The Story of Harald Bluetooth and His Namesake Technology

Have you ever wondered about the little Bluetooth symbol on your phone or computer? If you’ve ever thought that the name of the tech and the shape of its symbol are peculiar, that’s because they are. The Bluetooth logo comes from the overlaying of two old Scandinavian runes for H and B. And these letters stand for Harald Bluetooth, a Viking king of Denmark, and the first Christian king of Denmark and Scandinavia. Who knew that all along a little piece of missions history was hidden in plain sight in a technology many of us use every day?

First, King Harald was nicknamed Harald “Bluetooth” either because he had a dead tooth that was conspicuously blue-gray, or because he had a particular fondness for berries, which stained his teeth blue. Or, my favorite theory, because some Vikings sometimes carved black line pattern tattoos into their teeth. King Harald may have had bluish tooth tattoos that flashed anytime he smiled, laughed, or snarled.

There is debate about much of Harald’s life and story, but the traditional accounts state that he became a Christian around the year 960 through what is known in missions as a power encounter. A power encounter is a spiritual showdown of sorts between the power of Jesus and the power of the indigenous spirits or gods. These can vary greatly. Earlier missionaries to Germanic tribes were known for boldly cutting down the sacred trees of the tribes they were trying to reach. One missionary I knew in Melanesia unintentionally stunned the tribe he was working with by emerging unscathed from a car wreck soon after lightning had hit his house. In their tribal beliefs, anyone whose house was hit by lightning was doomed by the spirits to die. But when this missionary’s vehicle afterward tumbled down a mountainside with him in it and he came out of it all just fine, the tribe knew that whatever power he possessed was greater than what they knew. Yet another missionary team in Africa demonstrated Jesus’ power over the spirits by the wives wearing their babies strapped on their backs out in a gathering area at night – something the local women would never dare to do. Even in our experience in Central Asia, we once prayed for a woman and saw her miraculously healed after the mullah’s prayers had failed to accomplish anything. Of course, Elijah’s encounter with the prophets of Baal is one of the most famous power encounters in the Bible.

The power encounter that allegedly led to Harald’s conversion took place because of an argument. During this period, the Viking peoples of Europe were mostly polytheistic, worshipping Odin, Thor, Loki, Freya, and other gods who have now been coopted and Disney-fied by superhero movies. But the true Viking religion was very dark, including sacred groves where they would hang bodies of their human sacrifices from the trees. But at last, in the 900s Christianity was making major inroads. Not only were missionaries actively preaching within Viking areas, but the politically Christian powers of Europe were exerting state pressure from without. Apparently, some Vikings were willing to absorb Jesus into the pantheon, similar to how a Hindu today might “accept Christ” but merely add him to the many gods they are devoted to. Well, a group of Vikings in Harald’s court and one Christian cleric, Poppo, were arguing about whether Christ was more powerful than the Viking gods or merely a kind of peer. Poppo insisted that Jesus was the one true God and that all the Viking gods were, in fact, demons. So, King Harald, observing this disputation, asked Poppo if he would vouch for his beliefs with his own body.

Poppo courageously agreed, not knowing what this would mean. Harald had him locked up overnight and in the morning set up the showdown. He had a heavy piece of iron heated up until it was red hot and then asked Poppo to carry it across the room. Poppo then proceeded to pick up the scalding iron in his hand, carry it calmly across the room, set it down, and then show his hand to Harald, healthy and unburnt. This demonstration is what later Christian chroniclers claim led to Harald’s conversion and baptism and made him the first Christian king of Denmark, which he had earlier unified. He later went on to briefly control Norway as well, as he famously claims on his Jelling Stone, “that Harald who won for himself all of Denmark and Norway and made the Danes Christian.”

Of course, there’s a lot of debate about the legitimacy of this conversion story among historians. They debate whether Harald’s motives for switching religions were really because of personal conviction, like in this story, or whether it was really a politically shrewd move to protect his kingdom from the encroaching Christian powers, the Franks and the Holy Roman Empire. In this world of complex motives, it may have been both. Probably only God knows at this point if Harald was a truly born-again Christian or if it was merely a switch of identity categories in this world, something that seems to have been true of many “conversions” in this period – and can still be true even in our own corner of Central Asia. Many a young Central Asian has become a “Christian” in an Islamic society merely because it felt like the hip and rebellious thing to do.

But there’s also debate surrounding the ordeal of Poppo, the alleged miracle at the heart of the power encounter. Of course, secular historians write this off as the typical Christian embellishment of the period. But many modern Christians also find themselves skeptical of miraculous power encounters like these, even if there were no dispute about motives or the sources themselves. For my part, I do think medieval scribes were prone to overly-embellish their accounts of Christians’ lives. But I also think there is a good case to be made that even in this post-apostolic age, miraculous events will occasionally accompany the preaching of the gospel. This seems to be true especially when the gospel is newly breaking into a people group. Missions history demonstrates much of this going on, particularly in fear-power cultures, where the primary question being asked is not “How can I be forgiven?” or “How can I buy back my honor?” but “How can I not live in abject fear of the spirits’ power?” And though I am a continuationist, even well-known cessationists like Augustine went to great lengths to document that miracles were still quietly happening in his circles in order to confirm the truth of the gospel and to strengthen the faith of God’s people. So, I leave the door open that Poppo’s power encounter may have really happened.

But how in the world did Harald Bluetooth become the inspiration for a new kind of wireless network technology? The answer is to be found in the late ’90s when two engineers from Ericson and Intel were at a bar discussing what to name this new prototype technology. Both of them were history nerds, so one mentioned recently reading about Harald Bluetooth, the Viking king who united the Danes, and how his nickname might work for a new wireless technology that would unite various devices. The name was supposed to be temporary, but it stuck and is still with us today.

Today, Bluetooth tech is everywhere, far more widespread than the name of King Harald ever was. Perhaps the next time you see that peculiar runic symbol on your smart devices, you can remember Harald Bluetooth, who may have been a brother in the faith, and praise God for the way God used him to bring Christianity to his people. And you can remember the power of Jesus, his superiority over any and all spirits and “gods,” and his power to reach even the hardest to reach peoples.

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