Reformation Across the North Sea: Early Protestant Connections Between Denmark, England and Scotland

Close contacts between Denmark, England and Scotland since the Middle Ages facilitated the spread of reformation ideas and the travels of migrants and refugees across the North Sea in the first part of the sixteenth century. The North Sea route offers a corrective or supplement to dominant narratives in Reformation history on at least three counts. Firstly, Fink-Jensen argues that the Lutheran Reformation in Denmark-Norway did not almost solely come out of Wittenberg, moving from the south to the Nordic countries, but also continually received intellectual input from the British Isles. Secondly, he contends that Reformation initiatives in England and Scotland also took inspiration from contact with Denmark, and that Denmark served as an intermediary for Protestant connections between Germany, and England and Scotland. Thirdly, he points out that these connections were to a large degree based on or generated a general Protestant outlook, which sought to minimise or sooth confessional or doctrinal strife between Protestants and Protestant nations.