Bishop Osmund: A Missionary to Sweden in the Late Viking Age

Bishop Osmund: a Missionary to Sweden in the Late Viking Age 

By Janet Fairweather 

According to the Liber Eliensis, Bishop Osmund was already an elderly man when he first appeared at the court of King Edward the Confessor, having recently arrived in England from Sweden. He was received with honour both at the royal court and later, at the Benedictine Abbey of Ely, where he was admitted as a monk under generous terms which allowed him, some fifty years before the diocese of Ely was founded, to serve this celebrated monastery as its house-bishop. After his eventual death in the time of Abbot Thurstan, he was granted the honour of burial within the Abbey Church and, to this day, the monument of the ‘Seven Confessors of Ely’ in Ely Cathedral commemorates his connection with Sweden and encloses a casket of his mortal remains.  

What, then, is one to make of the estimate of Osmund’s character expressed by the eleventh-century historian Adam of Bremen, which is as disparaging as the chapter about him in the Liber Eliensis is honorific?  Was our retired missionary in fact, a rogue, unworthy of the honour given to him at Ely? Not necessarily. What Adam of Bremen tells us is that, although Osmund had received his theological training in Bremen, under the sponsorship of ‘Sigefrid, a Bishop of the Norwegians’, he was ‘forgetful of the kindnesses’ of  his educators; that he was acephalus (that is: insubordinate) and a ‘gyrovagus’ (a vagabond); that he had travelled to Rome in the hope of being made bishop by the Pope, but was rebuffed and obliged to receive his ordination as bishop from ‘a certain archbishop of Poland’, and since then had been serving as court bishop to the ‘evil’ King Emund the Old of Sweden. Worst of all: Osmund was allegedly given to ‘corrupting new Christians by unsound teaching of the faith’.  

The attitudes expressed in this memorable piece of invective are, however, strongly reminiscent of the known prejudices of Adalbert, Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen, author of a special report on Swedish affairs in the 1050s, to which Adam had access. It could be that Osmund was guilty of nothing worse than having joined a mission-group, outside Adalbert’s control, that was headed by his educational sponsor, Bishop Sigefrid. For a famous mission-leader of that name, who hailed from ‘England’, is recorded as having worked in Sweden ‘alongside Norway’.  For a possible explanation of the charge alleging ‘unsound teaching of the faith’, we need look no further than  the Swedish countryside where, still today, one may encounter rune-stones, erected in or around Bishop Osmund’s time, which combine representations of the Cross with decoratively intertwined snakes, or juxtapose Christian inscriptions with scenes derived from the mythology of polytheistic Scandinavia. 

Janet Fairweather’s enquiry into the life and times of Bishop Osmund was first published in 2014 by the Historical Association of the Diocese of Skara (Skara Stiftshistoriska Sällskap). 

This hardback book, printed in Sweden on high-quality, glossy paper, consists of 404 pp. of which 49 pp. are devoted to plates, mainly in colour, that include two maps. 

To ensure easy readability of this investigative study, all quotations from foreign-language texts are translated into English but, with the interests of academic researchers in mind, each chapter is supplied with endnotes, and the book as a whole is provided with a comprehensive bibliography.

*Please note that because of its size or weight, this item will be sent as a medium parcel when shipped within the UK.