Pod Insights Stuff You Missed in History Class Jón Arason, Last Catholic Bishop of Iceland About this episode Jón Arason was the last Catholic bishop in Iceland before it became a Lutheran country. His story involves a lot of gory details in this story including a pretty gruesome beheading.
Transcript Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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0:39 Holly Frey? We've all tumbled down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose, and it leaves us more anxious than informed. Our feeds are full of wellness trends, but how do we know what's real, what's exaggerated, and what's just wrong? Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association breaks it all down. Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends, not to cancel them, but to understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. So listen to Health vs. Hype wherever you get your podcasts. A rare disease diagnosis can change your life, but it doesn't have to define your future. In season seven of Untold Stories: Life with a Severe Autoimmune Condition, host Martine Hackett continues the conversation
1:23 Holly Frey? with people living with MG, CIDP, and the broader rare disease community, exploring what comes after diagnosis through stories of hope, progress, and connection. Produced by Ruby Studio in partnership with Argenx. Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
1:42 Tracy V. Wilson? The Old Gays are back with Silver Linings, their lovable podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Robert, Mick, Bill, and Jessa strut back down memory lane for season two, sharing lessons on life, love, and loss. These are the kind of insights that only come from experience. So tune in to Silver Linings with The Old Gays on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
2:10 Holly Frey? Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of iHeart Radio.
2:20 Tracy V. Wilson? Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. Wilson.
2:24 Holly Frey? And I'm Holly Frey.
2:26 Tracy V. Wilson? While we were in Iceland, we had this amazing local guide named Guleon, who went by God. And God was full of knowledge about Icelandic history. And the trip also involved a lot of bus rides. So those bus rides were full of God telling us all about the history of where we were going. I don't actually remember whether we were on the bus or at one of the places that we visited. But one of the people that he told us about was Jón Arson, who was the last Catholic bishop in Iceland before it became a Lutheran country. This story had a lot of gory details, including a pretty gruesome beheading.
3:10 Tracy V. Wilson? So of course I was like, that's going on the list.
3:14 Tracy V. Wilson? There's a lot of writing about Jón Arson in Icelandic. There's way less writing about him in English. So if you're from Iceland, you might know more about him than we do. And you will probably, or I will say certainly, say all the names in this episode better than we will do.
3:34 Holly Frey? 100%. As a quick bit of background, the Norse settled Iceland in the 9th century. And around the year 930, a national parliament was established, known as the Allting. A thing was essentially an assembly or council, and smaller things were held across Iceland. The Allting was the one that brought the whole island together every summer as both a legislative and judicial body. Chieftains and other representatives would discuss and pass laws, and judges would hear cases that hadn't been handled through one of the smaller things. The Allting still exists today, although it meets at a parliament building in Reykjavik
4:15 Holly Frey? rather than at the Assembly Fields or Thingvæliar, which is where it met historically.
4:21 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, it's often described as the oldest parliament in the world. There's various debate about whether that's correct or not, but.
4:29 Holly Frey? And it has great acoustics.
4:30 Tracy V. Wilson? Yes. Overwhelmingly, these first Norse settlers were polytheistic. The spread of Christianity, starting in the 10th century, led to strife and sometimes violence, which was also happening in other parts of the Norse world. King Olaf Trigefsson Christianized Norway by force after coming to power there in the year 995. There'd been other people who had tried to do that, but Olaf is the person that's usually pointed at as successful. He also sent missionaries to other Nordic countries, including Iceland. In the face of all of this, the question of whether Iceland should become Christian came before the Althing.
5:12 Holly Frey? The Althing decided that Iceland would become a Christian nation around the year 1000. The diocese of Skalholt was established in 1056, about 80 kilometers or 50 miles east of Reykjavik. The diocese of Holly was established in 1106, near the northern coast of the island, essentially on the opposite side of Iceland from Vik. The diocese of Skalholt covered about two-thirds of the country, while the diocese of Holly covered the other third.
5:43 Tracy V. Wilson? Most sources say that Jon Arason was born in northern Iceland in 1484, but some sources argue that it was really a decade earlier than that, in 1474. There's not much detail known about his early life. Sometimes his family is described as poor and other times of reasonable means. After his father died, possibly during the course of Jon's education, he took care of his mother.
6:11 Holly Frey? Jon was ordained in about 1507 at the age of about 23. He started living with a woman named Helga Sigordardater in what was basically a civil union or a common-law marriage. For the most part, Catholic clergy in Iceland weren't observing a tradition of celibacy at this point. Jon's father had also been the son of a monastic prior. Jon and Helga had nine children together, six of whom lived until adulthood.
6:40 Tracy V. Wilson? The bishop of Holly at this time was Gottsåk Nikulsson, who seems to have put a lot of trust in Jon. Gotzkalk sent him on missions to Norway, at least twice, once to get some timber for the church and once to deliver gold that was going to be made into a chalice. In 1519, Gotzkalk also absolved Jón of any sin that was associated with his relationship with Helga. Although both clergy and laypeople in Iceland generally seemed to have thought it was fine for priests to have common law partners, that was not as true for bishops. So this absolution was probably because Gotzkalk was planning for Jón to be his successor.
7:23 Holly Frey? Bishop Gotzkalk died the following year in 1520, when Jón was about 36. This circles back around to the questions about his birth year. His rise through the leadership of the diocese is seen as very fast if he was really ordained around 1507, when he was about 23. But it wouldn't have been so unusual if he was really in his mid-40s when Gotzkalk died. Regardless, in addition to taking on increasing power and responsibility within the church, Jón had become prosperous and prominent in northern Iceland, much like a powerful chieftain. When a group of clerics met to choose an interim leader for the see, they chose Jón almost unanimously.
8:08 Tracy V. Wilson? Jón did still have some detractors, though, and a different group of clergymen also met and put forth a different candidate of their own, named Pjotr Paulsen. It seems like they intended for Jón and Pjotr to have sort of equal power and responsibility, but Pjotr gave up this role by the following April, and that left Jón in charge.
8:31 Holly Frey? Holly also wasn't the only place where Jón had enemies. Olmandur Paulsen, bishop of the Southern Diocese in Skallholt, had been in Norway being consecrated when Bishop Gotzkalk died. Norway had taken control of Iceland in the 13th century, and the Icelandic diocese reported to the Archdiocese of Nideros, which is now Trondheim. Nideros had been the capital of Norway, and although the capital had been moved to Oslo, Nideros was still Norway's religious center.
9:03 Holly Frey? The Archbishop of Nideros had made Omender interim bishop of Holly until a new bishop could be elected.
9:11 Tracy V. Wilson? Omender seems to have really, really, really hated Jón. If Jón really was only in his mid 30s, this might have been related to his age. It was probably also connected to how powerful Jón had become in northern Iceland. He had a reputation for being really ambitious and assertive, and it's possible that Omender thought this would sort of tip the balance of power between the two diocese. Regardless of the exact reasoning, Omender started trying to remove Jón from power. He wrote to Pope Clement VII about it, and he also tried to put Björte Paulsen back in charge of the see.
9:50 Tracy V. Wilson? The northern clergy refused to recognize this, and on August 18th, 1522, they elected Jón to be the next bishop. They wrote to the Archdiocese of Nideros to both name Jón as their choice for bishop and to complain about Omender's behavior.
10:09 Holly Frey? Omender tried to stop Jón from going to Norway to be consecrated. So Jón made arrangements to travel there aboard a German merchant ship. Omender tried to take the matter to court before riding north with a group of men, possibly as many as 300, to physically stop Jón from leaving. Omender also sent word to the German merchants that they would be attacked if they left Iceland with Jón aboard. Jón sent a priest named Magnus back to Holly with a copy of a letter that he had written to the Archbishop of Nideros, outlining everything that had happened and saying that Omender should go to Nideros to answer for his actions.
10:50 Holly Frey? In what seems like a pretty astute move, Magnus read them this letter through a window where they could not reach him.
10:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Although the German merchants initially had to turn back because of some bad weather, Jón did ultimately make it to Norway with them.
11:07 Tracy V. Wilson? Olmunder was probably hoping that the king, King Christian II, and the Archbishop of Nideros would refuse to recognize Jön as bishop. Olmunder already had a relationship with both of those men because of the time he had spent in Norway for his own consecration. But Christian II was forced off the throne after a revolt in early 1523. And the Archbishop who had consecrated Olmunder had died by the time Jön arrived. There were different people in charge. The king was now Frederick I, who Jön developed a friendly relationship with. And the new Archbishop of Nideros, Olaf Ingelburson,
11:49 Tracy V. Wilson? cleared Jön of all the charges against him on August 9th of 1524, and formally consecrated him as Bishop of Holly.
11:59 Holly Frey? There is a possibly apocryphal story about Jön's coronation, which is that toward the end of the ceremony, his mitre fell off. That's the ceremonial headpiece worn by bishops. As a couple of page boys raced to pick it up, he said something along the lines of, "That's how my episcopal career will end."
12:19 Tracy V. Wilson? We'll have some more after a sponsor break.
12:24 Speaker 03 First thought is like, wow, how are we going to do all this?
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12:48 Speaker 03 It was good arrival, anything that was already built. And that takes quite a bit of people and different teams to all be on the same page.
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14:32 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self-diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy-nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
15:14 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
15:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with Vive Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jesay have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So, listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
16:20 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
16:40 Tracy V. Wilson? When Jón Arson returned to Iceland in 1525, he became one of the country's wealthiest and most powerful men. He was the bishop of one of the country's two dioceses, and the church was deeply interconnected with every level of Iceland's social fabric. He also had control of more than a hundred farms that had been left to the church by a wealthy landowner. But he continued to be at odds with Olmunder and the diocese of Skjalfjord for at least the next couple of years. This came to a head with both Jón and Olmunder showing up at the 1527 althing with more than a thousand men apiece.
17:22 Tracy V. Wilson? There may have even been a duel between their champions at the althing that year. Eventually, though, these two men started to tolerate each other. It seems like eventually they were like, that guy's not going anywhere. He's been formally consecrated. I just gotta live with it.
17:39 Holly Frey? There's not a lot of documentation about Jón's first years as a bishop beyond that. He did introduce the printing press to Iceland, probably around the year 1535. Iceland's first printer was a Swedish priest named Jón Mathiasen. Some documents from this press still survive today, and it is possible that Jón authorized a translation and printing of an Icelandic Bible. But if that is true, no copies of that Bible survive. He also wrote poetry, most of it religious or devotional. Some sources describe him as the greatest poet of his generation. And he worked on advancing his sons' careers,
18:20 Holly Frey? playing a big enough role in their upward mobility that some sources describe it as nepotism. He also arranged marriages for his daughters to wealthy men.
18:31 Tracy V. Wilson? These same years were tumultuous elsewhere in the Norse world. In 1533, King Frederick I died. This led to a war of succession in Denmark, known as the Count's War or the Count's Feud. On one side was Christian II, that was the one who had been deposed back in 1523. And then on the other side was Frederick's only son, Christian, who was the ultimate victor and became King Christian III.
19:00 Holly Frey? Christian III was a devout Lutheran. Martin Luther was a German theologian who had initially intended to try to reform the Catholic Church, but he had been excommunicated in 1521. The reform movement he was part of had evolved into a schism in which reformers broke from the Catholic Church and started establishing new denominations. Today, this is known as the Protestant Reformation. After coming to the throne in Denmark, Christian III immediately began the process of turning it into a Lutheran nation, which was something he had already done in territory that he controlled before becoming king.
19:38 Tracy V. Wilson? This included things like arresting the Catholic bishops and seizing all their assets and introducing a Lutheran Church Order that had been approved by Martin Luther himself. Christian then did the same in Norway after ascending to the throne there in 1537. Of course, all of this is an entire other story that we are not getting into today.
20:01 Holly Frey? Bishops Jön and Omandur recognized that the king's religious efforts were a threat and that he would probably try to implement Lutheranism in Iceland. And he did. He had the Lutheran Church Order read at the allthing in 1538. Not much is known about the bishop's response to this first reading, but it doesn't seem like it led to meaningful changes right away. Also, this was not the first time Lutheranism was introduced to Iceland. It was likely introduced by German merchants earlier in the 1530s, and there was at least one Lutheran church in Iceland by 1537. It was also common for promising young men to be sent to Germany to study, and as Martin
20:45 Holly Frey? Luther grew in prominence, they started to be exposed to his ideas there.
20:49 Tracy V. Wilson? It did not take long for things to escalate in Iceland, though. In 1539, Iceland's governor was Claus van der Marvetzen. His representative, Diedrich van Menden, led a small group of men in an attack on the monastery at Víðe on an island northeast of Reykjavik. They expelled all the monks and they seized the monastery and all of its lands and assets. When the allthing convened not long after that, Omandur questioned the men who were involved with this, and the assembly excommunicated both the governor and Diedrich van Menden. Omandur sent a letter to the king, signed by most of the southern clergy and a lot of laypeople detailing what had happened.
21:34 Holly Frey? But Diedrich tried to do this again at another monastery not long after, and he and his men stopped in Skålhold on the way, where they insulted and harassed the bishop and, in some accounts, physically assaulted him. In response, a group of farmers rose up and killed Diedrick and his men on August 10. Icelandic courts condemned the governor and acquitted the farmers who were involved.
22:00 Tracy V. Wilson? By the time word reached Denmark about what had happened, it was too late to send reinforcements to Iceland. Travel between Denmark and Iceland wasn't really possible in the winter. Everything was frozen. So, since many of Denmark's representatives in Iceland had been killed and Icelandic courts were not recognizing the authority of the governor, over that winter, Iceland was more or less out of Denmark's control. But this, what had happened, these killings, that was also a major issue to the king. So, when travel resumed in the spring, he wanted to both regain control of Iceland and accelerate its conversion to Lutheranism.
22:41 Tracy V. Wilson? And then there were also rumors spreading that Olmunder had ordered those killings. So, the king wanted somebody to get to the bottom of that, too.
22:50 Holly Frey? Meanwhile, both Jón Arason and Olmunder Paulsen had written to the king to express their loyalty to Denmark, but also maintain their dedication to their existing religion and traditions. Jón also said that if the king insisted that Iceland adopt these Lutheran religious reforms, Catholics should be allowed to leave the island and resettle in whatever place God showed them.
23:14 Tracy V. Wilson? Although Jón and Olmunder were now solidly on the same side, and they were both trying to keep Iceland as a Catholic country, they were at very different points in their lives and their careers as bishops. Jón was 56, or maybe 66, if you're going by that earlier birth year. He was still really active, and as we've said, he was one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in northern Iceland. But Olmunder was in his 80s and had lost most of his eyesight. He had already tapped his nephew Sigmund as his successor, but Sigmund had then died in Norway shortly after being consecrated.
23:57 Tracy V. Wilson? Omenor's second choice was his assistant Gissur Anirsson, who was already in Norway when Didrik von Menden and his men were killed. Gissur was sent back to Iceland as bishop-elect, but without formally being consecrated yet, possibly because of his age. He was only 28. He arrived back in Iceland in May of 1540.
24:20 Holly Frey? What Omenor apparently did not know was that Gissur was a Lutheran. When Gissur appeared at the Allthing that summer, he read the Lutheran Order and Christians' command that it be adopted in Iceland and that Didrik's killers be brought to justice. After discussing these issues, the Allthing wrote back to the king, refusing to adopt the church order and maintaining not only that Omenor had not ordered the killings, but also that the perpetrators had already been tried and acquitted under Icelandic law. The Allthing also asked the king for a new governor, which did lead the king to recall and imprison Klaus van der Marvetson.
25:00 Tracy V. Wilson? Another complication was that in addition to Gissur, there were multiple other Lutherans in Omenor's household and at the diocese of Skalholt.
25:11 Tracy V. Wilson? It really just kind of reads to me like a hotbed of secret Lutheranism. One of these was Omenor's secretary, Oder Gottskalkson, who was the son of Gottskalk Nicholson, who had been John Arason's predecessor back in Holly. Oder had secretly converted while studying in Denmark and Germany, and he was spending his free time secretly translating a Lutheran version of the New Testament into Icelandic out in Omenor's barn.
25:42 Holly Frey? It does not seem like Omender was at all aware of Gisser's thoughts on Lutheranism when he chose him as his successor, or that there were other Lutherans in his household and staff. When he realized what was happening, he was not happy about it. He wrote to Jón Arason complaining about Gisser's actions and claiming he had taken silver and other church property from the cathedral to his own residence. Jón was still upholding Catholic traditions in the north of Iceland, and he was alarmed by what was happening in the south. But it also seems like he thought it was prudent to keep a positive working relationship with Gisser as his counterpart in the southern diocese. Jón and Gisser
26:26 Holly Frey? agreed to help and support one another through a covenant of friendship and mutual aid.
26:32 Tracy V. Wilson? King Christian dispatched a new governor to Iceland. That was Christopher Huitvelt, who arrived in May of 1541, along with two warships. Christopher was tasked with converting Iceland to Lutheranism and with implementing a new tax to help the king pay off the debt from the count's war that had put him on the throne. With Gisser in charge, the diocese at Skalhold quickly adopted all of this. But Jón and his council wrote to the king to say that they would pay this tax in exchange for maintaining their religious liberty and their traditional customs.
27:12 Holly Frey? In the summer of 1541, the governor started making plans to take Omender into custody. Although Omender had retired, he had not yet left Skalhold. Some of his friends convinced him that it would be safer for him to retire to a monastery, and on the way there, he stopped to visit his sister. On June 2, 1541, some of the governor's men showed up while Omender was still sleeping, forced him out of his sister's house, still in his night clothes, and put him on a Danish ship. He was deported, and he either died on the journey or sometime within a couple of years of arriving in Denmark, remembering that he was a very old man through all of this.
27:54 Tracy V. Wilson? Yeah, I think they did let him change into something other than his night clothes, but he was described as still, like, he was not adequately dressed. Uh, when Omander was planning this journey to this monastery, Gisser had told him he did not have anything to worry about. But Gisser was definitely involved in this whole abduction and deportation plan. He may have actually instigated it, but that part is less clear. Gisser later wrote to Jón Arson, saying he believed what he had done was for the greater good, and he asked Jón not to believe any, quote, "evil rumors" that he might hear.
28:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Jón agreed to this, saying that if he were to hear any slander about Gisser, he would not believe it unless he received some kind of certified documentary proof.
28:46 Holly Frey? Jón Arson had been traveling south for the Allthing when Omander was abducted and deported. And when he heard about it, he turned back. He sent letters to the Allthing and to the governor forbidding any action against his diocese. Without Jón and Omander there to argue against it, this time, the Allthing agreed to adopt the Lutheran Church Order. But since the diocese at Holly was not represented at the Allthing when this was decided, it was not considered to apply to them.
29:17 Tracy V. Wilson? For a while, Jón didn't really interfere with what was happening in the southern diocese. While he thought Gisser's acceptance of Lutheranism was heresy, Gisser had also been lawfully appointed as bishop of the diocese. Jón also agreed to pay the taxes and assist Danish officials as long as he and his diocese were able to maintain their Catholic religion and customs.
29:47 Holly Frey? In 1542, King Christian III ordered Gisser and Jón to come to Copenhagen. Gisser went, but Jón said he was ill, and he sent delegates in his place, one of them being his son Sigurdur. Sigurdur and Gisser both signed on to the Lutheran ordinance while there, and a priest who had traveled with Sigurdur started preaching Lutheran doctrine when they got back to Iceland. Jón refused to be bound by the ordinance that his son had signed as his delegate. But for the moment, Christian seems to have considered the matter settled and didn't do much to interfere with the North.
30:24 Tracy V. Wilson? This kind of uneasy peace did not last, though, and we will get to that after a sponsor break.
30:33 Holly Frey? We've all done it, tumble down an internet rabbit hole trying to self diagnose. And sometimes doing our own research can leave us more anxious than informed. Your feed is packed with wellness trends telling you to cold plunge, protein max, detox, track your sleep. But what's actually real? What's exaggerated? What's just wrong? That's exactly what Health vs. Hype from the American Medical Association and iHeartMedia's Ruby Studio is here to find out. Each episode, Emmy nominated science communicator Trace Dominguez, who's racked up billions of views across PBS, Discovery Channel, and YouTube, talks to doctors, influencers, and real people trying these trends.
31:16 Holly Frey? Not to cancel them, not to hype them more, but to actually understand them. Because when it comes to your health, who you listen to matters. Start asking better questions and listen to Health vs. Hype on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
31:37 Tracy V. Wilson? Guess who's back in the house? The old gays return for season two of Silver Linings, their hit podcast from iHeart's Ruby Studio in partnership with ViiV Healthcare. Just wait until you hear what hosts Robert McMillan and Jess A have in store this time around. They strut back down memory lane navigating life, love, loss, and everything that shaped them along the way. And as usual, someone just might break into song. From leather bars to bathhouses, dance floors to drag brunch, nothing stays off limits. These are the kinds of insights that can only come from experience. So listen to your elders, honey, and discover the silver linings you can take with you. All sass, zero filter, and decades of perspective from four friends proving that queer joy
32:22 Tracy V. Wilson? only gets better with age on the podcast that never gets old. Listen to Silver Linings, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
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34:23 Tracy V. Wilson? On Good Friday of 1548, Bishop Gisser Anerson died at the age of only 36. He had gone to Caldutharnus, which is southeast of Reykjavik, to remove a wooden cross that had long been seen as a healing relic and was frequently used as a pilgrimage site, obviously among Catholics.
34:48 Tracy V. Wilson? Gisir got sick and died after returning to Skalholt from that trip. When Jóin heard about his death, he rode to Skalholt and on the way, wrote a letter offering to handle any church and religious matters and nothing else until a replacement could be elected as bishop of the southern diocese.
35:09 Holly Frey? Before the start of Christian III's efforts to make Iceland a Lutheran country, this would have been a completely normal and uncontroversial thing to do. With Gisir's death, Jóin was the only Catholic bishop in Iceland. The Archdiocese of Nideros had been dissolved as Christian III had converted Norway to Lutheranism. So Jóin was also reporting directly to the Pope and was seen as the Pope's representative in Iceland. It was routine for an Icelandic bishop to take on, or at least assist with, the duties of his counterpart at the other diocese if he died, or for some other reason, was incapacitated.
35:50 Holly Frey? But the Protestant Reformation made all of this a whole lot more complicated, especially as the Reformation and Counter-Reformation had led to wars in other parts of Europe.
36:01 Tracy V. Wilson? Jóin also did not simply step in to keep things running in the southern diocese after Gisir's death. He started trying to reestablish Catholicism there. He chose an abbot named Sigvörður Haldrson as Gisir's replacement and sent him to Denmark to be consecrated. Of course, Lutheran church authorities in Denmark were not going to do that. They did not consecrate Sigvörður as bishop, and they also did not let him leave Denmark. Sigvörður died in Denmark a couple of years later, after having first become a Lutheran. Lutherans had also put forth their own candidate for that bishop spot, an Icelandic priest
36:46 Tracy V. Wilson? named Martin Anerson. Martin was already in Copenhagen. He became bishop of Skalholt instead.
36:55 Holly Frey? Before Martin returned from Denmark, Jón continued trying to reimplement Catholicism in the south, with the help of people living there who were still Catholic. This included re-consecrating monasteries and cathedrals, including the monastery at Vidé. He arrested Lutheran clerics and forced them to either readopt Catholicism or to leave Iceland. Jón also declared Gisser a heretic, exhuming his body from its grave and throwing it into a pit. In the late summer of 1548, some of Jón's men lay siege to Skalhold for eight days, but they were ultimately repelled, thanks to its having been fortified by Martin's brother Pjotir.
37:39 Holly Frey? Martin and Pjotir's brother-in-law, Dadi Guthmundsson, was also heavily involved in the Lutheran opposition to Jón's efforts.
37:48 Tracy V. Wilson? There was another pause in the winter as the sieves once again became impassable. But on February 11, 1549, the king declared Jón Arson outlawed. When Martin Andersen arrived back in Iceland in the spring, he was carrying a summons for Jón's arrest, and of course, Jón considered that to be invalid. Dadi Guthmundsson started working with the latest Icelandic governor, Laurentius Muller, to try to get the king to condemn Jón. Instead, the king ordered Dadi to arrest Jón and his sons, thinking this would be a lot less bloody and expensive than sending some more warships and trying to fight over it.
38:33 Holly Frey? Meanwhile, Jón had written a letter to Pope Paul III, asking for guidance for what to do with donations that normally would have gone to the archdiocese at Nideros. The Pope's response was to distribute them to the poor. The Pope also described Jón as pious and full of veneration and obedience toward the Pope and the Holy See. This letter said in part, "We therefore pronounce on you our highest recognition in the Lord and exhort you with the flock entrusted to you to persevere in the same mind. For this you will receive praise from men here on earth and from God Himself eternal life in heaven."
39:16 Holly Frey? Jón saw this as confirmation that what he was doing was right and had the Pope's support, and he had it translated into Icelandic, and then he distributed that around the diocese.
39:29 Tracy V. Wilson? Then Jón sent two of his sons to Skáhlholt to try to arrest Martin Einerson and Dáthi Gudmundsson. One of the sons, Ari, was a lowmother, or a lawyer, or lawspeaker, and the other one, Bjorn, was a priest. They did manage to capture the bishop, but Dáthi's men reportedly put on gray clothing to camouflage themselves, and then were able to ambush Jón's men and drive them back.
39:58 Holly Frey? Bishop Martin was kept in Ari's custody at a monastery where he was forced to work drying cod. We said earlier that most of Jón Arson's poetry was religious, but he also wrote a number of insulting poems about Martin while he was in custody, and about a cleric named Arni Arnerson, who had also been captured.
40:20 Tracy V. Wilson? In 1550, the next time the allthing convened, Jón, Ari, and Bjorn were all there. Jón with 200 men, and Ari and Bjorn with 100 men apiece. Before the gathered assembly, they all declared that one of the very prominent Lutheran priests in Iceland was a heretic. Ultimately, that led this priest to flee to Denmark.
40:44 Holly Frey? Later in the summer, Jón and Dáthi arranged a thing at which they would discuss their various grievances. But once they were there, Dáthi announced that he was going to put things off until the next allthing the following spring. An official thing was supposed to come along with protections for its participants, but postponing the proceedings meant those protections essentially disappeared. Realizing they were under threat, Jón declared himself and his sons to be under the king's protection, but Dáthi's men took them captive.
41:18 Tracy V. Wilson? Something else that was supposed to happen at this point was that the three men would be held until they could be tried at the next allthing. Christian Skriever, who was the governor's representative, took custody of Jón and his sons on October 23, 1550. So the idea was they were going to hold them until the following summer. But everybody knew that doing that would be challenging at best. Even with the reduced travel during the colder months, there would probably be people from the north who would be coming to Jón's defense. Unrest would probably be spreading through and from the north without Jón there.
41:59 Holly Frey? This led to a lot of discussion among Jón's captors, and a clergyman named Jón Bjornsson is often cited as offering this solution. Quote, "The axe and the earth will keep them best." On November 6, 1550, Christian Skriever gave a recitation of all the purported crimes of Jón Orson and his sons. And even though there had been no real trial, they were all beheaded the next day.
42:27 Tracy V. Wilson? Various accounts give some different details, but Ari Jónsson was beheaded first with his head severed in one blow. Bjorn Jónsson was next, and it took four blows to decapitate him. And then for Jón Orson, it took seven blows. And he gave his last words after the third, saying in Latin, "Into your hands, Lord, I commend my spirit." He died at the age of 66, or, you know, 76, if you're looking at that date discrepancy. The story that our guide God told us on our trip about why it took seven blows
43:08 Tracy V. Wilson? was that the regular executioner didn't want to behead Jón Orson. So this task instead fell to somebody who was not considered to be particularly smart and did not have a sharp axe.
43:21 Holly Frey? If Danish authorities were trying to avoid a hassle by executing Jón and his sons rather than holding them until the all thing, that really did not work out for them. Especially in the north of Iceland, Jón was immediately seen as a martyr. A force from the north, which may have been sent by Jón's daughter Thorn, marched to Skalholt and killed every Danish person there.
43:47 Tracy V. Wilson? In the spring, another party was sent from Holly to claim the bodies of Jón and his sons. Their bodies were exhumed and placed in coffins, still covered in mud. Those coffins had bells attached, and they were carried from Skalholt back to Holly. This party stopped at Loigervaten, which was home to a consecrated hot spring, where the bodies were washed before being returned to their coffins. There are six stones beside this pool, which, according to tradition, are where the coffins were laid while the bodies were being cleaned and prepared.
44:25 Holly Frey? Also, according to legend, church bells rang as this processional passed on the way back to Holly. This ended with the largest bell at the Holly Cathedral, which started ringing by itself as the procession came down into the valley, and continued ringing until they were in sight of town, at which point it cracked.
44:46 Tracy V. Wilson? There had, once again, been very little Danish presence in Iceland over the winter of 1550 to 1551, because they were all dead. But four Danish warships arrived in the spring, and troops started marching on the north. They had been sent to arrest Jón Arson, not knowing when they set sail that he had already been executed. Jón was posthumously condemned as a traitor, and troops reestablished Danish and Lutheran control over Iceland. Catholicism was made illegal, and Catholics were outlawed. The remaining monastic houses in Iceland were dissolved, and their assets were all seized, and that included that chalice that
45:31 Tracy V. Wilson? Jón had delivered the gold for early in his years as a priest. During all of this, Jón's coven-law wife Helga Sigurdsson's daughter had to go into hiding. Most Catholic Icelanders who refused to convert to Lutheranism left. A lot of them went to Scotland, where, for the moment, Catholicism was still legal, but then that changed in 1560.
45:56 Holly Frey? From an outsider's perspective, Jón Arson's legacy is fascinating. Jón died as one of the wealthiest men in all of Iceland, if not the wealthiest. He had stewardship of more than 350 estates. One of the sources used in this episode said that he controlled 18% of Iceland's real estate. There was one Danish official who wrote that if you were riding through Iceland and asked whose farm that was, the answer was either Bishop Jón's or Bjorn Jónsen's. He was incredibly rich at a time when people in Iceland overwhelmingly were not, and he faced criticism for that wealth while he was alive.
46:36 Holly Frey? But he and his sons, Ari and Bjorn, are also seen as emblematic of Iceland's past. 19th century Icelandic historian Jón Sigurdsson called them "the last Icelanders."
46:48 Tracy V. Wilson? There's another degree of irony in Jón Arson's status as a national hero in Iceland. He was fighting against something that's now part of the national fabric of Iceland. Today, the evangelical Lutheran Church of Iceland is the state church of Iceland. More than 60% of the population are members. The religion Jón observed and fought for was outlawed in Iceland for centuries, with Catholics only starting to return to Iceland in the extremely late 18th and early 19th centuries. The Apostolic Prefecture of Iceland was established in 1923, and it became the Roman Catholic Diocese of Reykjavik in 1968.
47:34 Tracy V. Wilson? According to statistics, Iceland, only 3.9% of people in Iceland are Catholic today, and between 2/3 and 3/4 of those are people who immigrated to Iceland from places where Catholicism is a lot more widely practiced.
47:50 Holly Frey? This irony connects to some debate and varying interpretations around Jön's motivations. How much of it was about religious faith? How much about his ambition and personal wealth? And how that was tied to the Catholic Church? And how much was about wanting Iceland to be free of royal control by Denmark? That last part is definitely connected to his status as an icon and national hero. Centuries passed before Iceland became independent. It became a sovereign state in a union with Denmark in 1918 and an independent republic in 1944.
48:28 Tracy V. Wilson? There's also a saying that all Icelanders are descended from Jön Arson. The Icelandic Web of Science website tackled the question of whether this was true in a 2005 piece by the late Gisly Gunnarsson, who had been a history professor at the University of Iceland. This was translated into English by Nicholas Jones. This piece looked at math and at historical laws banning marriages between third and fourth cousins, and of course, people more closely related than that. This piece approximated that a person living in 2005 would have about 65,536 ancestors
49:10 Tracy V. Wilson? who were alive in 1484, when Jön Arson was born. The population of Iceland in 1484 was probably less than that. And some of the people living in 1484 would, for various reasons, not ever have any children. So this article concluded, "It is at least possible that everyone with Icelandic heritage is related to Jön Arson in some way."
49:39 Holly Frey? Do you have listener mail to take us out?
49:42 Tracy V. Wilson? I do have Lister mail. This is from Lorena and Lorena wrote, hi Holly and Tracy. I listened to your SL one reactor episode and the replay of the demon core episode with great interest slash horror this week. The extreme laxity in nuclear safety standards of the mid century was a surprise to me since I grew up in a nuclear town, Pickering, Ontario. As a child in the early 90s, we had nuclear drills, which consisted of hiding under our desk, question mark, and being told that our teachers would issue us a potassium iodide pill if there was a real nuclear incident. Details were not provided. And since my main source of knowledge about nuclear exposure was the historical fiction
50:27 Tracy V. Wilson? about Sadek Chan and the thousand paper cranes, I was under the impression that we would invariably die painful deaths if we were exposed to any radiation whatsoever. Nonetheless, it was clear that there was a protocol. Then in 2000, my grade 13 O A C for the Ontarians out there. Art project was helping paint a mural for the lunchroom at the nuclear plant. We painted the panels off site and I was only permitted a single tour of the working part of the plant after assuring them there was zero chance I could be pregnant. Even so, the staff got quite sharp with me because I kept putting my pen cap in my mouth as the tour began.
51:08 Tracy V. Wilson? The art opening was held outdoors and attendees were only permitted to go in briefly in small groups to view the mural, wearing safety gear. So it seemed Pickering was very safety conscious. Wikipedia reveals that in fact, the plant operations were rather lax at times, but we were blissfully ignorant. Thanks for your work. I've learned so much from the podcast and remittance of my pet tax here are my weird little guys, Pippin and Mary. Pippin and Mary are so cute.
51:35 Holly Frey? Babies.
51:36 Tracy V. Wilson? Uh, I don't know all the cat breeds, but these look like Siamese to me. And they are lounging in almost a little train along the back of a couch. Super duper cute. Um, thank you so much Lorena for this episode.
51:54 Tracy V. Wilson? A couple of random things. One of the reasons there used to be duck and cover drills, like, people like to make fun of duck and cover drills, because it does seem completely pointless, that if there was going to be a massive radiation exposure, how is hiding under your desk going to work? And the idea was that if you were not, like, at the center of the blast, there would be, you know, the force of an explosion also happening. So being under the desk was meant to protect you from things like falling debris. But it does seem kind of silly, because also, radiation happening. I don't know if Lorena has heard it, but we do have a two-part episode back when we were celebrating our 1,000th
52:37 Tracy V. Wilson? episode of the podcast about Sadako Sasaki, so folding 1,000 paper cranes, if folks want to go listen to that. And then I was sort of delighted by the whole putting your pen cap in your mouth being a cause for alarm. It totally makes sense why that would be the case. But yeah, I get that. And what great kitty cats.
53:01 Holly Frey? Also, I have gone to open the email myself. We don't always both have them open when we're doing it. And yes, I would say those are chocolate point signees.
53:09 Tracy V. Wilson? Okay. Yeah. Thank you for the confirmation of that. So thank you so much again. If you would like to send us an email, we're at [email protected] . You can also subscribe to our show on the iHeartRadio app or anywhere else you'd like to get your podcasts.
53:35 Tracy V. Wilson? Stuff You Missed in History Class is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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Previous SYMHC Classics: Christine de Pizan Next Isles of Scilly and the 335 Years War Page updated November 5, 2026 · transcript and summary are machine-generated