Example: Winning the Vikings

Let me remind you of the four different “mission mechanisms”at work to bless other peoples: 1) going voluntarily, 2)involuntarily going without missionary intent, 3) coming voluntarily, and 4) coming involuntarily (as with Gentiles forcibly settled in Israel—2 Kings 17).

 

As in the case of the Norsemen in England, one of the most obvious means by which conversion could have occurred was through intermarriage and the cultural integration that this would entail. There are some signs that the Norse pirates in France, as elsewhere, were overwhelmingly male. In his study of Scandinavian personal names attested in Normandy between 911 and 1066, Jean Adigard des Gautries managed to identify seventy-nine masculine Norse names, but only three feminine names.

Moreover, a good argument can be made that many of the Norman settlers integrated very quickly into Frankish, Carolingian civilization. This was probably especially true in those areas where the Norman establishment consisted not of the creation of Scandinavian communities, but rather of a political takeover by a military elite, obviously made up exclusively of men. The evidence for this speedy assimilation is mostly negative, but still striking. There is absolutely no Norman equivalent to the Scandinavian-inspired sculpture found throughout England.

On a more abstract level, the Vikings seem to have generally taken over and left intact many native institutions, since by the eleventh century, when documents become available, it is clear that rural estates had preserved essentially Carolingian features and that ducal government operated largely through mechanisms which were inspired by Carolingian notions of authority.

Both of these factors suggest the sudden integration brought about by intermarriage, not the creation of Scandinavian communities. Assuming that these men must have taken Frankish, Christian wives, their children, like the children of mixed Scandinavian-English marriages, would surely have been drawn into the dominant Christian culture of their mothers’ families. 

There are indications of Oda’s evangelizing work, however, that are more concrete than his young kinsman’s schooling. Noting that Oda’s pontificate was “a notable period in diocesan reorganization”, R. R. Darlington once remarked, “it is probably not by accident that the sees of Elmham and Lindsey reappear while Oda was archbishop.” Even as bishop of Ramsbury, Oda was surely able to promote religious foundations in eastern England, for although Ramsbury is not in the Danelaw, it was an extremely important diocese from which further archbishops of Canterbury after Oda, such as Sigeric the Serious and Ælfric, came. Anyone who achieved such a position would enjoy favor and influence with the secular rulers and would be in a position to have some bearing on the decisions of other bishops. He could have urged the promotion of Theodred to the bishopric of London c. 931. From Theodred’s will, we know that as bishop of London, he also administered churches in at least Suffolk, if not the whole of East Anglia. Dorothy Whitelock, in fact, suggests that he could have been chosen specifically to reorganize the area of the former Danelaw. His will mentions a number of small religious establishments in East Anglia whose interests he had presumably promoted. He was certainly responsible for the re-establishment of an identifiable diocese in East Anglia, for in 956, Eadulf, Bishop of Elmham, made his profession to Oda.

 

As this was the first diocese to be organized in East Anglia since the Viking conquest, it came to function simply as the bishopric of East Anglia for well over a century. On one occasion, King Eadwig (955-59) made a grant of land to Oda at Southwell. This site later became the core of the Nottinghamshire diocese, suggesting that Oda must have quickly taken the opportunity to use the site as a base from which to promote the Christian cause. Paul Cavill suggests that Oda’s promotion to Canterbury in 942 may well have been because of his success in promoting and reorganizing the Church in heavily Scandinavianareas. Just a few years earlier Olaf Sihtricsson (generally known as Amlaíb Cúarán), the Irish-Norse king defeated at the Battle of Brunanburh in 937, had reneged on his promises and had re-taken Northumbria. King Edmund was therefore forced to make an advance into Northumbria. It is likely that in considering the permanent re-conquest of Northumbria, Edmund recognized the value of a churchman of Danish ancestry who could help the church advance in Danish areas and incorporate it into the structure of the rest of the English Church.