Whom Wind and Waves Obey: Selected Sermons of Bishop Jon Vidalin

Whom Wind & Waves Obey introduces English-speaking readers to one of the major literary productions of post-Reformation Iceland - the sermons of Jon Vidalin, Lutheran bishop in Iceland from 1698 to 1720, and the greatest of Icelandic preachers. The introduction describes the history of Icelandic Christianity from the first settlement of the country up to the bishop’s time, and is followed by translations of 23 sermons written by the bishop for home devotional reading. His sermons are literary gems, and were vital formative influences on the Christian life of his people during the disaster-ridden eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.