No human beings even tried to live in Iceland before the ninth century A.D. It is harsh, cold, rocky, and rough. Little grows beyond lichen. Sheep and horses can make do grazing, but agriculture is out of the question. Fish are abundant in the surrounding waters, but violent storms and long winter ice make it a dangerous living. Those who finally did stake out a life for themselves on this spartan rock at the north edge of the world were tough realists with no small streak of fatalism.

But extremity conveys its own benefits. In such a place, everyone has to pull together to survive. Loyalties are intense, honor is everything, and even chieftains have to respect the will of the people. Storytelling is what gets you through: it’s no wonder that Icelanders produced the oldest literature of northern Europe in their rich collection of sagas. Or that they as a people were so deeply shaped by the Passion Hymns of Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674).

Just a little over a century after the first settlements in Iceland—in the year 1000—the Althing, Iceland’s council of elders, undertook a momentous decision on behalf of its people: to accept the Christian faith. Despite its coming from a hot, dry desert worlds away, the gospel gripped the people and indigenized quickly. Ísleifur, the first native bishop, was canonized in 1056 and immediately saw to the education of his clergy and translation projects.

Half a millennium later, a student named Oddur Gottskálksson learned of Luther’s teachings while studying abroad, prayed to the Lord to show him the right way, and upon receiving his answer pursued the Reformation course. He undertook the first translation of the New Testament into Icelandic, printed in 1540, which in turn led to the first complete Icelandic Bible in 1584. These two sparked a fresh flowering of literature after several centuries of dormancy following the era of the sagas. The Reformation’s commitment to education coincided neatly with Icelandic values and led to widespread literacy, and the new permission for pastors to marry meant that the clergy, now having families of their own, shared personally in the people’s struggle against poverty and for survival.

Nevertheless, the Lutheran interpretation of the gospel didn’t really take hold in the lives of the Icelandic people until the seventeenth century under the guidance of Hallgrímur…