7 - Scandinavia enters Christian Europe

Summary

It was not until the ninth century that significant numbers of Scandinavians were converted to Christianity, but some knowledge of Christian beliefs and rituals had reached Scandinavia much earlier. A few Scandinavians encountered Christians and their churches even before the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west, and in the eighth century the commercial links between Christian Europe and the Baltic region provided opportunities for some Scandinavians to meet Christian merchants and to visit the great Christian market at Dorestad. This trade also made it easier for missionaries to reach pagans living in the coastal regions north of the Rhine.

As early as the first years of the eighth century Willibrord, an English monk who had been working in Frisia, extended his mission to the Danes, probably travelling in a merchant ship to Ribe. He soon abandoned the attempt and sailed back to Frisia with thirty boys, presumably in the hope that some of them would eventually preach to the Danes in their own language. It was, however, over a hundred years before missionaries returned to the Danes. For the Frankish rulers on whose support missionaries like Willibrord depended it was more important to convert their immediate neighbours – the Frisians, Saxons and other Germans beyond the Rhine – than the more distant Danes.

Early missions

By the beginning of the ninth century the Franks had subjected and forcibly converted the Saxons south of the river Elbe. This made the Danes their neighbours, across the no man’s land of Nordalbingia. The Danes were then ruled by Godfred, who actively opposed Frankish expansion, but in the succession disputes that followed his assassination in 810 some of the contestants, including Godfred’s sons, continued to oppose the Franks, while others were prepared to come to terms with them – and one, Harald, actively welcomed their support.