Rebuilding the archdiocese of Nidaros: Etienne Djunkowsky and the North Pole Mission, c . 1855–1870

• Published in: The Innes Review
• Main Author: Newby, Andrew G.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: English
• Published: Edinburgh University Press 2010
• Subjects: Religious studies; History; Cultural Studies; Alta; Faroe Islands; Norway; Tromsø; North Pole; Etienne; Iceland; Northern Norway
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.3366/inr.2010.0003; https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/full-xml/10.3366/inr.2010.0003

The Prefecture Apostolic of the Polar Regions (‘North Pole Mission’), which ran between 1855 and 1869, was an attempt to bring the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church to a broadly defined circumpolar area. From its initial base in Alta, in northern Norway, the mission expanded to establish a presence in: Iceland; the Faroe Islands; Orkney, Shetland and Caithness; and Tromsø. This article explores the reasons behind the mission's expansion into northern Scotland, and the reaction which greeted the arrival of foreign missionaries in a region which had been relatively untouched by Catholicism in the three centuries since the Reformation.