Denmark's Top-Down Reformation

From The Rise and Fall of the Danish Empire, by Michael Bregnsbo and Kurt Villads Jensen (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), Kindle pp. 201-203:

Thus, in the conglomerate state, there were large differences between the various state entities, as well as within each territory. But the regime seems not to have found an issue with this, let alone display any desire to unify and harmonize conditions. Only at one point did the government actively intervene and seek to create uniform conditions: in the political and religious spheres of the Lutheran Reformation. In the duchies [Schleswig and Holstein], especially in Schleswig, the Reformation movement had grown in strength as early as the 1520s, through the support and promotion by Frederick I, and especially his son, the later Christian III. The Reformation Movement was supported by several local priests as well as members of the nobility and the town's citizens. The movement spread to the kingdom in the 1520s. In some parts it was met with great enthusiasm among the priests and other sections of the population (Viborg, Copenhagen, Malmø), but other parts were untouched (Ribe) by the movement. After Christian's victory in the Count's Feud in 1536, the Reformation was officially completed. The organization of the old church was purged, the bishops imprisoned, monasteries and church property were expropriated by the Crown, but the clergy in the ministry remained, now as Lutheran clergymen. In 1537, the church ordinance was issued, which was the legal basis for the new Evangelical-Lutheran State Church.

Thus, both in the duchies and in the Kingdom of Denmark, the Reformation was carried out with a top-down approach, but it was done with considerable assistance from large sections of the clergy and the lay population. The introduction of the Reformation in other parts of the empire was a different case. The Danish church ordinance of 1537 was extended to Norway that year, which had come under Danish control. The Catholic priests remained in their positions, while new bishops and eventually also new Lutheran clergymen—virtually all Danish-born—joined.

In the Faroe Islands, the Lagting—the parliament—recognized Christian III in 1535, and when the bishop objected to the new church ordinance, he was dismissed and replaced by a Lutheran. In 1557 the Faroe Islands ceased to be a separate diocese and were placed under the Diocese of Bjørgvin in Norway. It was far more elaborate and dramatic when the Lutheran Reformation was introduced in Iceland. In an attempt to bring ecclesiastical lands to the crown, one of the king's prominent officials was assassinated in 1538. In 1541, an armed expedition was sent to Iceland, which imprisoned one of the two Icelandic Catholic bishops and enabled the Reformation to gradually actualize. But in 1549, the second Catholic bishop succeeded in reintroducing Catholicism by a coup, imprisoning his Lutheran colleague and banishing a prominent representative of the king. In 1551, therefore, a significant military expedition was sent from Denmark to Iceland, but when it arrived, everything was in chaos. The Catholic bishop had clashed with the local Icelandic grandee, who had seized and executed him. Order was now restored and the reformation introduced—even in Iceland.