The Scandinavian Reformation Kingdoms

In Scandinavia the Reformation arrived from the top down and stayed. Sweden's break began at the Diet of Västerås in 1527, when Gustav Vasa took the church's property and its independence, and was only completed at the Uppsala Synod of 1593, which committed the kingdom to the unaltered Augsburg Confession. In Denmark-Norway it came faster and harder. Christian III won a civil war, arrested the bishops outright in 1536, and the church ordinance drawn up with Luther's colleague Johannes Bugenhagen reorganised the churches of Denmark, Norway and Iceland at a stroke. Icelandic resistance ended in 1550 with the execution of the island's last Catholic bishop. What followed everywhere was the long, slow business of translating Bibles and hymnbooks and teaching a rural population its catechism.