Tove
The Quiet Apostle · Apostle to the Far North
Tove is one of the The Frostborne Twelve, “the quiet one” who speaks no word in the gospels yet kept faithfully to the end. The tradition of the northern church honors him as the apostle of the far cold peoples, who carried the gospel into the deep north “where the sun does not rise for half the year, and the Cold is most at home.”
The Hidden Mission
Little of Tove’s labor is recorded in the Acts; the northern churches preserve his memory in oral drift-songs. He is said to have died at great age among the snow-peoples, “having made the whole long winter glad,” and to lie under a cairn of clear ice still kept by his converts’ descendants.
Veneration
Patron of the silent, of the far missions, and of the northern peoples; a model that faithfulness need not be loud. Feast kept in deep midwinter.