[skepsel]

1700s, really? I’d like to know more about this. I thought the last (officially) pagans in Europe were Lithuanian, in the 14th or 15th century. Thanks.

[muawiyah]

Try - A History of the Vikings (Paperback) by Gwyn Jones

Note, not all the people of the Northern Polar regions were Christianized simultaneously with the Danes. The Orthodox were sending missionaries into the Sapmai to Christianize the Sa'ami well into modern times.

[muawiyah]

BTW, just doing a quick lookup into the question it would appear you have to distinguish between "last pagan ruler" and "last pagans" ~ two different topics, and as I suspected the piece in Wiki does note the Sa'ami were still practicing "traditional religion" into the 18th century (1700s), and that's just in Europe. I'm sure many of the traditional practices (horns, drums, pointed hats, etc.) persisted into the 21st!.

They were hardly alone ~ plus, not all the Mongols went home (and many were Buddhist), and not all the Turkish POWs were repatriated (with good numbers of them being Orthodox and not Roman, and if not, then Moslem, and possibly even Shi'ite, not Sunni).

The various claims about uniformity of Christianization throughout Europe are just that ~ claims! Not everyone was on the same page at the same time, and knowing that the big blow up in the 15th and 16th centuries should have been expected.