Today we pick up our story right where we left it at the Icelandic all thing of 999 1,000 where one man

the law speaker Thorgeer made a decision which would eventually have a seismic impact on the lives

of tens of thousands of individuals.

It's true that Thorgeer's decision to make Christianity

the official state religion of Iceland was informed and ratified by a few dozen others, but the fact remains that a precious few individuals

had decided the religious fate of an entire population.

To be fair, the immediate impacts of this decision were minimal,

and it seems likely that most Icelanders simply continued on with their everyday lives,

much as they always had done, thinking or caring a little about the political and religious whims of the elite.

There was, however, one requirement of Thorge's decision, which in theory anyway, would have directly impacted the life of each and every

Icelander in the years immediately following the summer of 9-1,000.

You see, the law speaker had decreed that all inhabitants of Iceland

had to undergo Christian baptism. Unfortunately, we have almost no idea about what this rather Herculean

undertaking actually looked like on our practical level.

We are told in Krisney Saga about a few groups who were baptized in hot springs on their way

home from the all things. But beyond that, we are left in the dark about how, when, and where, the vast majority of the Icelandic population was baptized.

A related and rather acute concern is the question of who exactly was doing all of this

baptizing. You see as far as we know there was only

one ordained priest on the island at the time of conversion. That sole holy man was a priest named Thormother who had

accompanied Gieser the White and Yelty Skegeson when they returned to Iceland

from Norway, carrying Olaf Trigvison's conversion message with them.

Did Thormother really baptize each and every Icelander all by himself? If so, he would be in rather good company.

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