We have very few accounts of what it was like for Vikings to convert to Christianity from a personal perspective.

The verse of tenth-century court poet Hallfreðr Óttarsson gives us a rare insight into the mind of someone grappling with abandoning their old gods /1

These stanzas (from Hallfreðr's so-called "conversion verses") grapple with a particularly acute problem for Viking skalds: their craft was bound up with worship of Odin as patron of poets, so they had quite a psychological barrier to get over /2

Of course, as with much skaldic verse, we can't be sure this poetry isn't just a thirteenth-century invention. But even if it is, it's an interesting insight into how later medieval authors imagined Vikings might have dealt with conversion /3

Here's the original Old Norse, taken from the Skaldic Database. I feel like I've made some progress in finding a voice for my Old English and eddic verse translations, but I still need to do a lot of work on skaldic poetry - the language and form is just way more difficult /fin