TL;DR:
Between AD 800 and 1200, Christianity spread among the Vikings through royal influence, community-wide movements, cultural contact, and missionary activity. Unlike many later colonial situations in which conquerors promoted their religion among subject peoples, some Vikings adopted the faith of people they had conquered.
The 700s saw the emergence of fierce Viking raiding parties that pillaged and plundered much of Western Europe. Not long after that, Christian missionaries began arriving in Scandinavia. Then, within about 400 years, Christianity had become the dominant religion in Viking lands.
How was this possible? How did people known primarily in Western Europe as raiders gradually become Christians?
Three key factors shaped the strategy used to evangelize the Vikings. This pattern resembles, in some respects, what occurred during the earlier evangelization of the Germanic peoples. [ Read more ]
This third feature of Viking evangelization is particularly interesting when compared with the later era of European colonial expansion beginning around the time of Vasco da Gama. In that period, powerful colonial nations commonly sent missionaries to subject peoples. The relatively low level of political suspicion encountered by some English missionaries in Viking lands contrasts with the opposition Western missionaries have sometimes faced because of their perceived association with colonial or foreign powers.
For instance, my own denomination, the Church of the Nazarene, had two American missionaries imprisoned for a time in Mozambique, where a Marxist government came to power when that country gained its independence from Portugal. One wonders if these missionaries would have been imprisoned if their sending base had been a country seen as politically less threatening. A study of the evangelization of the Vikings (and of the Germanic peoples, too) should give missionary-sending agencies further encouragement to develop a strong missionary force from countries outside the traditional Western missionary-sending centers.
I think of my denomination, the Church of the Nazarene. About 75 percent of our worldwide membership lives outside the United States, Canada, and the British Isles. Yet a substantial portion of our missionary force has historically carried passports from those countries. Fortunately, denominational leaders have sought to increase the percentage of Nazarene missionaries sent from elsewhere.5 [Note: By 2021, Nazarene missionaries were being sent from about 60 countries.]
May the Lord continue to guide us as we learn lessons from the entire history of the expansion of Christianity.
— Howard Culbertson, hculbert@snu.edu
1 Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History of Christianity, rev. ed. (New York: Harper and Row, 1975), p. 386.
2 Ibid.
3 William Richey Hogg, "The Rise of Protestant Missionary Concerns," The Theology of the Christian Mission, Gerald H. Anderson, ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1961), p. 97.
4 Latourette, op. cit.
5 Jerald Johnson, "Report of Department of World Missions" in Journal of the Nineteenth General Assembly of the Church of the Nazarene (meeting held in Dallas, Texas, June 20–25, 1976; no publisher given), p. 474.
The Christian evangelization of the Vikings between AD 800 and 1200 was a multifaceted, complex process. It was marked by both coercion and cultural exchange. Viking communities encountered Christianity through raids, settlement, trade, political alliances, and the work of missionaries from the British Isles and continental Europe.
These missionaries often faced daunting challenges, and many Vikings continued to adhere to traditional Norse beliefs and practices. Nonetheless, conversion gained momentum by the eleventh century through alliances between Viking leaders and Christian rulers and through the conversion of rulers such as the Danish king Harald Bluetooth. The emergence of Christian kingdoms in Scandinavia, including Norway under Olaf Tryggvason and Olaf II, signaled a decisive shift toward Christianity. The conversion of Viking leaders and the incorporation of Christian elements into Viking culture contributed to Christianity's gradual acceptance among the wider population and to the Christianization of Scandinavia by the end of the twelfth century.
