Buo of Iceland

Buo of Iceland is remembered as a missionary in Iceland in the ninth century. Very little is known about him.

According to O'Hanlon (Lives of the Irish Saints, 1875), who follows Arngrim Jonas, there lived at that time in the province of Kialam a man of Norwegian descent named Helgo Biola. He received into his house an exiled Irish Christian, Ernulf, with his family, and allowed him to build a church dedicated to Saint Columba in a village called Esiuberg, after a pagan temple had been destroyed. Buo worked in Iceland at about the same time. He is said to have helped to end human sacrifice and to have given the images of false gods to the flames.

Colgan and others take him to have been born in Ireland, while Scottish writers make him a Scot. Some have called him, with Ernulf, an apostle of Iceland, but O'Hanlon points out that what is known does not justify such a title. The year of his death is not known; he is said to have lived around 890. His day, 5 February, comes from Camerarius and Dempster and follows the Julian calendar. He is honoured in the Irish calendars, with no synodal canonization shown in the source.