Arctic Ecotheology

Abstract

At the end of the seventeenth century, the poet-priest Peter Dass at Alstahaug, son of a Scottish emigrant, characterized life in Northern Norway as living ‘at the edge of the world’. Even today, people in the North understand and appreciate his words. For three centuries the Reverend Dass has been a symbol of Northern identity. His hymns and poetry display a deeply religious understanding of the relationship between the land and its people. Like few other parsons, he managed to capture and express the common and down-to-earth sense of religious identity that characterizes the life of many Northerners who live at the edge of the world.