Iceland is known as the “land of frost and fire.” Its frozen mountains and desolate landscape stand like a vast ocean sentinel guarding the approaches to the polar regions of the Northern Hemisphere. To the eyes of men used to warmth and luxury, Iceland is imposing, barren, and ugly. But to a unique breed of men of hardy adventure, Iceland is a wonderland of rugged beauty—full of craggy peaks, drifting snow, bubbling steam vents, eternal ice, and fascinating plants and animals.

However, the beauty of nature could not hide the ugliness of sin. Viking religion, with its sinister and bloody practices, left a darkness over a land and its inhabitants who waited in ignorance and superstition for the day when the dawn of the Gospel would bring light and warmth to a land of frigid cold. In His Own time, God would raise up His servants to bring His Word to Iceland.

Iceland is also a land of contrasts. It contains vast glaciers, as well as deep pools of hot water that well forth from thermal reservoirs heated by underground magma. The barren rocks of this country seem devoid of life, but at certain times of the year, these very rocks are covered by a dazzling array of thousands upon thousands of breeding seabirds.

The Icelandic waters look icy and lifeless, but those freezing waters teem with krill, which is the main food for the great whales that find their food in these polar oceans near the ice caps. Iceland is cold! But also the land is hot and desolate, harsh, yet fruitful. The country welcomes the seaman who takes refuge there. These contrasts are seen not only in the landscape of Iceland but also in its interesting history.

Iceland was settled by the Norwegians beginning in A.D. 874, during the time of Viking expansion and exploration. The Viking chieftains of Norway were constantly making raids upon the British Isles. Soon they began to bring their Gaelic slaves, called thralls, into Iceland to help them subdue the stubborn land. Thus, the population of Iceland became a mixture of Gaelic and Viking elements.

The religion of the Vikings was dark and bloody. Their gods, such as Odin, Thor, and Tyr, hurled their thunderbolts throughout the land of the North. Raids, terror, and bloodshed were the fruits of this gloomy religion of cosmic warfare.

The Gospel of Jesus Christ first came to Iceland through the efforts of King Olaf Tryggvason around A.D. 997. King Olaf sent emissaries from Norway to Iceland to convert the Icelandic people to Christianity. The methods of Olaf were sometimes brutal and warlike; baptisms and conversions were sometimes forced upon an unwilling population at the point of the sword! But, gradually, the thunderbolts of Thor yielded to the scepter of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Icelandic Althing (their word for parliament) adopted Christianity in A.D. 1000.

Over the next five centuries, however, Christianity in Scandinavia slowly became diluted and corrupted. Elements of Viking paganism crept back into Icelandic Christianity in the same way that elements of Roman paganism crept back into the church of Rome.

By the time of the Reformation, Iceland was in the depths of a spiritual winter. As lands such as Italy, France, and Germany were being warmed by the truth, Iceland seemed forever locked in the barbarism of its Viking past.

In 1527, the two bishops of Iceland, Oegmund Paulsen and Jón Arason, were in the midst of a quarrel for dominion. They lived in luxury, while the people of Iceland toiled at farming the rocky soil. These two men were the very image of the evil shepherds rebuked by the prophet in Ezekiel 34:2–4, “Woe be to the shepherds of Israel that do feed themselves! should not the shepherds feed the flocks? Ye eat the fat, and ye clothe you with the wool, ye kill them that are fed: but ye feed not the flock. . . . with force and with cruelty have ye ruled them.”

These cruel bishops of God’s heritage resorted to a barbaric way of resolving their personal quarrel. In authentic Viking style, they each selected and hired a warlike champion to take their quarrel to the arena of single combat. As the people watched, the two champions shouted at each other and battled with their swords. Horrid oaths were shouted by the combatants, and blood was soon drawn by the thud of the heavy blades against flesh and bone. Oegmund’s champion was finally victorious, and the insolent bishop soon asserted his domineering control over the frozen island.

But in Iceland the burning fires of truth lay underground, ready to break forth at any moment. God’s instrument for the reformation of Iceland was a young man named Oddur Gottskálksson. He was the illegitimate son of a former bishop of Iceland, showing again how immoral the Icelandic clergy had become. Because of his family connections to the church, the young man was appointed to be the secretary of the victorious bishop. He had been educated in Norway and also in Germany. While on the continent and without Bishop Oegmund’s knowledge, Gottskálksson had met and studied with Martin Luther at Wittenberg.

When Gottskálksson returned to Iceland to undertake his duties as private secretary to the bishop, he carried with him the books and tools necessary for the translation of the Bible into his native Icelandic language. Gottskálksson knew the risk of such an undertaking. It was well-known in Iceland that Oegmund had a deep hatred for the Scriptures. The bishop, in a great rage, had once thrown a copy of the Vulgate against the wall when it was found that a priest had been preaching from the book! Icelandic churchmen had been known to inflict the most barbaric punishments upon their enemies, including pouring molten lead down the throats of those who spoke against them.

Gottskálksson knew he could not gain the triumph of the Gospel by an open confrontation with the bishop. So he worked quietly, sowing the seed of truth wherever possible. Rejecting a more comfortable chamber in the bishop’s palace, he took up his abode in a cowshed so he could go about his work undetected.

In this cowshed, Gottskálksson labored tirelessly at his translation of the Icelandic New Testament. Wherever men, women, or children would gather to hear him, he would teach them the truth of God’s Word. In the solitude of his lowly quarters during the long, dark days of Icelandic winter, Gottskálksson would toil at his work, while beseeching God that a warm summer would come soon to Iceland.

Gradually, the warmth of truth began to thaw the frozen land. Before the bishop could realize the source of the influence, the doctrines of the New Testament were being promulgated throughout the island. When the aged bishop died, he was replaced by a young man named Gissur Einarsen. This young man had been influenced by the quiet work of the bishop’s secretary, Oddur Gottskálksson!

There was one final battle for truth in Iceland. The elderly Bishop Jón Arason, whose champion had lost in the combat of the arena, was still alive. Seeing that the Reformed doctrines were spreading through the land and that his old enemy was dead, Arason and his own illegitimate sons went on a rampage throughout Iceland. He forcibly deposed the new Reformed bishop, seized the property of the Church, slew Reformed believers, and demanded that the island return to its former ways.

But the arrogant bishop went too far when he scorned the royal power of King Christian III! The monarch of all Scandinavia had been influenced by the Reformation in Norway and Denmark. So, in 1550, the king’s royal governor in Iceland commanded that the haughty bishop be put to death, along with his sons. Thus ended the tyranny of the prelates in Iceland.

The Word of God was and is more powerful than the force and cruelty of man. Frost had been overcome by fire, and the warming influence of the Holy Scriptures had brought life to a land ravaged by cruelty, superstition, and ignorance. Iceland became a trophy of the power of God to transform a culture. The example of Oddur Gottskálksson encourages us to know that the day of small beginnings is not to be despised. The quiet influence of a humble Christian in a cowshed is more powerful than the force and cruelty of a Viking bishop in a palace!

Sources and Further Reference:

Eidsmoe, John. Historical and Theological Foundations of Law. Ventura, CA: Nordskog Publishing, 2016.

D’Aubigne, J. H. Merle. History of the Reformation in the Sixteenth Century. Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Publications, 2003.