This article is based on my observations and does not pretend to understand the entirety and the complexity of the challenges and opportunities that face the National Church (Þjóðkirkjan) also called the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland (Hin evangelíska lúterska kirkja) and The Church of Norway (Den norske kyrkja). What I witnessed was churches faithfully trying to be church in their context. If something sounds critical of their practices it is more about me and less a judgment on their practice. Studying the way church is done and ministerial leadership provided in Iceland and Norway helped me to see more clearly what is important to me and the way I hope to lead in the church.
In January of 2016 I traveled to Iceland and Norway as a part of a cross-cultural immersion experience through Wartburg Theological Seminary. While traveling I was privileged to be among the assembly for many worship experiences. While in Iceland I attended two Masses with Eucharist and one without, one baptism service, and one funeral service. While in Norway I was a part of one Sunday Mass with Eucharist and a baptism. These experiences, as well as conversation with many Icelandic and Norwegian pastors and seminarians, gave me some insight into the history, theory, and praxis of the liturgical life of these churches. From what I can tell, the liturgical revival that took place in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA) and many other churches during the 20th century has not had a great impact on the churches in Iceland and Norway. There are some in these countries, perhaps influenced by cross-cultural experiences of their own, that are pushing against the liturgical walls and are encountering great resistance. According to Pastor Gunnar Sigurjónsson, our guide while in Iceland, he has had to fight for every change that he has worked to change. The following is what I observed and learned about the fights that are taking place along with my own reflections and opportunities for growth that I observed.
The Language: Biblical and Liturgical
Iceland became a Christian nation during a meeting of Island’s Parliament in the year 1000, a decision that avoided war between the Christians and those who followed the Norse gods (Æsir). Because of this date, Iceland had 500+ years of pre-reformation Roman style Christianity before the reformation came to the Island in the 1530’s. With the beheading of the last Catholic Bishop of Iceland, Jón Arason, in 1550, Iceland’s church was thereafter a Lutheran one. With the arrival of reformation ideals came a desire for scripture in the vernacular and a new/revised liturgy. The Bible was translated into Icelandic with the New Testament being completed in 1540 and the whole Bible in 1584. The evangelical liturgy, from what I heard from the bishop at Skálholt, Kristján Valur Ingólfsson, was brought to the country from priests who had been studying in Germany. Denmark tried to use its power over Iceland to influence its reform. A Bible in Danish was given to the Icelandic church and a reformed liturgy in the style of Bugenhagen was likely also given. These gifts were graciously accepted and set aside choosing to be self-sufficient rather than dependent on the Danes.
The Icelandic Bible was the first book published in Icelandic and had (and continues to have) a strong influence on the survival of the Icelandic language. The Icelandic language is a living piece of the past. It is often said that it is similar to the language that would have been spoken in Norway some 1000 years ago. While other Scandinavian languages have morphed over the previous centuries Icelandic has changed very little. Something similar can be said of the Bible and the liturgical text; they are living pieces of the past. These texts were established in the vernacular at the time of the reformation and have not been changed or have changed very little over the last 500 years. Despite the fact that Icelandic has changed little, while in Iceland I was told that the language that is used in these texts is no longer the same as the language spoken by the people. I was told by one person that it is similar to the difference between King James English and the English that is commonly spoken today. I was also told that one of the difficulties of teaching the faith is teaching the language of the Bible and liturgy. One pastor with whom I spoke told about a child who had understood the Icelandic of “thy will be done on earth as in heaven” as saying something like “and don’t put the cheese in the freezer.”
The fact that the language of these texts has not been updated is surprising to me. It is surprising to me that a church of the reformation would need to wrestle with the question of whether or not to put the word into the vernacular. Repeatedly, while in Iceland, I heard that one of the greatest difficulties faced by the church is getting the people to understand themselves as participants in God’s mission in the world; to be carriers of the Word. I do wonder if the distance between the people and their Holy texts created by the dated language is one part of this difficulty. (In the USA we have countless translations of the Bible. Some try to put the Bible into the vernacular. Others try to be as true to the Greek/Hebrew as possible. Some translate closely to the words and others the thoughts. Most try to do all of the above with varying degrees of success. And yet we also have difficulties trying to get people to participate in God’s mission.) Updating the language of the Biblical text and the liturgy was not a fight that I heard about while in Iceland through I did hear some sentiments which may be a precursor to such a fight.
The Liturgy:
While traveling through these countries it was very apparent that the National Church in Iceland and the State Church in Norway are one church with many congregations. In contrast, I would describe the ELCA as many congregations that have come together to form a church. And this distinction has a great impact on the way the church functions on the congregational level, including the way they do liturgy.
The top-down ecclesiology that I witnessed in these churches assures that a person coming to worship knows what to expect in whichever church he or she goes to worship. What is being said about God through the ordo will be the same in all the churches that belong to the National or State churches in the country. On a Sunday while in Iceland we were able to worship in two different locations. While the music was radically different in the two places, the liturgy was nearly identical except for the absence of the Eucharist in one. There is a sense of unity that comes from this. The worship that is being done in one location is not unique to that place. In worship you are connected with churches across the country. The church as a whole can be sure that each of the church’s liturgical theology is consistent with that of the whole church. There are obviously some benefits to this form of being church.
There are also some downsides to this. I witnessed one example of this while we were in Norway. Pastor Øystein Aronsen in Skien, Norway said that he would be more comfortable preaching out of the pulpit; that being able to move around while preaching would be more his style. He, however, was told by his bishop that he needed to stay in the pulpit to preach as this was mandated by the law in Norway. Pastor Gunnar Sigurjónsson also told about having to do things a certain way and the fights he had had when choosing to do things differently. In fact, Gunnar has been an agent of change regarding many liturgical practices. Gunnar has made changes to the liturgical practice in his own setting in the way he preaches at funerals, in his refusal to conduct wedding services in churches other than the one to which he has been called, in the frequency and regularity of Eucharistic practice, and in his worship leadership techniques. Making changes leads to conflict in any system but because of the nature of the Icelandic church the fight for change has been difficult.
A practice that surprised me in Iceland was the way pastors of multiple parishes provide for those parishes worship lives. Many small, rural parishes may only have mass once a month, perhaps even less. I thought that this would mean that the services when the priest is not present would be lay led. Instead, however, this is not the case. When the priest is not there, there is no Sunday service held in the church. This is different than in the ELCA where a pastor of a rural parish would be expected to travel between the churches so that each congregation would have worship every Sunday and in the absence of the pastor a lay led worship would likely take its place. I was told that the Icelanders listen to worship on the radio when there is no service being held in their church. It will be interesting to see if the National Church will make some effort to provide a more regular worship experience for its members of rural parishes in the years ahead.
Eucharist:
One area of the liturgical life of the Icelandic church that has shifted noticeably over the past few decades is its Eucharistic theology and practice. During our stay in Iceland, I heard stories about the affect Calvinism had on the Icelandic Church’s Eucharistic theology. Icelandic pastors, seeking continued education opportunities, left Iceland and found their way to Calvinist colleges and universities. These were the institutions to which they were welcomed. Their experiences at these schools shaped their theology and the influence was felt throughout Iceland. One of the ways the Calvinist influence expressed itself was in infrequent celebration of the Eucharist. Many Icelandic churches celebrated the Eucharist only on Easter and the Wednesday after Confirmation Sunday. In the past few decades the church has recovered a sense of Eucharistic identity and the celebration of the Meal has become a weekly occurrence in many churches. At Gunnar’s first church, this was one of the changes that he made right away upon entering the parish. He received little resistance locally for making such a change because of the healthy way the previous priest left his position (though he didn’t leave the parish).
One experience concerning the Eucharist that I have to mention was the beautiful story that Pastor Sunniva Gylver told about serving communion after the terrible violence that struck Norway in 2011. She told about having many, many people come into her church in the days and weeks that followed. She said that she served communion to about a million people (this may or may not have been an exaggeration) in the time that followed the attacks. People, she said, were looking for something the could cling to for support in chaotic times. Laurence Hall Stookey grasps this beautiful aspect of the sacraments when he states, “It is one of the virtues of the sacraments that they offer us an objective assurance of God’s love in those times when subjective indications fail us.” Sunniva said that many of the people she communed in those days had never received before or had only received at their confirmation but she was able to share God’s word with them in a way they could grasp, literally.
Baptism:
I wonder if the Calvinist influence that took hold of the church in Iceland and affected its Eucharistic theology and practice affected also affected baptism. In Iceland, a majority of the baptisms take place in people’s homes. Of those that take place in the church, many happen in services separate from the Sunday mass. The baptism that we witnessed while in Iceland happened on a Friday morning with many family and friends in attendance but without the assembly gathered. The masses that we attended did not, from what I could grasp from a translation of the prayers and from the movement of the service, have any emphasis on the sacrament of Baptism. The gathering and the sending did not center around the font. The architecture and furniture of the sanctuaries we entered did not show an emphasis put on the baptismal practice of the church. Most every church had the table at the center of the sanctuary (front of the church) with a large, elevated pulpit to one side. The font was usually on the opposite side of the pulpit as if to provide balance. The fonts were usually very small and appeared moveable.
In discussions with many of the clergy, a great deal of focus was spent on talking about ways they were drawing people into the church. Only when asked did they talk about how they send people out. In fact, when asked about this I typically heard a response that almost sounded a little embarrassed that this was not something they focused on or gave much thought. At the same time I heard much talk about the difficulty of getting people to understand that they are the church and participants in the mission of God in their lives. These two, to me, are related.
One piece of the baptismal life of the Icelandic church that seems to have fallen from common practice but I found beautiful and powerful was the baptismal cloth. During a baptism a family is given the cloth that is used to dry the baby’s head. This cloth can become a prayer cloth put into the Bible or prayer book of the child as she grows. It may be incorporated somehow into the confirmation service and stays a prayer cloth throughout the person’s life. At the wake before the person’s funeral this baptismal cloth covers the face of the person signifying that they have been clothed in their baptism throughout their life. This is a tangible piece of the baptismal faith life that I would love to borrow and use in ministry.
There are some at Wartburg Theological Seminary who feel that too much attention has been put on baptism in recent years. They may be right. Perhaps the pendulum has swung in our churches too far towards baptism causing us to focus less on the Eucharist and the word. But a strong baptismal theology and identity helps us to understand who we are as Christians and how we are to be the body of Christ. Studying in Iceland and Norway helped me to see how important baptism is to my own theology. Knowing how important it is may help me remember not to focus strictly on baptism but broaden my focus. The emphasis placed on the word and table in the Icelandic church is something to learn from and put to use.
Conclusion:
Studying the church and getting to engage with people of God in a culture different from my own was a remarkable experience. It helped me to think bigger about the mission of God in the world and the Church through which God works. It helped me to see how central worship is to my understanding of the faith. It was beautiful to worship in a language completely foreign to me and to pray alongside sisters and brothers using my own language while they did the same. It was an experience that will continue to bear fruit in my future ministry.
