Anskar

Anskar was a Frankish Benedictine monk who became the first Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen and the pioneer of Christian mission to Scandinavia. Sent to Denmark in 826 and to Sweden in 829, he established the first churches in both countries, though the full Christianization of the Norse peoples would not come for another century. His missionary career was marked by repeated setbacks — churches burned, converts relapsed, Vikings destroyed his cathedral — yet he persisted for over thirty years.

Rimbert records that Anskar experienced visions throughout his life. As a young man at Corbie, he had a vision of the Blessed Virgin and the apostles Peter and John commissioning him for missionary work. Throughout his career, further visions sustained him through discouragement.

Rimbert also records that Anskar's prayers were accompanied by healings among both Christians and pagans, and that his personal austerity — hair shirt beneath his vestments, bread-and-water diet when not entertaining guests — impressed the Scandinavians, who respected physical endurance.

His dying wish for martyrdom is one of the most humanly touching moments in medieval hagiography — a man who spent his life facing danger and disappointment, wishing at the end that he had been granted the one thing he wanted most.

Anskar was born around 801 in Picardy and entered the Benedictine monastery of Corbie as a child, later transferring to New Corbie (Corvey) in Saxony. In 826, when the exiled Danish king Harald Klak was baptized at the court of Louis the Pious, Anskar accompanied him back to Denmark as a missionary.

His first Danish mission was short-lived, but in 829 he traveled to the Swedish trading center of Birka, where he established a small Christian community. On his return, Pope Gregory IV appointed him Archbishop of Hamburg with responsibility for the northern mission. When Vikings sacked Hamburg in 845, destroying his cathedral and library, Anskar's see was merged with Bremen.

For the next two decades Anskar worked to rebuild his mission under extraordinarily difficult conditions. He sent missionaries back to both Denmark and Sweden, negotiated with Scandinavian kings for freedom to preach, ransomed Christian captives from the slave trade, and founded schools and hospitals. His progress was modest: the Scandinavian kingdoms would not become securely Christian until the late tenth and eleventh centuries.

• Bishop
• Missionary