I am the God Thor. I am the war god. I am the thunderer. Here in my

north land, my fastness and fortress reign I forever. Force rules the world still, has ruled it, shall rule it. Meekness is weakness. Strength is triumphant.

Over the whole earth still it is Thor's day,

Thou art a god too, O Galilean.

And thus single-handed unto the combat, gauntlet or gospel,

Here I defy thee.

Excerpts from The Challenge of Thor, a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

A little more than 1300 years ago, the region we now know is Germany was a battleground between the missionary

efforts of the Anglo-Saxon Christian Church and the Germanic pagans living in the Frankish

Empire. These pagans were worshippers of the old Norse gods, mainly known by their

Scandinavian names, Thor, Odin, Freya, and more. That pagan world was a bloody, brutal world, full of tribal conflict, murder, warring, human sacrifice,

and all manner of barbaric violence.

Into that world, a Benedictine monk named Boniface, along with a cohort of his Christian brothers,

boldly defied the pagan gods, seeking the freedom of the Germanic pagans from the bloodthirsty wraiths demanding their worship.

To show the supremacy of the Christian God over the pagan idols, Boniface determined to walk

after the Prophet Elijah and his showdown with the prophets of bail in 1st Kings 18.

Sometime around the year 723 in the town of Geismar,

Bonifis strode up to a great oak tree,

a tree known to the locals as Thor's Oak dedicated to the worship of the Norse God of thunder

and declared his intentions to chop down the tree in Christ's name. The Germanic pagans laughed. They knew that if anyone so much has broke a twig from their sacred tree, Thor would surely strike that one down with his lightning before the branch hit the forest floor.

But Boniface set his face, determined to make the attempt.

The tree before him, he stripped to the waist,

...