Digre (“stout” or “burly”), seemed to be just one more casualty in the shifting and brutal power politics of medieval Scandinavia.

Within a year, however, he was more than another Viking fatality. He was a martyr, a saint, a hero who brought Christianity to the heathens. In truth, none of those titles accurately describe the life of “Saint Olaf.” But in death, Olaf did more to Christianize Norway than he ever did in life.

A bloody beginning

The son and foster-son of Norwegian kinglets, Olaf Haraldsson (not to be confused with the earlier Olaf Trygvesson) makes his historical debut in 1007, when he was sent out, at just 12 years old, as a “sea-king” or raiding chieftain (under the eye of an experienced captain). His first raid, in Sweden, resulted in a hairbreadth escape from the irate Swedish king—later hailed as his first miracle!

In Denmark Olaf joined forces with the notorious Thorkel the Tall. Together they launched profitable raids on Jutland, Frisia, Holland, and that greenest of Viking pastures, England. There they tormented that unlucky king Ethelred Unræd—a nickname meaning not so much “unready” as “clueless” (this is the same Ethelred who was tormented by Olaf Trygvesson—see “Be Christian or Die“).

In the winter of 1009, Olaf and Thorkel attacked London and raided East Anglia. That September Olaf, the future saint, plundered Canterbury and killed the archbishop, whom he pelted to death with bones.

King Ethelred finally got a clue and bought Thorkel’s “services”—meaning he paid Thorkel protection money. Olaf raided Brittany, France, and Spain. The Norwegian planned on sailing to Jerusalem, but like many other legendary Viking heroes, he had a fateful dream. He saw a “great and important man, of terrible appearance” who told him to return home because, he said, “You shall be king of Norway for ever.”

Vision or no, Olaf’s timing was perfect. Norway, an unwilling part of the extensive empire of Knut the Great (reigned 1014-35), was ripe for revolt while the Dane was heavily engaged elsewhere.

Within a few months of his arrival home in 1015, Olaf had routed the Danes, proclaimed himself king, and established his capital in Nidaros (modern Trondheim). But a still greater change had taken place: somehow, somewhere, this fearsome young pirate had become a Christian.

Vikings often didn’t take baptism seriously, undergoing it repeatedly for the sake of the free white shirt the church gave to the newly baptized (as well as perhaps a cash bonus). Even genuine converts seldom changed their habits: Olaf Trygvesson, for example, had evangelized his enemies with the same tortures and head-loppings he had used as a pagan seeking extortion money.

Although accounts of Olaf Haraldsson are sometimes contradictory, they agree he was free of the besetting Viking sin of manic vengefulness. Ready to meet force with force, he was equally ready to be reconciled even with enemies and rivals. Olaf warred fiercely but preferred peace and law. And he was a man of his word, with Christ as with any bargain. He immediately proclaimed the Christian faith throughout his realm, and he built churches, including St. Clements in Nidaros.

The faith had highly practical attractions for a Viking ruler. Christianity made it easier to trade with the Christian heart of Europe. It was the faith of the Byzantine emperor and the wealthy kings of England and France; it smacked of civilization, wealth and status.

And Christianity, with its teaching about the divine right of kings, gave the king something Odin and Thor never could: a share of divine authority. Furthermore, whereas pagan cults were local, diffuse and traditional, Christianity was centralized, scholarly, and unifying—it could unite a country that paganism divided. And it was a faith that respected the importance of civil law.

The Vikings also had great respect for law; we owe them the very word. And Olaf was a great lawgiver. With his bishop, Grimkell, he created the Moster Law, which became the enduring model for the church throughout Scandinavia.

Destroying the infested idol

Olaf was ready to enforce Christian law. Norway’s outer regions were mostly Christian, but the less accessible Trondelag still observed the great pagan festivals, disingenuously excusing them as simple Yule and harvest feasts.

Olaf would have none of it and descended on the region, fining or executing offenders. But he did not rely on force alone. At Gulbrandsdal, in central Norway, militant locals confronted him with a huge wooden Thor-idol, which received offerings of food and gold ornaments. In turn, Olaf hailed the bright sunrise as herald of his God; with every eye on the sunrise, one of Olaf’s warriors clubbed the idol. The rotten wood broke, scattering the gold and spilling out rats (as large as cats) and vermin that had fed on the offerings. The horrified pagans bolted. Olaf had them rounded up, but only observed dryly that the destroyed idol’s gold ornaments would look better on their wives and daughters. Not surprisingly, they agreed and converted.

Though Olaf’s 12-year reign was effective, the king was soon unpopular. Local divisions were strong; local lords still chafed at the loss of independence they’d enjoyed under the mostly absent Knut. Olaf punished the piracy and raiding that were the Viking way of life; he strove to bring Iceland and the Faeroes under his sway. And he enforced Christianity. His failures cost him prestige; his successes made him more enemies.

To the aging Knut, a powerful neighbor was bad news. When Olaf understandably rejected Knut’s claim to be his overlord, Knut began to suborn powerful nobles like Einar and Kalf Arnarson with what Viking noblemen most prized: money, and status. Apparently the Danish bishop Sigurd also helped to whip up feelings against Olaf. In 1028 Olaf had to flee, taking refuge with his cousin, King Jaroslav of Kiev.

Olaf attempted to reconquer Norway in 1030, but could raise few followers and had lost the fleet that brought him to power. He arrived at Stiklestad with 3,500 men—against Knut’s 13,000. Olaf could not turn back. Chronicler Snorri Sturluson says he gave his men a battle-cry: Fram, Fram, Kristsmenn, krossmenn, konungsmenn! “On, On, Christ’s men, Cross men, King’s men!”

It was stirring but useless (not to mention presumptuous: Knut’s army prayed to the same God for victory, and was personally blessed by Bishop Sigurd). Accounts of the battle by Olaf’s poets are full of drama, and it does no harm to believe them. Splendid in gold-decked armor, Olaf fought heroically as the sun became eclipsed overhead. As one chronicler wrote,

On they came in fierce array,
And round the king arose the fray,
With shield on arm brave Olaf stood,
Dyeing his sword in their best blood.
For vengeance on his Trondheim foes,
On their best men he dealt his blows;
He who knew well death’s iron play,
To his deep vengeance gave full sway.

But at last Olaf was struck down against a great rock. His men fled, and the army dispersed, but not, says Snorri, before the king’s spilt blood began to work miracles even for his slayers: “The king’s blood came on Thorer’s hand, and ran up between his fingers to where he had been wounded, and the wound grew up [mended] so speedily that it did not require to be bound up.”

Olaf’s body was smuggled away to Nidaros and hidden in a sandbank to safeguard it. There it lay throughout a year of enormous change: Knut’s promised rewards went unfulfilled, replaced instead by punitive taxes and Danes’ grabbing the most prestigious posts; weather worsened, harvests failed; men remembered Olaf more kindly and vilified the treacherous Tronders.

Soon even Sigurd was obliged to flee to England and was replaced by Olaf’s Bishop Grimkell. Barely a year after the Battle of Stiklestad, Olaf’s body was disinterred.

“There was a delightful and fresh smell,” Snorri recorded. “His appearance was in no respect altered, and his cheeks were as red as if he had but just fallen asleep. The men who had seen King Olaf when he fell remarked, also, that his hair and nails had grown as much as if he had lived on the earth all the time that had passed since his fall.”

Grimkell declared Olaf a saint, enshrining him in his own church of St. Clement. His shrine rapidly became a center of miracles, as did the cathedral where he was later reburied. “A multitude of lame and blind and other sick who came to the holy Olaf went back cured,” one early account records.

Now the Norwegian powerbrokers promoted their fallen king, memorializing him as a pious and noble Christian leader, to inspire national pride and win their country’s freedom from Denmark. Olaf’s son, Magnus (named after Karl Magnus, Charlemagne) was brought back to Nidaros from Kiev. The Danes were again driven out, and Knut died soon after. Suddenly, thanks to the dead Olaf, Norway was united and independent. And Christian.

Europe’s saint

The fact that Olaf, like Christ, had become more powerful in death was not lost on contemporaries. Olaf became “Norway’s king forever,” guardian of his people and the national interest; through him the church’s standing became too great for even the most obdurate pagans. After his story, tales of pagan resistance cease.

Soon Olaf’s influence extended far outside Norway—further even than his early travels. Olaf’s body in Nidaros became one of Europe’s most visited pilgrimage sites. Shrines and churches were constructed in his honor in England, Sweden, and Rome. (York’s famous minster was built "in God’s name and Olaf’s.”) Even in Byzantium, then the heart of Christian Europe, Snorri says a church was dedicated to St. Olaf by the Norse and English soldiers of the emperor’s bodyguard. (In fact, Olaf is the last Western saint accepted by the Eastern Orthodox church.) Above the altar hung the sword Olaf had borne at Stiklestad, and the hand that held it had stretched across the world. Olaf had not only converted Norway, he had become for many medieval minds the ideal ruler, even God’s regent over the earth.

Michael Scott Rohan and Allan Scott, both science fiction writers, coauthored The Hammer and the Cross: The Conversion of the Vikings (Alder, 1980).

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

Around the year 965, King Harald Bluetooth of Denmark and his Viking warriors were discussing which god was most powerful. Some favored mighty Thor, who defeated giant trolls with ease and caused lightning by throwing his hammer. Others picked Odin the Wise on his eight-legged horse, leading a horde of all dead warriors who ever perished in battle. One mentioned mischievous Loki, who tricked the other gods to serve his evil purposes.

But what about this new god, Hvíta Kristr, White Christ, who was said to rule the hosts of heaven?

A foreign priest named Poppo at this meeting was a servant of Hvíta Kristr. The Viking warriors called upon him to prove the power of his god.

At the forge of the smith, so the story goes, Poppo took a red-hot iron and held it in his hand. When he set it down, the king looked at his hands. There was not the slightest sign of injury.

That was enough for King Harald Bluetooth. He was baptized without delay and ordered all his subjects to follow his example.

Even if it did take a miracle to formally convert King Harald’s realm to Christianity, the process did not begin that instant. For two centuries a variety of forces had been at work to bring the Christian faith to Denmark, but none so important as the missionary presence.

The first missionary to Denmark was Willibrord, an Irish monk known more for his work in Friesland than in Scandinavia. In his efforts to evangelize Friesland (now parts of the Netherlands and Germany), he visited Denmark briefly in the early 700s, returning with 30 Danish boys to educate as Christians.

But as often happened in Denmark’s turbulent history, missionary work was interrupted by war. In 772 the great Frankish emperor Charlemagne launched a crusade into Saxony, and his troops slowly conquered and forced its conversion to Christianity. In less than 30 years, his armies approached the borders of Denmark, which was ruled by a powerful king named Godfred.

To Godfred and his Danes, it seemed obvious that Frankish conquest and Christianity went hand in hand. They did not want to be conquered, so that meant they had to reject Christianity, as well. He built a great wall, the Dannevirke, along his southern border and manned it with warriors to hold back the Franks. Then he launched a counter-attack, sending waves of Viking ships to harry the coasts of the Frankish empire, and the crusade was stopped cold.

But Christian merchants ventured where Frankish armies could not go. They traveled to Hedeby, just beyond the Dannevirke, where they traded with the pagan Danes, sustaining a Christian presence.

Vanguard churches

A quarter-century after the Danes repulsed Charlemagne’s troops, they found themselves immersed in civil war. One of the contending princes, Harald Klak, sailed to the Frankish empire to seek the aid of Charlemagne’s son, Emperor Louis the Pious. As part of the alliance, Harald and a great host of his Viking followers were baptized, and Ansgar became Harald’s chaplain.

It was a position that Ansgar, a devout monk from Picardy, longed for, despite the dangers. “Since there could not be found a preacher who would go with them to the Danes because of their barbarous cruelty—on account of which everyone shuns that people,” Adam of Bremen writes in his History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, “the blessed Ansgar, inspired … by the Holy Spirit and desirous of obtaining martyrdom … presented himself.”

Unlike other hagiographies of saints’ lives, Ansgar’s is not replete with miracles and signs. While Rimbert, his biographer and successor, writes that many were healed during his ministry, Ansgar himself denied he had any such gift. “Were I worthy of such a favor from my God,” he told one of his followers, “I would ask that he would grant to me this one miracle, that by his grace he would make of me a good man.”

Ansgar’s patron, Harald Klak, never actually returned to Denmark (now ruled in part by Swedish overlords), but the evangelist got his wish to visit there briefly in 829.

Three years later, the pope, hearing of Ansgar’s missionary passion, appointed him archbishop of Hamburg with the mission of converting Scandinavia to Christianity. It took another dozen years, however, before Ansgar won the right to establish a church in Hedeby, after which more Christian merchants moved to the town and a few Danes became Christians. Soon, a second Danish church was established in the North Sea port of Ribe.

“By God’s favor the church of Christ was established both among the Danes and among the Swedes, and priests are functioning unhindered in their proper office,” Ansgar happily announced.

As a child, Ansgar had reportedly received visions as a child of God telling him, “Go and return to me crowned with martyrdom.” But in 865 he lay on his deathbed not because of persecution but illness, and “became very sad,” lamented his biographer, and Ansgar kept repeating, “Thou are just, O Lord, and thy judgment is righteous.” Just before his death, however, he experienced another vision that assured him he had been faithful.

For all Angsar’s devotion and effort, Denmark remained pagan for another century save the tiny churches in Hedeby and Ribe. As Adam of Bremen wrote, “Let it suffice us to know that up to this time all the kings of the Danes had been pagans, and amid so great changes of kingdoms or inroads of barbarians, some small part of the Christianity that had been planted by Ansgar had remained, the whole had not failed.”

Preaching to the king

During these next decades, Danish Vikings increasingly encountered Christians on their raids abroad. Back home, they began to weave stories of Hvíta Kristr into tales of Odin and Thor, Frey and Freya, Balder and Loki, Ull the winter god, giants, trolls, water sprites, mermaids, sea serpents, and all the other supernatural beings of the Nordic pantheon.

In 934 international politics again entered the picture. Christian troops from the Holy Roman Empire forced the Swedish ruler to submit and accept baptism, which meant, again, that Denmark was officially Christian. But then came another pagan reaction against Christianity, Danish independence, and the beginning of the rule of the heathen King Gorm.

Though Archbishop Unni of Hamburg preached in his court, Gorm remained hostile to Christianity. His son, Harald Bluetooth (who co-ruled with his father), listened sympathetically. Harald even allowed missionaries to baptize Danes.

After Gorm died, Harald extended his authority in many directions. When he converted (after his encounter with Poppo), he was at the height of his power, and there was little resistance when he commanded all his subjects to become Christians.

Yet politics entered into even this decision. By 965, King Harald knew he was powerful enough to accept the Christian religion without succumbing to German political domination. He knew that his new faith, in fact, would help him to solidify his own control over his extensive realm. But whatever his motives, King Harald became an exemplary Christian, and the new religion began to penetrate more deeply into the country.

Eventually, his son, Svend Forkbeard, rose in revolt, and Harald was forced to flee. But Svend was a Christian like his father and, with royal patronage, Christianity continued to grow in Denmark. When Svend died suddenly in 1014, his Christian son, Knut (“the great,” the king who killed Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson, the saint, in battle) succeeded him as ruler of a Danish empire that now included England and Norway.

Two centuries had passed since the mission voyages of Ansgar, and 70 years since the miracle of Poppo. Denmark had become a solidly Christian country, and bells were ringing every Sunday from some 500 churches throughout the land. Pagan superstitions still lingered, but Hvíta Kristr was triumphant at last among the Danes.

J. R. Christianson is research professor of history at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, and editor of Scandinavians in America (Symra, 1985).

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

EASY APOSTATE

Hakon the Good of Norway

(935-961)

As was the Norwegian custom, Hakon, son of the aged Harald Fairhair, was fostered to England’s king, Athelstan. Across the North Sea, Hakon not only took on English customs but also its Christian God.

When his father died, the 15-year-old Hakon sailed for Norway to claim his kingdom and bring his Christianity to Norway, 45 years before Olaf Trygvesson. When his rival (and brother) Erik Bloodaxe was killed by the English in 954, the Christian youth took Norway’s throne.

“King Hakon was a good Christian when he came to Norway,” writes Snorri Sturluson in Heimskringla (c. 1220). “But as the whole country was heathen, with much heathenish sacrifice … he resolved to practice his Christianity in private … It was his intent, as soon as he had set himself fast in the land and had subjected the whole to his power, to introduce Christianity.” But that time never came, and when he did try to encourage Christianity, local chiefs complained that he was trying to take away their freedom. The opposition became so fierce that Hakon’s rule was threatened.

He decided he didn’t have the power to force Christianity upon his country, so he allowed his subjects to continue practicing paganism. But that was not enough, and the chiefs, to ensure that Hakon was a true pluralist in religion, demanded that he sacrifice to the Norse gods.

Hakon complied. To satisfy his conscience, he made the sign of the cross over the sacrifice (though he said publicly he was making the sign of Thor’s hammer), but eventually he forsook the charade and made straightforward sacrifices to the pagan gods.

Even though he proved a faithless Christian, Hakon was treated well by later Christian historians. His title of “the Good” did not refer to his spiritual state, though, but to his innovations in law and justice. He voluntarily limited his autocratic power while strengthening his standing as a nationwide king by building up the Lagthing (local advisory groups) to consult on national law. He also reorganized his coastal defenses to protect Norway from Denmark.

VICTIM OF RELIGIOUS POLITICS

Harald Greycloak of Norway

(c. 935-c. 970)

Hakon the Good was succeeded (after a bloody battle) by Harald Greycloak (the son of Erik Bloodaxe, whom Hakon had defeated decades earlier).

“Harald Greycloak, or Greypelt, was clearly a man of character and authority,” writes Viking historian Gwyn Jones. But ultimately, Harald was judged a failure as a sovereign. Why?

First, his Norwegian subjects discovered that he’d won his throne with the help of Harald Bluetooth—a Dane!

More important, Harald Greycloak was a Christian unlike the politically savvy Hakon; Harald retained his Christianity and fought harshly to stamp out Norway’s paganism.

Harald too had become a Christian in England. But, as Sturluson writes, “When [he and his brothers] came to rule over Norway, they made no progress in spreading Christianity—only they pulled down the temples of the idols and cast away the sacrifices where they had it in their power, and raised great animosity by doing so.”

Naturally, his subjects, who thought these actions offended their gods, were angered in turn. A series of bad harvests and years of rotten weather deepened their animosity toward Christianity and their sovereign. At the same time, Harald, described as “very condescending, and full of fun” by Sturluson, felt the chill of Harald Bluetooth’s waning affection on his southern flank.

Eventually, sources say, Harald Greycloak, his power base severely weakened, was lured to northeast Jutland and killed.

PROPHETIC KING

Stenkil of Sweden

(d. 1066)

When Stenkil, a Christian, took the Swedish throne, his country was still a stronghold of pagan worship.

In 1060, two Swedish bishops, Egino and Adalward, came to their Christian sovereign with an ambitious plan: promote Christianity by demolishing the heart of pagan worship—the Uppsala temple.

This would strike right at the heart of Scandinavian paganism. Christians everywhere lamented “the Heathen Temple at Uppsala,” including church historian Adam of Bremen. A mere decade after Stenkil’s death, he wrote, “Those who have already adopted Christianity redeem themselves at [Uppsala] ceremonies”– meaning these new converts were covering their religious bases by sacrificing to pagan gods.

“If it were torn down, or preferably burned,” Adam of Bremen continued, “the conversion of the entire nation might follow.”

While sympathetic with the bishops’ zeal, Stenkil, though a firm Christian, turned down the idea. Not only would the bishops be killed, he himself would probably be exiled, and subjects who had converted to Christianity would undoubtedly revert to paganism. In short, destruction of the Uppsala temple would be a political and evangelistic disaster.

The bishops saw his point but persisted, going to regions where they felt paganism was weak and destroyed many local temples.

After Stenkil died in 1066, though, even these “victories” were reversed. The Swedes drove out the antagonistic bishop of Sigtuna, and, as Stenkil had foreseen, paganism returned fullforce. When his son, King Inge, refused to sacrifice to the gods at Uppsala in the 1080s, he was banished from Sweden and its throne.

Georgia Beaverson is the author of the forthcoming novel The Hidden Arrow (Random House, 2000).

Copyright © 1999 by the author or Christianity Today/Christian History magazine.Click here for reprint information on Christian History.

By the turn of the first millennium, pagan forms of burial had been abandoned in Denmark. Christian teaching about life after death must have been persuasive.

Missionaries objected to elaborate pagan burial rituals in which some graves were furnished with valuable goods, even ships, and covered by huge mounds. They urged instead that gifts should be made to them as "payment" for future prayers on behalf of the dead. This was an enormous breach with custom; the rituals of pagan burials were not only for the sake of the dead but also a means of demonstrating the wealth and status of the survivors.

With burial mounds gone (and before church yards became the natural places for memorials), rune stones provided a way of displaying wealth and status while honoring the dead. Such monuments flourished in western Scandinavia in the late tenth and early eleventh centuries, while in eastern Sweden, they became popular later and continued into the twelfth century.

Inscriptions on these stones show the personal side of conversion, especially the place of women in the conversion process; one inscription erected by two men in memory of their father and mother ends "May God now help her soul well." It was obviously their mother, not father, who had converted.

There are many indications, in fact, that women outnumbered men among early Scandinavian converts. Most of the early Christian graves at Birka, for example, were of women, and most of the runic monuments commemorating men who were converted in their last days, who had "died in white clothing," were erected by women. Another inscription, from the eleventh century, commemorates a woman who planned to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

The c.145 inscriptions that refer to bridge building (missionaries often suggested building a bridge or causeway "over deep waters and foul ways for the love of God") confirm the leading role of women in the conversion period. A surprisingly large proportion of these inscriptions were commissioned by or erected in memory of women.

The inscriptions also cast light on the methods of the missionaries. Many of the religious formulas in them derived from the Roman liturgy, which must have played a vital part in Christian evangelism.

Birgit and Peter Sawyer are the authors of Medieval Scandinavia (University of Minnesota, 1993) and editors, with Ian Wood, of The Christianization of Scandinavia (Viktoria Bokförlag, 1987).

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