Rebuilding the archdiocese of Nidaros: Etienne Djunkowsky and the North Pole Mission, c. 1855–1870

The Prefecture Apostolic of the Polar Regions (‘North Pole Mission’), which ran between 1855 and 1869, was an attempt to bring the doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church to a broadly defined circumpolar area. From its initial base in Alta, in northern Norway, the mission expanded to establish a presence in: Iceland; the Faroe Islands; Orkney, Shetland and Caithness; and Tromso. This article explores the reasons behind the mission's expansion into northern Scotland, and the reaction which greeted the arrival of foreign missionaries in a region which had been relatively untouched by Catholicism in the three centuries since the Reformation.