Harald Bluetooth - Denmark's Conversion To Christianity

Denmark's Conversion To Christianity

King Harald Bluetooth's conversion to Christianity is a contested bit of history, not least because medieval writers such as Widukind of Corvey and Adam of Bremen give conflicting accounts of how it came about.

Widukind of Corvey, writing during the lives of King Harald and Otto I, claims that Harald was converted by a "cleric by the name of Poppa" who, when asked by Harald to prove his faith in Christ, carried a "great weight" of iron heated by a fire without being burned.

Adam of Bremen, writing 100 years after King Harald's death in "History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen", finished in 1076, tells a story of Harald being forcibly converted by Otto I, after a defeat in battle. However, Widukind does not even mention such an event in his contemporary Res gestae saxonicae sive annalium libri tres or "Deeds of the Saxons", which, considering Widukind was at least partly writing to promote Otto I and his family, is damning to Adam of Bremen's claims.

Four hundred years later, the Heimskringla relates that Harald was converted with Earl Haakon, by Otto II.

A cleric named "Poppa", perhaps the same one, also appears in Adam of Bremen's history, but in connection with Eric of Sweden, who had supposedly conquered Denmark (there is no evidence that this happened anywhere else). The story of this otherwise unknown Poppo or Poppa's miracle and baptism of Harald is also depicted on the gilded altar piece in the Church of Tandrup in Denmark, a detail of which is at the top of this article. The altar itself has been dated to about 1200. Adam of Bremen's claim regarding Otto I and Harald appears to have been inspired by an attempt to manufacture a historical reason for the archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen to claim jurisdiction over Denmark (and thus the rest of Scandinavia); in the 1070s, the Danish King was in Rome asking for Denmark to have its own arch-bishop, and Adam's account of Harald's supposed conversion (and baptism of both him and his "little son" Sweyn, with Otto serving as Sweyn's godfather) is followed by the unambiguous claim that "At that time Denmark on this side of the sea, which is called Jutland by the inhabitants, was divided into three dioceses and subjected to the bishopric of Hamburg."

As noted above, Harald's father, Gorm the Old had died in 958, and had been buried in a mound with many goods, after the pagan practice. The mound itself was from c. 500 BCE, but Harald had it built higher over his father's grave, and added a second mound to the south. Mound-building was a newly revived custom in the 10th century, perceivably as an "appeal to old traditions in the face of Christian customs spreading from Denmark's southern neighbors, the Germans."

After his conversion, around the 960s, Harald had his father's body reburied in the church next to the now empty mound, and erected one of the Jelling stones described above.

Harald undoubtedly professed Christianity at that time and contributed to its growth, but with limited success in Denmark and Norway.