In Norway we have a well-known example of a bishop attached to a king’s court,
acting as the king’s counsellor, namely the aforementioned Bishop Grímkell. He is the
one who was decisive for the translation of the dead king Óláfr to Nidaros and the
creation of the legend which introduced the first and by far the most important of
the Scandinavian saints, St Óláfr, Perpetuus Rex Norvegiae. The early cult of St Óláfr
was decisive in the Christianisation process and many churches were dedicated to the
Norwegian saint.
In the middle of the eleventh century a consolidation and an expansion of the
ecclesiastical organisation took place. With the initiative of the dynamic archbishop
Adalberth in Hamburg–Bremen ( 1043 – 72 ) some twenty new bishops were ordained to
Scandinavian dioceses, to Hedeby/Schleswig, Ribe, Aarhus, ‘the island of Vendel’, ‘the
islands of Fyn and the Faroes’, Roskilde, Dalby and Lund for Denmark, Skara, Sigtuna,
‘Hälsingland’ and Birka for Sweden, the bishops Tholf and Sigvardr for Norway, a
bishop to Orkney and Bishop Ísleifr to Iceland. The letter describing this achievement
is problematic in many ways, but it shows that there was a definite interest in the
ecclesiastical organising of Scandinavia from Hamburg–Bremen.
A more fundamental organisation of Scandinavia by the Church came later on with
the parish formation, but then we have left the Viking Age and entered into the Middle
Ages of Scandinavia. This process took place in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
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–– chapter 45 : Christianisation and the early Church––