2 that Ebbo, Archbishop of Rheims, was sent to Denmark in consequence
of a political embassy to Louis the Pious, emperor from 814 to 840.
Harold, the Danish king, had asked aid. The emperor gave him also a
Christian teacher; and in 826 the king and his wife were baptized.
Other missionaries went northwards, but before long the Danes drove out
both their king Harold and his teacher Ansgar. From Denmark, however,
the mission spread to Sweden, and in 831 an archbishopric was
established at Hamburg to direct all the northern {130} missions, and
Ansgar was invested with the pallium by Pope Gregory IV. The missions
had a chequered career. [Sidenote: and of Sweden.] Hamburg was seized
and pillaged by the Northmen in 845, and the Swedish mission was for a
time destroyed. In 849 a new revival took place, when Ansgar was given
the see of Bremen in addition to that of Hamburg; and before long he
won over the king of the Jutes and his people of Schleswig. In 853
Ansgar returned to Sweden, where he was favourably received by the king
Olaf. The tale of his vast missionary labours, from which he was
rightly called the "Apostle of the north," is told with spirit and
feeling by Adam of Bremen, who wrote in the eleventh century, as well
as by the biographer who commemorated him on his death. He not only
preached, but he "redeemed captives, nourished those who were in
tribulation, taught his household. As an apostle without, a monk
within, he was never idle." When it was said that his prayers wrought
miracles of healing, he said, "If I could but think myself worthy of
such a favour from the Lord, I would pray Him to grant me but one
miracle--that out of me, by His grace; He would make a good man."
[Sidenote: S. Ansgar.] S. Ansgar is, in his work as in his training, a
parallel to S. Boniface. Like him one of the finest fruits of
monasticism, which first taught in solitude and then sent out to work
actively in the world, he was brought up at Corbie. For nearly
thirty-five years he laboured incessantly among the peoples of the
north, and at the very end of his life he gallantly went among heathen
chiefs to rebuke them for buying and selling slaves. He died in 865,
and S. Rimbert, {131} his disciple and biographer, was his successor in
his sees.

[Sidenote: Norway.]

Gradually, and in different ways, Christianity spread in the far north.
Haakon, the son of Harold Haarfager of Norway, was sent to be
foster-son to Aethelstan of E