Changing fashions: the coming of the Reformation to Iceland

• Published in: Reformation
• Main Author: Cunningham, J.
• Format: Article in Journal/Newspaper
• Language: unknown
• Published: Routledge 2011
• Subjects: DL Northern Europe. Scandinavia; Norway; Iceland
• Online Access: https://bgro.repository.guildhe.ac.uk/id/eprint/57/; https://doi.org/10.1558/refm.v16i0.65

In 1550 the last Catholic bishop in Iceland was executed by Icelandic Lutherans and the Danish governors. The country on the outer fringes of the Danish kingdom thus succumbed to a Reformation that had already been established in the other territories of Denmark and Norway. This article examines contemporary sources and modern scholarship in order to demonstrate that the success of the new movement was based largely on two factors. Firstly, this was a Reformation that was deliberately light on theology, a "changing of fashions" as it came to be known in Icelandic. Secondly, it was an inevitable consequence of the growing national strength of early modern Denmark that was keener to establish a firmer grip on its territories than it had ever had before.