Truth Unites - Scandinavia's Christianization: A FORGOTTEN Story

Episode Date: September 5, 2022

It is commonly claimed that the Christianization of Scandinavia in the  10th and 11th centuries was just a matter of politics. In this video I draw from Adam of Bremen, a medieval historian, to show how many  missionaries and martyrs played a role in the spread of Christianity  into Northern Europe. Truth Unites is a mixture of apologetics and theology, with an irenic focus. Gavin Ortlund (PhD, Fuller Theological Seminary) serves as senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Ojai. SUPPORT: Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/truthunites One time donation: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/truthunites FOLLOW: Twitter: https://twitter.com/gavinortlund Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TruthUnitesPage/ Website: https://gavinortlund.com/

This video is going to be about the 10th and 11th century Christianization of Scandinavia. I know that can seem like a really niche topic. Maybe you've never thought about that before. Maybe you're not interested in that. Let me explain why I'm so excited to share this video. This topic is absolutely fascinating. It's a fascinating story and it's incredibly neglected. I try not to use too much that's sensationalistic in my thumbnails or video titles that

doesn't accurately reflect what's in the video. But in this case, I think the words forgotten story for this episode of church history isn't an exaggeration. It really is. There's just so little on this. I don't really know of any resource, contemporary or popular level that, academic or popular level, that shares the particular narrative. I'm going to try to lay before us here in terms of these missionaries and martyrs who are bringing the gospel into Scandinavia. So what I've done is I've worked very carefully through this 11th century text by a medieval historian named Adam of Bremen in order to cultivate this project. I worked very carefully through this over the summer and then I'm just distilled it down into this video that

I've organized and hope it will be helpful for viewers. Now let me just say that in most church history texts, you really don't find a lot about the Christianization of Scandinavia specifically. Sometimes you'll have more on some of the other parts of Europe, like St. Patrick going to Ireland or something like this. But this episode is almost completely overlooked. In many church history texts, there will simply be nothing at all about it. When you do find it discussed, and it was really Andrew Luth who set me hunting for things. And I was amazed how little I could find. Andrew Luth is a fantastic Orthodox scholar. And he talks about this very briefly in one of his books.

and I was kind of intrigued, like, boy, that's kind of the genesis of this for me. And then I just, into my imagination, into my mind, began to flood these thoughts of interest of what would it be like, to be a Christian in Sweden in like the 900s or the 10 hundreds and so forth. And so I just became just kind of amazingly curious about this. So I'm hunting down and I'm amazed how little I can find. Now, when you do find it discussed, it's almost always this idea that the Christianization of Scandinavia was basically politics. This is the reigning idea that I want to argue against. For example, Richard Fletcher, is a respected medieval historian who wrote a book on the conversion of Europe to Christianity. He has a chapter on Scandinavia. He's getting to the end and he's explaining that the reason we don't

have a set of missionary literature on the Christianization of Scandinavia is basically this is just politics. It's just kind of a natural. Christianity is kind of the natural byproduct of this larger cultural assimilation and so forth. He says, apart from royal push and shove, there is precious little evidence for missionary activity in the positive sense that we associate with Patrick or Amandis or Willa Broad. Now, by the way, the names, if this video is entertaining to you for no other reason, The names, these medieval Scandinavian names are so classic. If, you know, young parents out there are going to have kids thinking about names, you'll get some good ideas.

You'll see what I'm talking about. So by the way, you know, probably Patrick, most people know of Patrick, missionary to Ireland, Willa Broad was an 8th century missionary to the Netherlands, Amanda's, a 7th century missionary to France. Most of the names I'm pretty confident about how to pronounce Amanda, I don't. I have no idea if I'm pronouncing that right or wrong. Fletcher continues, Adam of Bremen might proclaim that the mission to the heathen is the first duty of the Church of Hamburg, but the spectacle with which he presents us is of intermittently empire-building

archbishops who grasped opportunities to send out clergy in an entirely pragmatic way. Okay, that idea that you just got in those sentences there is representative of academic portrait of the Christianization of Scandinavia. If you pick up a more popular-level book, so there's Fletcher's book, if anybody wants to buy it, it's not expensive. Here's in this captivating history series of books, if you pick up a book like this,

the more popular level, it's giving a hit, that one is on the history of Norway. Same idea, very cynical. It recounts how one king named Haken the Good, I'll put up a picture of him. He's the one pictured in red on the throne there. I'll try to put pictures up for most of the figures I mentioned, if not all of them.

Some of them you can't find pictures of. He's saying he was an early influence in spreading Christianity into Norway, and then he says, other Viking chieftains and rulers also accepted baptism, but their main motivation was to strengthen their ties to foreign rulers. The attempted conversions were also used as a political play, as the newly Christian kings could now replace their political enemies and elevate Christian followers in their place. And then he talks about the role of another figure, another king Olaf Heraldson.

There's lots of Olaf's coming up and kind of completing the process of the Christianization of Norway. And he says, modern scholars understand that Christianization was a process and that the significance of St. Olaf is more symbolic than real. Nevertheless, he did impose Christianity on his subjects and use cruelty to do so. So this is the common idea out there that I want to oppose. This idea that Christianity coming to be rooted in Scandinavia, which it certainly had had contact there earlier on, but it's 10th and 11th centuries that it really takes root. And the idea is this is just politics, it's just power plays, it's not as much the result of active intentional missions and evangelism and so forth. And a corollary to this is people say that the evils of the pre-Christian people in Scandinavia, Adam will use the term pagan or heathen to describe them, that these evils were exaggerated.

It wasn't that bad. Christianity didn't have much of a difference. So this video is basically going to be an argument against that common claim, scholarly and popular level. And I just want to say it leaves out so much and thereby fundamentally mischaracterizes how these countries became Christianized. And certainly there were political factors. But I want to show how many waves of missionaries and evangelists it took for Christianity to take root in places like Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the surrounding islands as well. So Scandinavia usually just means Denmark, Sweden, Norway. Sometimes it's used more broadly. We'll mainly focus on those countries, especially Denmark and Sweden, but also a little bit. There were also lots of missions efforts beyond that to Iceland, Greenland, and then the Orkney Islands, which are,

off the coast of northern Scotland. Yeah, so I just want to tell the story. I want these martyrs and these brave, courageous missionaries to be honored and for their story to be told, because I don't see anyone talking about this in the scholarship anywhere. And I just think it's, and I also want to argue that Christianity had a positive cultural impact, very positive in Scandinavia. And I just think it's tragic that this is sometimes forgotten or overlooked. And so sharing what gotten from Adam's text is, I hope, helpful for people out there. So we'll have four sections to this video. First, four reasons why this is so interesting and important. Second, a basic historical overview focusing on these missionaries I want to discuss. Third, I'm going to give

a brief argument that Adam's account of the Christianization of Scandinavia is generally trustworthy because that's frequently disputed, increasingly disputed, and he is a our main source of information. And then lastly, I want to draw out four quick lessons for the church today. I'll try to keep this moving quickly and sustain your interest. This will be a longer and more scholarly video than most of my videos. So if you watch all the way to the end, let me know in the comments, and I'll like your comment. And let me know if you think this was worthwhile for me to do. It took a lot of work. I mean, I'm not doing it just for this video. It's also interesting to me personally, and I'm going to develop this into an academic article, Lord willing. But

It took a lot of work, but I'm really proud of this, and I hope it has value. If you find value in it, of course, I appreciate people liking and, you know, talking about the medieval missions is not the hottest trending topic on YouTube. So however much you can help me share this, I appreciate that. And, you know, for those who are new to my channel or newer, I would just invite you to join in with the work that I'm doing. The elevator speech for Truth Unites is our world is rapidly polarizing and there's so much disintegration and negativity. I'm trying to be a reconstructive and ironic voice toward God

doing basic apologetics, but then also theology, doing things like theological triage, defending Protestantism, trying to have positive, respectful dialogue with others and so forth. And you could consider becoming a patron as well. I really appreciate that support. And that's a great community of people to interact with and get feedback from too. Okay, diving in. Number one, Why is this important? Four reasons. Number one is church history is simply so fascinating. It's like, for Christians, it's like our family photo album. It tells us about how we got here. It explains so much about the current state of the world right now. And I'm not going to say too much about this because I have a whole book about the value of studying history called theological retrieval for evangelicals. So I'll just summarize it like that. Number two, history is really edifying and important. study. You know, as we go through this, you'll see the story is absolutely fascinating. The saying truth is stranger than fiction is so true. You couldn't make this stuff up. It's just amazing. But it's also edifying, and it, as we'll see at the very end, it raises questions that are

worth grappling with today. The past is always relevant to the present. It's amazing how much that is the case. Number three, as we've mentioned, this is a particularly neglected chapter of church history that I'm jealous for it to be better known. Of all, All times in church history, kind of setting it up like this, you could say the medieval era in general is probably the most neglected. People love the church fathers. Reformation and modern church history tend to get more focus. The medieval era, you know, sometimes even the old enlightenment idea that this is the dark

ages, sometimes that still persists in people's minds, which is very unfortunate because the Middle Ages is a very rich time, intellectually, artistically, and so forth. and but then within the, and I just think medieval history is fascinating, but within the medieval era, where people do focus tends to be more on the high Middle Ages and then the late Middle Ages to some extent. People are very understandably interested in Thomas Aquinas and scholasticism and things like that. So then you say, okay, so the early Middle Ages could be the most neglected span of time in church history in terms of our awareness of it. So we're thinking early Middle Ages is sixth to tenth centuries.

Now, within that, people tend to neglect the latter part, I told you this gets kind of niche, of the early Middle Ages, more. So people are still interested in the sixth century, the seventh century, you've got ecumenical councils going on, you've got Gregory the Great and Bede and these kinds of things. You've got the iconic class controversy in the east, so forth. But you get to like the 10th century. There's such little, I mean, if you had a candidate for the least

important century seemingly in church history. The 10th century would be a good candidate for that. But what I would say about one of the reasons I love studying church history is, and all of history, really, just like our lives, the seemingly unimportant times are profoundly connected to the seemingly important times. And there really are no unimportant times, just like there are no unimportant people or unimportant places in God's world. And so, you know, it's just absolutely fascinating, but it is incredibly neglected. People just hardly ever talk about the 9th century, 10th century, 11th century. Last reason is, of all people who can particularly benefit from learning this process of how Christianity spread throughout Europe, we who live in the time of secularization

particularly stand to benefit. Because the beginning of something is, you know, is relevant to its end. By studying how Christianity came into places in Northwest Europe, we find intriguing lessons that we'll return to at the end of this video that speak to how we function as the church as it's leaving those places. Because today, Denmark and Sweden frequently

rank as some of the least religious places in the world. So it's fascinating to see the full story from the start to the finish, and they touch one They have relevance to each other. For example, questions about the relationship of Christianity and political power come up. So we're often, I suspect many people when they study history will be surprised at how relevant it is. Okay, let's dive in, second part of this video to a basic overview with a view to missions. So Adam of Bremen is mainly famous for this book that he wrote, The Deeds of the Bishops of the Hamburg Bremen Church.

I'll just talk about this as Adam's book. Now I'll put up a picture. You can see where Hamburg and Bremen are. These are cities in northern Germany, just south of Denmark. What happens is in the mid-9th century, these two cities are united as one Episcopal C. That just means that there's one bishop who has jurisdiction over both territories. And then at that, around the same time, this Episcopal C receives an official commission as a kind of beachhead for missions efforts to the north into Scandinavia. And Adam's history book has four sections, the first two books just chronicle the history of these churches in Hamburg and Bremen starting in the 700s, and then up to the 11th century

when Adam is writing. And then book three focuses on one bishop there named Adelbert, who's the bishop that Adam personally knew and of significant one, both for good and then for back. bad. And then book four is basically an ethnography of Scandinavia in Adam's time. The word ethnography, just kind of a technical term for basically a description of culture, basically. And so it's in book four and then various historical sections, passages in books one through three that we get almost everything we know about the Christianization of Scandinavia in the 10th and 11th centuries. really everything we know about Scandinavia in the 10th and 11th centuries.

Not everything, but it's our primary source of information because we don't have a lot of other information. So all to say, Adam's history is just an invaluable source of information, and that's why it's so important to think about its trustworthiness, and I'll come back to that. Now, as you're reading through books one and two, if there's anything that just strikes you over and over and over, It's just how many missionaries are going up into Denmark, Sweden, and Norway to preach the gospel there, and doing so in the face of enormous persecution and even martyrdom. Early on in the 8th century, as Adam's history book starts out, Christianity is still spreading through places of what we call Germany and France, places like this, and you have missionaries.

I try to put up pictures of these, most of these people all put up pictures of St. Boniface, who was martyred. and then Willahad, who was probably the first bishop of Bremen, before the church merged with Hamburg, who was a missionary in those regions in Germany. And then in the 9th century, there's a bishop named Ansgar. And I'll put up not only a picture, but a statue of him that's up in modern-day Hamburg. And it's during his archbishopric that the two churches are united, and they receive this commission to bring the gospel north into Scandinavia. and that is why you saw in the Fletcher quote earlier,

how he talked about how Adam says missions is the first duty of the church at Hamburg because they were given this commission. Ansgar himself, he didn't just commission people to go north and spread the gospel. He himself went. And from Ansgar's day forward, so we're talking, you know, like mid-ninth century, there's just continual. It never ceases. continual stream of missionaries and evangelists going up to share the gospel in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway.

So, for example, just to give a little flavor here of how Adam will describe this, he's talking about Ansgar and his associate named Whitmar. They sail up to Sweden, and it says they were kindly received by King Bjorn. That's Bjorn Ironside, who is a king and kind of Viking chieftain in like mid, like 850s, somewhere in the there. And we're publicly, and were permitted publicly to preach the word of God. And so in the course of one year, they won many to the Lord Jesus Christ. And then he continues, oh, the wonderful providence of the omnipotent God for the calling of the heathen, which the maker orders as he wills, and when he wills, and by whom he wills. And then he's quoting Adam of Bremen, is quoting Romans 9,

about how, you know, God has mercy on whom he wills, God hardens whom he wills and so forth, to interpret this open reception to the gospel at that time. So there's lots of missions going on, people becoming Christians, but it never really takes root. It keeps lapsing back. There's so much persecution. And that sentence I just quoted in Adam, that's like very representative of just constant,

you know, over and over, from Ansgar's time forward. A lot of it, like with Ansgar himself, is not just the archbishop sending missionaries, it's the Archbishop himself going. In the 10th century, you have Uni, for example, who is one of the archbishops there of Hamburg, Bremen, and like Ansgar himself, he goes.

I mean, he dies up there. He gets sick and Sweden and dies. Now, a lot of the people going are getting martyred. There's a lot of persecution. My ancestry is Swedish. I'm Swedish. So no insults to Swedish people or Scandinavian people, but at this time in history,

these people were very violent. You've probably heard about Viking raids and so forth. And this was happening continuously, you know, offensive Viking raids down into Germany and France and other places. And then wherever in the Scandinavian regions, whenever a church is established, it's just absolutely brutal. As brutal as you can imagine,

entire churches are burned down, all the people are slaughtered, you know. At one point in the 10th century, the Hungarians attack, and Adam records how they are burning churches, butchering priests before the altars, mutilating the crosses there. I probably will get emotional talking about it.

For some reason, I preach a sermon on Antipus, the martyr that Jesus brags about in the letters of Revelation 2 and 3, and I could hardly finish the sermon. I was getting so choked up. I get really emotional thinking about martyrs and persecution for some reason that I can't fully understand. But a lot of these things,

it's pretty grisly. It's pretty dark. A lot of demonic opposition. And so he's describing this terrible, terrible stuff. And I won't go into any graphic details because I know some of us can't handle that. But we need to know the story, though. And so at the same time as this, this Danish king, a man named Gorm the old, sets out to destroy Christianity in Denmark. And he's torturing Christians in the most brutal ways. And Adam is describing how there's another German city called Oldenburg, where in the early 11th century, there's a large population of Christians there at that time. And all of them are slaughtered, except for 60 priests who were kept for the purpose of mockery. And Adam writes concerning their martyrdom, after the skins of their heads had been cut with an iron

in the form of a cross, the brain of each was laid bare, with hands tied behind their backs. The confessors of God were then dragged through one Slavic town after another, harried either with blows or in some other manner until they died. And so I think that's to the east. I think he's talking about what we would call Poland there. And he's, Adam is getting this from one of his main sources. We'll come back to Svain, a king in Denmark. And he says, he asked Svain for more information, and Svain said, stop, son. We have so many martyrs in Denmark and Slavia that they can hardly be comprehended in a book. Now, you can probably see already kind of why I am so passionate for this story to be told and so indignant at this idea that it's all politics because it dishonors the

memory of these courageous Christians. And, you know, the persecution they were facing was both, it's always the most brutal when it's both physical and psychological. It's both the mockery and contempt and the physical, you know. So it's helpful to, to just honor their courage, these Christians. The motivation for these missionary attempts does not seem to be primarily political. At one point, Adelbert, the Archbishop that Adam admires so much, is encouraging a man named Gottschalk for his mission's work there.

This is not Gottschak of Orbi, who's the most famous Gottschalk in the Middle Ages, again, one of these great medieval names. And his whole appeal is, there will be many rewards, many crowns for you in heaven for the conversions of these people you are seeing. The goal, the motivation seems to be heavenly reward because he's dying. There doesn't seem to be a lot of political benefit to that, at least for the missionary. There's also incredible courage that is displayed to the point of, at times, I would have to say,

kind of a fanaticism maybe, you know, some weird stuff a little bit. But you can understand when you're like getting slaughtered by the Vikings, You may want to try to do anything you can in those front lines, missions, circumstances to try to get their attention or something. And so there's this idea of Popo. There's a missionary named Popo, P-O-P-P-O, who will light himself on fire. And the idea is God is miraculously preventing him from dying from the fire. And that's a sign that the God of the Christians is the real God, not Thor, you know. And he'll do other miracles like grabbing a hot iron and showing it didn't burn his hand and things like this.

Now, for those who will be skeptical and say, well, those aren't, that didn't really happen, those aren't real miracles. I mean, number one, I think we should always just be a little cautious in judging. But the other thing is, it still shows you, this wasn't all politics. It still shows you, this is front lines work where there's, it shows you the intensity of the situation. Again, it just fills my heart with this sense of honor to think about these people who are suffering for Christ. As they are preaching, it has these consequences of uprooting sorcery and demonic activity, and they're constantly smashing idols. There's a later preacher named Agino, and Adam says that they are all said to have been moved to tears by his preaching

and to have manifested such sorrow for their error that they immediately broke up their idols of their own accord and hastened to be baptized. In the 11th century, there's a missionary named Wolfred, who's preaching and he himself is smashing idols, and he gets persecuted. Let me, this is so fascinating. It's the cool one because he's smashing an idol of Thor. Let me give you Adam's account of this. A certain Englishman named Wolfred, inspired by divine love,

entered Sweden and with great courage preached the word of God to the pagans. And as by his preaching, he converted many to the Christian faith. He proceeded to anathematize a popular idol named Thor, which stood out in the thing of the pagans. That sentence is referencing a pagan temple in Uppsala. More on that later. And at the same time, he seized a battle axe and broke the image to pieces. And forthwith, he was pierced with a thousand wounds for such a daring,

for such daring. And his soul passed into heaven, earning a martyr's laurels. His body was mangled by the barbarians, and after being subjected to much mockery was plunged into a swamp. That's what they do. Again, the psychological stuff, too. They try to just tear to shreds, not just through pain, but also through contempt. This persecution is par for the course at this time. It doesn't sound like it's all politics.

It sure sounds like it's courage and faith that is advancing the gospel there. Now, something important to note here that we'll return to, Welfred, the person who was just plunged into the swamp, he was an English missionary. He's not from the Hamburg-Bremant Church. So you can't say, oh, Adam is, this is, Adam does exaggerate. So we'll get to this. Adam does exaggerate the greatness of the sea of Hamburg-Bremant.

That's kind of his agenda. He does exaggerate that. But you can't say there would be no motive for the reflection of his own church to talk about these English martyrs like Wolffert. In fact, a sense of cooperation with other missionaries, like English missionaries, for the larger purpose of the advancement of Christianity is something that comes up elsewhere in the book. At one point, he's talking about the conversion of Olaf Trigvison or Olaf I. This is one of the key conversions that leads to the Christianization of Norway. Olaf getting baptized around the year 1000, a little before the year 1000 AD, changes everything. It's a game changer.

Again, we're going to come back to politics and Christianity and the relationship there. And Olaf is said to have built the first church in Norway. Well, Adam is saying that basically it was our missionaries, missionaries from the jurisdiction of the church in Hamburg, Bremen, that converted him. But then he says, others say that, of old and at this time certain bishops and priests of England left their home for the sake of doing mission work and that they baptized Olaf and others. And then he mentioned some of these missionaries, a man named John, for example. Now, keep in mind, the church in Hamburg, Bremen had received an official commissioning to evangelize these northern countries. So you can imagine there could be a temptation

of rivalry or wanting to claim credit for this or something like that. But Adam acknowledges the tradition that he's received of these English missionaries, and he quotes from Philippians one. Listen to what he says. If this is true, the mother church at Hamburg did not, I say, look askance even at strangers if they bestowed grace upon her children, saying with the apostles, some preach out of envy and contention, but some also for goodwill and love. But what then? So that by all possible means, whether by occasion or by truth, Christ will be preached. and he says, in this also I rejoice, gay and will rejoice. That seems to reflect what today we would, in our church we talk of this as a kingdom mindset,

partnering with other churches so it's not about our tribe, you know. There's something of that in there, unless you're really cynical and just, you know, completely block out anything Adam is saying, which again, as we'll talk about, I don't think we have reason to do. So already you can see hopefully that this idea that it's just political fallout that leads to the Christianization of Scandinavia in the 10th and 11th centuries just overlooks so much. Which is not to say that politics is unimportant, and I'll return to that, but it just ignores this stream of roughly 200 years of steady missionaries getting brutally martyered and persecuted. Moreover, even when political power was involved, it was not always coercive.

Sometimes there were political agreements and negotiations. For example, in the 9th century, there's another Olaf, Olaf Guthfrettson, and he wants to make people Christians, so he has plans to destroy this pagan temple in Uppsala that we'll talk about later. And the people committed to paganism are hearing about this, and they don't want that, so they strike a bargain. And they basically say, Olaf, you take whatever part of Sweden you want, build a church there, but just leave us the temple here. so that people don't have to become a Christian if they don't want to. And Olaf says, great. And he establishes an Episcopal Sea in the western part of Sweden.

And there establishes a bishop there named Thorgout. And Thorgout is energetically doing missions in that region of Sweden while the temple is still up. So the picture here of how political power and Christianity relate is much more complicated than just the way it's often described. Additionally, as important as it was for kings to convert and then make Christianity legal, it's not the case that every time a king did so, it was purely for pragmatic reasons. That is overly cynical. There was an expectation for a changed life, even for a king who gets baptized, generally speaking.

I'm not denying political motives or mixed motives in many cases. For example, Adam records an episode of Adelbert exhorting one of the Danish kings with scripture and basically rebuking him. And he talks about how the king listened to Adelbert. But it wasn't a total victory. He basically says the king was obedient and yielding to Adelbert's rebukes on everything except for two areas, gluttony and women. So he remained a glutton and basically what we think that means is he didn't give up his concubines. So that's a case of disobedience. in this king. But what that shows is there were other changes in his life that he was listening to this instruction from the archbishop. But more importantly, in becoming a Christian, it's clear that there

was an expectation he was supposed to give up his concubines. In other words, Adelbert didn't just say, oh, well, it's just politics. So just, you know, let the king do whatever he wants as long as he converts and gets baptized. There was an expectation for a changed life, for obedience to the scriptures. And so that's just important. So, you know, the picture here is complicated. We don't want to deny the political factor, but there's so much more to the story. And these courageous martyrs and missionaries need to have their story told. Okay, third section of the video, let me just offer a brief case that is too brief, more brief than I will do in my article for why we can take Adams account as generally trustworthy.

This is so important, obviously, because Adam is. as we've said, our main source of information, and he's tended to be viewed increasingly skeptically in the scholarship. Now, I am not arguing that Adam was completely reliable, or that he wrote according to the standards of and in the way of modern historiography. He had an agenda. The point of his book is to chronicle the greatness of the Sea of Hamburg-Bremon, and he does manifestly exaggerate what is accomplished by that sea. And there's some pretty dubious claims about all that was accomplished. He also makes a few errors, and at times he seems to evidence some superstitious beliefs about certain things. But that doesn't mean we should be unduly skeptical

of the general account. We can still learn so much from him, for three reasons, at least. First of all, much of what we can glean from Adam has to do with topics that he would have no reason to invent or exaggerate. When he's talking, you know, for example, you can see how it may be, maybe he's exaggerating with the case of some of the missionaries sent out from his own church, but why would he make up these stories about the English missionaries, for example? Second, many of the things that Adam tells us are confirmed by later historians. And the more confirmation you see, the more you start to trust the person in general.

For example, one of the most famous parts of Book 4 of Adam's account is this account of the temple and Uppsala, which I'll describe later. And, you know, there's later, there's other people who talk about that. 13th century Icelandic historian named Snorri Sturluson. I told you, I'll put up a picture of him, I told you, it's like you couldn't make these names up. It's amazing. And yeah, I mean, how, how random can you get that he's an Icelandic historian in the 13th century? But this is one example of where you find corroboration. And so basically there are, you know, scholars, it's not disputed in the scholarship that there was a temple in Uppsala. The details of Adam's description are disputed at times.

you know, the point is when you find confirmation and corroboration, the more you find that, the more this is helping you trust, okay, this person isn't doing wild hagiography or just making somebody writing to make somebody look good and making things up. A third reason and the main one that I've been digging into and thinking about is Adam's careful use of sources. So Adam was acquainted with a wide array of sources and he displays great carefulness as a historian in using them. The translator of this book, Francis Sahn, notes that Adam would have had contact with lots of people coming through from the Scandinavian countries. And he also would have had personal access to the archives of his archbishopric and to the books in the cathedral repositories, for example. And Sond lists a lot of those resources, these other biographies written earlier and so forth.

It's a lot of resources. Adam displays a lot of carefulness. Adam also lists the resources himself in the prologue of the book. He mentions the things he's drawing from, and he's just swearing. He's saying, I'm telling you the truth. You know, he's before God. He says, truth is my witness that I prophesied nothing out of my own heart and made no statement without due consideration. Everything I'm about to put down will be substantiated by sound authorities so that if I am not believed, credit at least may be accorded to my source. Then throughout the narrative, Adam will frequently tell you where he's getting something. I mentioned the Danish king, Svane Estritson earlier, late 11th century. He gets a lot of information from him because Svane had himself spent a lot of time in the northern regions. And so he'll tell you the particular information that he gets from Svain and how Svain got it in the text. He'll tell you about that. For example, he'll tell about a missionary named Eric who was beheaded for his preaching there and another one named Alford who was martyred and then he'll say, here's what.

where Svein was at this time that he came to come about this information, and here's how I heard it from him and so forth. By the way, it's just amazing how much, you know, we just barely hear about through this accidental, circumstantial background, and you think it's so interesting, you know, very well, so much of this, we would never have known. If Adam's book hadn't been randomly found in the 16th century in a library in Denmark, I wouldn't be making this video and we wouldn't be, we wouldn't, there's so much we wouldn't know more on that at the end. But so now here's the point. So, you know, Adam will tell you, oh, it takes one month to cross Norway and two months to cross Sweden. And here's how I know this. Spain spent 12 years there

doing this, that and the other and so forth. And what, and then Adam will try to corroborate everything he's getting from one source with the other sources he has. Imperial and papal writings, other history books. He's trying to cross-reference things. And he will identify these sources by name in the text. He'll say there's a Swedish bishop named Adelward the Younger, for example. He told me about this. Many times throughout the book he would do this. So he's drawing from lots of sources, oral and written. He's trying to harmonize them, build them together, and he identifies those sources. Why is this significant? Someone's going to say, well, just the fact that he says that doesn't make it true. Yes, but it touches on a principle that historians often use to determine reliability, and that's

falsifiability. You can see this principle wielded in scholarly efforts to find the so-called historical Jesus. Think about it like this. If Adam is wrong, for whatever reason, and he tells you his source, the source can be consulted by those reading his text to disprove him. And that makes it a lot less likely that he's just wildly an error, that he's making things up. There can be errors still, but it's less likely that he's just going to be concocting things or wildly exaggerating. So Adam is very different from some other medieval texts we have that are really hard to know, where they have no confirmation or they're written way after the fact. They don't have sources they're working with or whatever it might be. And he shows the willingness, even the heroes he's on or he's

very, you can tell he admires and respects Adel Bert a great deal, but he's willing to criticize him. And he talks about, this is the whole third section. He's, you know, saying, at one point he even says, I want to say more praising things about Adelbert, but I am afraid to lie. Then he talks, he quotes scriptures about how woe is us if we call evil good and so forth. And, you know, he also shows discrimination in his usage of resources. He'll quote a resource and say, ah, but this resource had a lot of fabulous things that we don't believe in. You know, so he's showing discernment like that. Now, I am not saying Adam is infallible and totally right about everything.

I'm not saying he's objective or denying the exaggeration. I'm just saying he's a careful historian. He deserves to be taken seriously. We shouldn't be unduly skeptical of his text. All right. Finishing off, let's talk about four things we can learn. This has been, this study, I mean, I know that it sounds kind of nerdy, but this study has been significant in my life.

I've just found it so interesting to think about these courageous martyrs. And it's impacted me. And so I'd like to share four thoughts of what we might learn. The first is, it's interesting as a reminder that Christianity has no geographical center. More so than other religions that tend to be more geographically stable, Christianity is constantly on the move. Today, Scandinavia is a more secularizing nation. We call it, together with Western Europe in general, we call it post-Christian. We think of it as kind of like where Christianity used to be.

You know, it's like, oh, yeah, kind of Christendom in twilight, the fading Christendom. Well, it's just fascinating to think of at this time, not yet a millennium ago when Adam is writing, these countries were the remote frontier. These were these seem to be the fringes where these uncivilized barbarian type people lived, you know. At one point, Adam is marveling at the bravery of Ansgar for going. And he says, because the desolation brought about by the North Northmen and Danes exceeded all belief, one may wonder the more that the holy confessors of God, Ansgar and Rimburt, should have gone undaunted through such perils by sea and land and preached

to peoples before whose onslaughts neither armed kings nor the mighty Frankish tribes could stand. We find it scarcely possible to believe that anyone, even an apostle, should in a time of such fierce persecution dare to go to a people so ferocious that it is hardly human in a region so very remote, I say, from our world. Now, that we find it scarcely possible, he's rebuking that mentality in the context. He's saying, don't say that. They are human. All people are made in God's image. And he's saying he quotes the Great Commission in Matthew 28 right after this passage to say, everybody needs the gospel and everybody's made in God's image. I find it helpful today where there's so much debate about these kinds of issues of Eurocentrism and whiteness being normative and this kind of

and we're trying to disentangle all of that. A lot of us think there's a lot of validity to where we need to be open to where racial prejudice is shot through us so that we don't even see it fully. Well, it's just interesting. It's actually helpful in that process to remember it wasn't always like this. People like me who have blonde hair and white skin were the barbarians in people's minds 1,000 years ago. I'm not saying they were barbarians or we should think less of them in any way.

All people are equally in God's image. it's helpful to remember how different things were. At that time, the Swedish people were like, oh, wow, could the gospel even be for them? Whereas today it's like a fading, a place where Christianity is fading. And that combined, and then you think of the courage of these missionaries. You know, it seems that the gospel always requires suffering and going forth. This seems to be the pattern. Christ's death and resurrection. That seems to be how the gospel always churns its way forward. that's why I feel indignant about these scholarly interpretations that it's just politics. It just dishonors this profound suffering that brought about this outcome.

So, and you know, a basic application from that would just be to say, if Ansgar and people like that were willing to go to the Vikings and be brutally treated, we should be willing to share the gospel with our friends, and we should be willing to stand for the truth no matter what the cost is in our day, because we usually don't have anything like that. and yet sometimes we're not courageous. But the bigger point here is just how interesting it is to see how different things are today. One millennium's barbarian territory is the next millennium's fading twilight of Christendom.

And in between the full span of initial resistance and martyrdom, explosion of Christianity, explosion of cultural impact, universities, hospitals, all the wonderful things Christianity tends to beget, and then it slowly fades away. all in that one thousand years. It's fascinating. That leads to the second point. Christianity has done much good for the world. Now it is possible to exaggerate this. First, because we can downplay common grace, and second, because we can downplay the real evils that Christians have done. Nonetheless, on the whole, it's amazing how much good is done by the entrance of Christianity into regions. You can see this in Adam's account. He speaks of these pre-Christian cultural

as given to the worship of demons. He describes various superstitious, violent rituals they practiced. Particularly common were piracy and slavery. So you've probably heard of these brutal Viking raids. I mean, man, you know, the thing that was interesting to get from Adam is how much they would, the Vikings would attack each other. You know, you always think of the Vikings sailing off to attack people in England or something. But they would attack each other.

At one point, Adam says they have no faith in one another. and as soon as one of them catches another, he mercilessly sells him into slavery, either to one of his fellows or to a barbarian. He talks about how frequently women were mistreated through rape or slavery or both. He talks about sorcery. He talks about the extremely common practice of divination by examining the entrails of birds. And what is happening is just like in the Book of Acts in Acts chapter 19 in Ephesus, for example, all the magicians bring their magic art books and burn them as they,

come to Christ. As Christianity is expanding into Scandinavia, it's the same thing. The demonic forces are being pushed back. I told you I'd get emotional during this. So when King Olaf becomes a Christian, for example, he tries to drive out all the sorcery and he's marty or he's killed. Adam reports he had for the most part made good his resolution when a small number of the sorcerers who had survived struck him down in revenge for those of their own whom the king had condemned. Later, some of the later Christian kings laps back into sorcery. Even Adelbert, Adam describes as falling back into using magic arts, listening to false prophets. There's a woman who is renowned for powers of divination and Adelbert is listening to her.

There's also prophecies. So it's interesting if you're interested in continuationism versus cessationism, people believe in prophecy in the church here. And then as Adam is describing the cultures on the various islands around Denmark and Sweden in book four, there's a lot of brutal practices. Human sacrifice on one of the Danish islands, he says they adore dragons and birds and also sacrifice to them live men whom they buy from the merchants. and Adam describes how the slaves are inspected to have any, see if they have any bodily defects so that otherwise the dragons won't accept them and so forth. There's cannibalism described.

There's all kinds of bizarre things too. I mean, on one island, I think it's a Swedish island. The people are blue, and he thinks, the editor of the book thinks it's because of tattoos. I told you, you couldn't make the stuff up. They have long hair. they're blue. Polygamy is rampant. He says the rich people and the princes on the island have unlimited wives. And then he says, basically, well, they martyr all the missionaries we send, but other than that,

they have great morals. It's like, wow. He says, many praiseworthy things could be said about these people with respect to their morals, if only they had the faith of Christ whose missionaries they cruelly persecute. Kind of amazing. I mean, and he talks about how they were very sharing, people they'd share their livestock and so forth. And he says they often willingly listened to the gospel message. There's lots of bizarre things.

There's one region where only women live and they drive the men away. And, you know, there's all these different theories about, well, how do they get pregnant and things like this? In another region, they have these magic arts and they're reported to, Adam doesn't commit himself to this belief, but he says what the superstition is they can use their magic arts to know what's happening anywhere else in the world on this particular island, and they're very kind of bizarre, like the women have beards, and they don't communicate with words, but with gnashing of teeth and so forth. I mean, just, you know, again, you just, you can make it up.

The temple in Uppsala is fascinating. He describes it as having three statues, Thor in the middle, God of the Storm and other things. Wotan, whom we call Odin, often associated with things like war, is on one side and then a statue of frico. We usually call him frere. I don't know if it's a god or goddess, actually. I think it's a male, but he's often associated with peace and pleasure. And he talks about priests and rituals and sacrifices going on there. And I won't go into the details with that. I was thinking, you know, I don't even need to go into all this. I don't want to be too provocative, but it's pretty lurid. So the point of all of this is Christianity changed a lot of things for the good.

And it's not necessarily politically correct to emphasize that, but it is so manifestly the case. Adam describes this reduction in piracy, reduction in slavery, reduction in sorcerous practices. Not that it went from having no grace to perfect. Christianized Scandinavia had its own problems, but there's improvement because of the introduction of ideas like the image of God or the value of love. You know, we take these values for granted. Why do we value equality? Why?

Why? That was not a value for many pre-Christian places in the world. Slavery was just assumed as a normal part of life. Why do we value love and compassion? Lots of cultures haven't had that same value in the same way. And this is one way we can see. I think a lot of people who leave Christianity and become atheists retain many of these values and you wonder what's the ontological basis for these values in atheism?

A lot of these things can be seen to be fruits of Christianity. On the last page of the book, Adam writes, behold that piratical people. That means given to piracy. By which we read, whole provinces of the Gauls and of Germany were at one time devastated, and which is now content with its bounds and can say with the apostle, for here we have not a lasting city,

but we seek the one that is to come. Since the altars of the demons have been torn down, it builds churches far and wide, and with universal acclaims, everyone proclaims the name of Christ. And today we can look back and see some of the rich cultural impact of Christianity coming into Scandinavia. I understand we can be too naive as to, you know, think of this too simplistically, but I don't want us to be too cynical and go in the other direction. There was a real, wonderful thing that happened that God did through the entrance of

Christianity to this region. Third point, these last two are a real brief. Political power. Just to say the main point here quickly. Political power is good, but also dangerous. Political favor toward the church can be a massive blessing. Obviously, the conversion of kings to Christianity is a great thing when it means the Christians stop getting their heads chopped off. It's bad when Christians are getting persecuted. We need to pray for the persecuted church today. If you're a Christian in the 990s and you live in a particular region where you're under the gun and then the king gets baptized and now you're safe, praise God. That's a good thing. Political power can be wielded for incredible good. But it's easy to misuse and when we misuse political power,

it damages our effectiveness in the gospel. At one point Adam recounts a conversation with a king who tells him the Slavic people, without doubt, could easily have been converted to Christianity long ago, but for the avarice of the Saxons. They are, he said, more intent on the payment of tribute than on the conversion of the heathen. Similarly, during Uni's preaching in the 10th century, Adam writes that the people hearing the message could by no means be easily persuaded to believe because they had lived through the period of barbarian invasion when in a few years many kings had held bloody sway over them.

you just wonder, maybe when the missionaries started going in like the 8th century, 9th century, maybe it wouldn't have taken so long if along the way there hadn't been this misuse of power by Christians at times that sadly did occur. And that's just something to sit with and wrestle with and think about. Lastly, a fun application point is the sheer size of church history. There is so much that God has done. It's like the end of the Gospel of John when he says, oh, Jesus did all these other things. Not all the, you know, all the books in the world could not

contain them. Similarly with church history and all the things Jesus has continued to do. At one point I was just thinking, I mentioned this earlier, can you imagine all that we wouldn't know about if Adam just hadn't happened to go talk with Spain on that one trip? Because he got a ton of information there. Or if somebody just hadn't happened to stumble across this book in Denmark, in a library in the 16th century, and all the people. Or if the wonderful folks overseeing the records of Western Civilization series that Columbia University Press puts out, which is incredible contributions of scholarship,

making it available to us, if they hadn't done that, what we wouldn't know about. And that raises the thought of, well, how much else is there out there that we don't know about? You know? How many things have happened? They're not in our historical record. you know, how many other missionaries were there?

And it's a happy thought that in heaven, all the stories will be told. In heaven, every triumph will be celebrated duly. And that's a happy thought. You know, for our lives, we'll probably be forgotten. You know, most history books probably won't talk about your life or mine too much, 500 years from now if Jesus has not returned by then. But in heaven, the full story will be told. for the history nerds out there,

this is one more cool thing about heaven. Amidst everything else that's going to be awesome about heaven, one other cool, it's just, you know, the full story will be told and you'll have access to. And that's a pretty cool thought. And to sum it all up like this,

all sacrifice for Christ, all courage, all faith, all martyrdom, all suffering will be shouted from the rooftops. And it will all sacrifice. have been worth it. But in the meantime, it also helps to tell these stories and try to celebrate them so that people know about these things that we should know about. So I hope

this video will be helpful to that end. All right, I have gone on enough. Hope you enjoyed this. Let me know what you think in the comments. God bless.