Was just reading about the early exposure to Christianity by the Vikings and how it took them hundreds of years to fully convert and how they maintained much of their culture for a long time after their conversion got me thinking about the Protestant Reformation. The Vikings remained very Viking like for many generations after their conversion.

It seems like every single country that had a significant Viking presence for a long period of time ultimately participated in the Protestant Reformation on the side of the Protestants. Every country except for Ireland but they had their own Celtic history that was unique to them and different.

I know a lot of the reformation was top down but it's an interesting pattern nonetheless. That fierce independence of Protestantism spread like wildfire in areas that had an ancestry of a warrior culture that valued individual glory. Since Protestantism is generally about a personal relationship with God and very individualistic, I can't say I'm surprised it took off in an area of Europe that had ancestors who behaved in that manner.

Has this idea been explored anywhere? I'd like to read more about the whole situation.

I think you might be onto something but there is a large group of Norse/Viking descendants who weren't part of the Protestant Reformation:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rus%27_people

At least to my understanding, what BAP is talking about used to be called "The West"...
and it wasn't ALL Protestant, but it was all heavily influenced by Protestantism.

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I've found this a little interesting too but haven't done much real reading on it. I think that then, as today, the Scandinavian people just really…don't fit into a neat religious box. Really, they're comparatively irreligious, despite having a lot of different beliefs.

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Another thing is that Scandinavians are far more communitarian than, say, the Scots-Irish, who are fiercely individualistic. So the Scots-Irish are really a perfect culture for Protestantism. But why would they be such a good fit while the Irish aren't?

Serotonin said:

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I've found this a little interesting too but haven't done much real reading on it. I think that then, as today, the Scandinavian people just really…don't fit into a neat religious box. Really, they're comparatively irreligious, despite having a lot of different beliefs.

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Another thing is that Scandinavians are far more communitarian than, say, the Scots-Irish, who are fiercely individualistic. So the Scots-Irish are really a perfect culture for Protestantism. But why would they be such a good fit while the Irish aren't?

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This kind of broad generalization is unhelpful. The "Scots-Irish" were largely a self-selected group with a unique experience in Ireland that was heavily constrained by local and imperial politics. Scotland had its own political history that made Presbyterianism popular (largely due to local "communitarianism") vs the competing versions of Anglicanism during the 16th and 17th century. The first Ulster Scot immigrants to North America went to New England. Both sides expected their Presbyterian beliefs to mesh well with the community-based Congregationalism of the Puritans. It didn't, for reasons of poor assumptions made by both sides. Instead, the future migrants moved more towards the land available in Pennsylvania and Virginia where they could recreate their own institutions. The idea of "individualism" as a key marker is vastly overstated and has more to do with the limits of infrastructure and the need for large land tracts to make a viable farm than anything intrinsically cultural.

Catholic Ireland had brutal experiences with the English, who first began seriously expanding claims to Ireland at the same time as the creation of the Church of England. The previous attempt had been made by the Normans and largely only affected the nobility in the long term without affecting lower culture or religion. The island became a pawn in imperial politics, with the French, Spanish, and Papacy working to limit English expansion and create a quagmire for the English crown. It didn't help the English that their strategy was to appeal to Irish nobles and impose their system from the top down. Without a strong middling class / educated class base to accept the theology of the Protestant Revolution and promote it in towns and communities, it didn't take.

It's a combination of the new printing press, internal Holy Roman Empire politics that had always made the various German principalities difficult to manage, and imperial politics between Spain, France, and the Papal States that created something of a power/authority vacuum in Catholicism at the moment Luther emerged. Coincidentally, the gold and silver flowing into Spain from the Americas helped fund and drive these wars and contributed to the breakup of Catholic Europe.

I enjoy and have a good grasp of history generally.

But 30 Years War still eludes me. I've listened to podcasts and read books, but just keeping track of everyone in what seems like random sometimes unified and sometimes disparate fighting just confuses me. Also the French seem like they're on the wrong side.

If anyone wants to take up the task here, I'd thank you for it

PascalsWager said:

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I enjoy and have a good grasp of history generally.

But 30 Years War still eludes me. I've listened to podcasts and read books, but just keeping track of everyone in what seems like random sometimes unified and sometimes disparate fighting just confuses me. Also the French seem like they're on the wrong side.

If anyone wants to take up the task here, I'd thank you for it

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There's a podcast called Wittenberg to Westphalia, the Wars of the Reformation. He's been doing it for years. Problem is that he kept having to go further back into order to give context and eventually ended up at the fall of the Western Roman Empire. Last I checked he was finally in the Middle Ages, so you'll get your wish in about another 10 years or so

This seems more correlation than causation to me