the Swedes and convert them. The aforementioned monk, Ansgar, was some time in the
820 s chosen to go and check if the Swedes really were ready to be converted to Christen-
dom. And after a dramatic journey he arrived in the town of Birka, where he met the
Swedish king Björn.
In Birka Ansgar’s most important contact was a man, Hergeirr, who in the Vita is
called a praefectus, hence some kind of chieftain or royal steward. He was the first to
convert and to be baptised by Ansgar, and within a short time they built a church on his
plot of land (presumably in the town). Rimbert relates several stories of pious people in
Birka and of miracles conducted in the town. After Ansgar left Birka, the people are said
to have returned to paganism and the Swedes became hostile towards Christians. One
story tells about the missionary bishop Gautbert, who was forced to leave Birka, and his
follower, Nithard, who became the first Christian to be killed, and hence the first
martyr. This sad situation led Ansgar to go on a second journey to Birka in 852. He then
met King Olof, and urged him to secure the rights of the Christians in his kingdom.
Of course, this is not a true story, but bears all the signs of having a core of truth that
has been amended and ‘improved’, a vita of a holy man, the first archbishop of a
struggling Hamburg–Bremen archdiocese which laid claim on this northerly province.
We don’t know if Ansgar’s journeys on the whole resulted in a Christian community,
and traces of the church mentioned by Rimbert have not yet been found in Birka. There
are actually reasons to believe that Christians were residing in Birka already before the
visits of Ansgar. The early emporia, such as Birka, Hedeby, Ribe etc., were probably
cultural melting pots, where people from a wide range of countries and cultures lived. It
is more than probable that in Birka people belonging to the eastern Church lived
alongside, for example, Frisians belonging to the Catholic Church and so on.
As regards Iceland, we have the paradox that this island was already ‘Christianised’
when the first Norwegian colonisers settled here in the ninth century. According to the
written sources these settlers met Irish monks, hermits (‘papar’), who – so typically for
the Irish Church – had left Ireland in search of remote islands to live in solitude.
The Christianisation of the Norwegians on Iceland is often mentioned in the Ice-
landic sagas, perhaps to be understood as a topos, such as Ari froði’s Íslendingabók,
Njál’s saga, the large saga of Óláfr Tryggvason, Saint Óláfr’s saga, Kristni saga etc. The
story is that a first mission took place at the end of the tenth century, when the
archbishop Adaldag of Bremen sent out two missionaries, the Icelander Þorvaldr
Kóðransson and a Saxon bishop Frederik, who made themselves unwelcome in Iceland
after killing two men. A decade later the Norwegian king, Óláfr Tryggvason, is said
to have sent two more missionaries to Iceland, who, however, were similarly violent,
destroyed several pagan cult sites, and had to leave.
According to the sagas the conversion of the Icelanders was a significant event. Two
expelled Christian Icelanders, Gizzur hvíti and Hjalti Skeggjason, returned to Iceland in
the summer of 999 or 1000 and went to the Alþing, and were able to talk at the
Lo ̨gberg. That year a Christian party stood against a pagan party, and there was a risk
that Iceland could be divided as a result of this clash. The Christian goði, Hallr frá Síða,
therefore asked the pagan Lawspeaker, Þorgeirr, to work out a compromise, which both
parties could agree upon. And according to the sagas the Lawspeaker sat in his thing hut
under a cloak and thought all night and in the morning addressed the people saying that
if Iceland should continue to be undivided, they had to agree on one law and one faith.
And this faith must be the Christian religion, the pagan Þorgeirr concluded. However,
–– Stefan Brink––