Ansgar’s Mission to Scandinavia

Ansgar was a monk of Corbie in northern Francia, sent to teach at its new daughter house of Corvey in Saxony. When the Danish king Harald, driven from his kingdom, was baptized at the court of the emperor Louis the Pious, the emperor looked for a monk to go home with him, and Abbot Wala proposed Ansgar. He went with one companion and began a school for a dozen or more boys (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 6–8). The court annals record Harald’s baptism at Mainz with his wife and a large following (Royal Frankish Annals, year 826).

Rimbert tells next of Swedish envoys who told Louis that many of their people wished to become Christians and that their king would allow priests to live among them. Ansgar set out with the monk Witmar. Pirates took the merchant ships they travelled in, with the emperor’s gifts and nearly forty books, and they finished the journey largely on foot. At Birka King Björn consulted his men and gave them leave to preach. Christian captives in the town could receive the sacraments again, and the town’s prefect, Herigar, was baptized and built a church on his own land (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 9–11).

On their return Louis founded an archbishopric at Hamburg, beyond the Elbe, as a base for the northern mission. Ansgar was consecrated to it, and Pope Gregory IV gave him the pallium and named him legate to the Swedes, Danes and Slavs. A bishop, Gautbert, was sent to the Swedes (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 12–14).

Little of this held. Raiders from the sea burned Hamburg with its church, monastery and books, and among the Swedes a crowd killed one of Gautbert’s companions and drove the bishop out (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 16–17). Ansgar was given the vacant see of Bremen to live from, won leave from the Danish king Horik to build a church at Schleswig (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 22–24), and went a second time to Birka. There, Rimbert says, lots were cast and the king put the matter to the assembly: an old man argued that the Christians’ God had often helped Swedes in danger at sea, and the people agreed that priests might stay (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 26–28).

Ansgar died on 3 February, the day after the feast of the Purification; in his last illness, Rimbert says, he had grieved that he was not to die a martyr (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 40–41). What Rimbert, his pupil, describes is not the conversion of kingdoms but congregations in trading places, existing by leave of the kings (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 22–24) (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 26–28). In his last weeks Ansgar had the papal privileges for the mission copied and sent to the bishops and to the king, so that the work would not be forgotten (Rimbert, Life of Anskar 40–41).