#vs3e9

Ansgar is known as the Apostle of the North and in Swedish schools we learn that he Christianized us in 829 when he visited Birka the first time. But this isn’t actually the whole truth and nothing but the truth. 

Ansgar was an actual person who lived 801-865 AD. He was arch-bishop of Hamburg-Bremen when he died, but whether he actually was made an archbishop or if he falsified papers appointing himself the seat is a question that modern scholars are looking into. What we know of him is what his successor Rimbert writes in Vita Ansgari.  

Ansgar went on missions to Scandinavia. First to Denmark in 826 and then to Birka in Sweden ~829-831. A small congregation was established but was soon abandoned so when Ansgar returned around 20 years later, he had to do it all over again. When bishop Unni visited Birka in 935, there were no traces of Ansgar’s mission ever existing. [x]

So yes, Ansgar might have visited and spread the gospel, but he was not the man that made Swedes Christian, that’s for sure.