“Religion poisons everything” (3)

The late Christopher Hitchens lamented that “religion poisons everything.”

But it’s difficult to see how Scandinavian culture was “poisoned” by the acceptance of Christianity.

Certainly the Irish wouldn’t have thought so.  They had suffered at the hands of the pagan Norsemen for generations, and were, no doubt, very relieved at anything that might rein them in.

And to anybody familiar with the glorious stave churches whose survivors still dot the Norwegian landscape, it will seem strange to regard those striking medieval structures as “poison.”