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3 .
RIMBERT, UNNI AND ADALDAG. 57
mission (legatio). Wherefore I make earnest prayers to
you that you will intercede with God, so that this mission
may be permitted to increase and bear fruit in the Lord.
For already, both among the Danes and the Swedes, the
Church of Christ has been founded, and our priests, with
out hindrance, discharge their proper office. I pray also
that you will cause this letter to be preserved in your
library for a perpetual memory ;
and that, as occasion shall
serve you and your successors, when you shall have found
it convenient, you will make it known to all men. May
Almighty God make you partners in this work by your
kind good will and joint heirs with Christ in heavenly
glory" (P. L., 1 18, 1031).
3. RIMBERT. GROWTH OF POLITICAL UNITY IN THE
NORTH.
Notwithstanding this solemn appeal, little or nothing
was done for Sweden by the German mission for seventy
years after Anskar s death. His successor and sym
pathetic biographer, Rimbert, did not indeed forget his
old master s work during the twenty-three years of his
episcopate (865 A.D. 888 A.D., Adam: ch. 33). But he
lived in troubled times, and had to spend his resources
largely in redeeming captives.
In the last half of the ninth century we find all three of
the Scandinavian Powers making progress towards in
ternal unity. Denmark was first united under Gorm the
Old, who used his central position of high priest of Odin
at Lejre in Seland, very much as the Upsala kings did in
Svithiod. He not only ruled over the Danish islands,
but over Slesvig and part of Holstein, and over Blekinge
and Skane in Sweden. At the same time Eric Edmund-
son (who died about 885 A.D.) was undisputed sovereign
both of the Swedes and Goths. Their example encour
aged Harald Fairhair (850 A.D. 933 A.D.) to attempt the
even more difficult task of uniting the thirty-one little
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