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Considering the nativity of Jesus, there are no differences between the
Christian confessions in the Baltic Sea cultural zone at that time. the
extra stanzas of the longer Icelandic version, however, refer to eschato-
logical topics such as the Last judgment, salvation, and the afterlife, topics
on which Lutheranism differs clearly from Catholicism and Calvinism:
will Christ judge the souls by their belief in Him (Lutheranism), or their
good works (Catholicism)? Can only the souls of the chosen enter Heaven
(Calvinism), or those of everybody who believes in Christ (Lutheranism),
or those of everybody regardless of their belief in Christ as long as they
lived a life compliant with Christian norms (Catholicism)?19 surprisingly,
the hymn gives no clear answer to these questions and it has virtually no
explicitly Lutheran content. In fact, some stanzas reflect Catholic or even
Calvinist notions that would be unacceptable to Lutheranism.
the first three stanzas, which derive from the original Latin hymn, re-
fer to the nativity of Jesus, and contextualize these with the Last Judgment.
the first stanza refers to Mary’s virgin birth, while the second stanza in-
cludes the trinitarianist view that Christ is “both god and man”. this is
compliant with Lutheran theology, but so too with most other Christian
theologies. the second stanza briefly refers to the descent of Christ into
hell, where he frees the souls of the just that had passed away after the
fall. More typically Lutheran is the harsh statement that “the Savior […]/
increases the sorrows/of those with dark souls” (st. 2, ll. 6–8). this state-
ment is best understood if interpreted with the Lutheran view on salvation.
According to the Lutheran doctrine sola fide [by faith alone], only believers
are delivered from sin, and no amount of good works can provide a substi-
tute for this.20 However, the statement in the second stanza goes further, as
ex negativo “dark souls” are attributed to all non-believers. this appears to
be a deduction from the (dubious) implication of the hymn that all believ-
ers have good souls (due to sola fide). However, this does offer us a possible
understanding of these lines, and poets are not bound to follow formal
logic. the description of Christ as “the Savior of all lands” (st. 2, l. 5) and
“the Savior of all people” (st. 4, l. 5) reflects the view of unlimited atone-
19 oliver freiberger, et. al. “Werke, gute,” in Theologische Realenzyklopädie, vol. 35: Vernunft
III – Wiederbringung aller, eds. gerhard Krause and gerhard Müller (Berlin: De gruyter,
2003), 636–640.
20 freiberger et al., “Werke, Gute,” 636–637.
An ICELAnDIC CHrIStMAS HYMn