Yggdrasil · Humankind

Ansgar: A Mission Dependent on Permission

A Frankish monk whose missions in Denmark and Sweden rested on kings, hosts, ships and local consent.

Myth and literature · Quotation

In Robinson’s translation

They were kindly received here by the king, who was called Biörn, whose messengers had informed him of the reason for which they had come. When he understood the object of their mission, and had discussed the matter with his friends, with the approval and consent of all [he] granted them permission to remain there and to preach the gospel of Christ, and offered liberty to any who desired it to accept their teaching.

Rimbert, Life of Anskar, chapter XI.

Myth and literature

The story

Later historical account: Ansgar, who died in 865, is known mainly from a saint’s life written by his follower Rimbert, who admired him, so the portrait is a devotional one.

Ansgar was a monk from the Frankish realm who worked in the north as a missionary and later as archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen. In Rimbert’s telling he went to Denmark, and around 829 to Sweden, with the backing of the Frankish emperor. His party travelled with merchants, was robbed by pirates on the way, and reached Birka on foot and by ship. There the king, after talking it over with his friends and people, allowed them to stay and preach. Later in Denmark he gained leave to build churches at Hedeby and Ribe. Each step depended on a ruler’s goodwill, a host, a ship and a community willing to listen.

Myth and literature · Context

What we know, and what we do not

What is recorded: a mission that began with imperial backing, a king who allowed it after consulting his people, and later royal permission to build churches. Rimbert shows Ansgar relying on merchants’ ships, on hosts and on rulers, and he also records setbacks, including years without a priest at Birka.

What is not recorded: any wide conversion. Rimbert does not claim a converted Scandinavia, and the Viking Ship Museum cautions that Christianity was still weak when Ansgar died. How many people at Birka were baptised, and how firmly, is not known beyond this life, which was written to honour him. Historians read it as hagiography as well as history.

Historical evidence

The evidence

The main source is the Vita Anskarii (Life of Anskar), written by Rimbert, Ansgar’s pupil and successor, in the later ninth century. This entry uses the English translation by Charles H. Robinson, published in 1921 (London, SPCK) and in the public domain; the page at Fordham University’s Internet Medieval Sourcebook gives that translator and year. Robinson’s long introduction is a separate voice, written by a twentieth-century scholar, and is not used for the quotation below. The Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde warns that the biography was written to support Ansgar’s sainthood and may exaggerate, and it calls the title “Apostle of the North” an overstatement, since Christianity was not well established when he died.