{"id":110,"date":"2026-10-22T03:13:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T03:13:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/?p=110"},"modified":"2026-11-01T15:36:39","modified_gmt":"2026-11-01T15:36:39","slug":"how-great-thou-art-the-story-of-the-hymn-that-was-born-from-a-storm-in-sweden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/en\/2026\/10\/22\/how-great-thou-art-the-story-of-the-hymn-that-was-born-from-a-storm-in-sweden\/","title":{"rendered":"How Great Thou Art: the story of the hymn that was born from a storm in Sweden"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

It all began with a thunderclap. One summer afternoon in 1885, a young Swedish pastor was walking home when the sky suddenly closed in and a fierce storm forced him to take refuge among the trees. Minutes later, the storm passed, and the silence and calm it left behind moved him so much that, upon arriving home, he took up his pen and wrote a poem. That poem would become \u00abHow Great Thou Art,\u00bb<\/strong> the hymn that millions of believers sing today in majestic cathedrals and in small neighborhood churches, in Spanish, in English, and in hundreds of languages more. This is its story: a journey of more than 140 years, five languages, and three continents that began with a thunderclap.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The day the sky spoke<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Carl Gustav Boberg was barely 25 years old when he lived the day that would change his life. He was a Lutheran pastor, poet, and musician, and in time he would also become a member of his country’s parliament. That afternoon he was walking back home after the service, in a village near Kronob\u00e4ck, while in the distance the church bells could still be heard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Suddenly, the sky darkened. A summer storm rose without warning: thunder, lightning, and a strong wind forced him to seek refuge among the trees. But as quickly as it had come, the storm ceased. The air filled with freshness, the clouds dissipated, and Boberg, from the top of a hill beside M\u00f6nster\u00e5s Bay, contemplated the calm the storm had left behind. From the forest across the bay came the song of the birds, mixed with the distant pealing of the bells.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Boberg himself would recount years later what he felt upon arriving home: he opened the window facing the sea and, in the stillness of the evening, heard the bells that seemed to be bidding farewell to a recent funeral. It was then that a deep reverence filled his heart. Before the greatness of the Creator, who had just shown him his power and his peace within minutes, he took up his pen and wrote the verses of a poem titled \u00abO Store Gud,\u00bb<\/strong> which in English means \u00abO Great God!\u00bb<\/strong> The poem was published the following year, in 1886, in a local Swedish magazine.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From poem to the people’s song<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The poem did not take long to find its music: it was joined to an old melody of Swedish folklore, one of those the people already hummed by heart. In 1888, three years after it was written, it was sung publicly for the first time in a church in the province of V\u00e4rmland, in Sweden.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that day, the hymn began to spread throughout Sweden and then across northern Europe. Its message was simple and profound at once: wonder before God’s creation and gratitude for his redeeming work. Believers made it their own because it put into words what many felt and did not know how to express: that God is great, immensely great. For years, however, the hymn lived almost in secret, sung only in Swedish and barely known outside Scandinavia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A journey through five languages<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

But this hymn’s story was only beginning. In 1907 it was translated into German, and in 1912 it crossed borders into Russia, where believers adopted it with love. And it was on Russian soil that the hymn would find the person who would carry it to the whole world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stuart K. Hine was a British missionary serving together with his wife Edith in the Carpathian Mountains, in Ukraine, during the 1930s. There he heard the local believers singing the Russian version of Boberg’s hymn. The melody moved him, but he felt the lyrics could say even more. Then he did something extraordinary: first he wrote down the lyrics and composed new stanzas still in Russian, and later he translated the hymn into English and added two completely original stanzas, born of his own experience as a missionary.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The nature stanza, the one that speaks of walking through the woods and contemplating the greatness of the mountains, was born of his walks through the Carpathians. And the final stanza, the one that looks with hope toward Christ’s return, he wrote when the Second World War broke out, after talking with a Russian refugee who had been separated from his wife and longed to be reunited with her in heaven. Thus, a hymn born from a storm in Sweden found its definitive voice in the midst of another storm: that of war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The English version, titled \u00abHow Great Thou Art,\u00bb<\/strong> was published in 1949, and in 1954 the publisher Manna Music acquired its rights to spread it in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The voice that carried it to the world<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The hymn needed a platform, and it found it in the most famous preacher of the twentieth century. In the mid-1950s, Billy Graham included \u00abHow Great Thou Art\u00bb<\/strong> in his evangelistic crusades, those massive meetings that filled stadiums around the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was George Beverly Shea, the legendary soloist of Graham’s team, who turned it into a phenomenon. Shea had received the sheet music from a friend who found it in London, and he sang it for the first time at the Toronto crusade in 1955. At the historic New York crusade of 1957 he performed it 99 times, with the choir and thousands of attendees joining in the chorus. Together with Cliff Barrows, musical director of the crusades, Shea carried the hymn to millions of people on every continent. It is said that, thanks to those crusades, Shea sang live before more people than any other singer in history. So great was the hymn’s impact that it became the theme music of Graham’s weekly radio program, \u00abHour of Decision.\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the stadiums of America, the hymn leapt to the rest of the planet. Today it exists in hundreds of languages and dialects, and has been recorded by countless artists of every style, becoming one of the most covered hymns of all time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00abCu\u00e1n Grande es \u00c9l\u00bb<\/strong> in Spanish<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

For the Spanish-speaking world, the hymn came through the Argentine pastor Arturo W. Hotton (1909-1959), who, besides being a pastor, was a journalist and a leader of the Evangelical Christian Church. In 1958, Hotton translated the lyrics into Spanish, giving us the verses we sing by heart today: \u00abSe\u00f1or, mi Dios, al contemplar los cielos, el firmamento y las estrellas mil\u2026\u00bb<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The translation preserved the structure of the English hymn: four stanzas that go from creation to the cross and to the final hope, joined by the chorus we all know. In the 1960s, \u00abCu\u00e1n Grande es \u00c9l\u00bb<\/strong> became popular in the evangelical churches of Latin America and Spain, and since then it has not stopped being sung in services, vigils, weddings, and funerals. Today you can find it among thousands of Christian songs<\/a> of all time, alongside the hymns that have marked the history of faith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A hymn that does not grow old<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

More than 140 years have passed since that storm in Sweden. The young pastor who took refuge among the trees never imagined that his poem would travel through five languages, cross three continents, and end up on the lips of millions of believers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But perhaps that is the secret of \u00abHow Great Thou Art\u00bb<\/strong>: it does not speak of an era or a culture, but of something eternal. Every time we sing it, we join Boberg on that hill in Sweden, Hine in the mountains of Ukraine, Shea in the packed stadiums, and countless believers who, in their own storms, discovered the same thing they did. Because all of us, at some point, have felt the thunder of trial and then the calm of God’s presence. And before that, the heart finds no better words than these: How great Thou art! How great Thou art!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It all began with a thunderclap. One summer afternoon in 1885, a young Swedish pastor was walking home when the sky suddenly closed in and a fierce storm forced him to take refuge among the trees. Minutes later, the storm passed, and the silence and calm it left behind moved him so much that, upon […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":34,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[179,175,133,177,137],"class_list":["post-110","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-classic-hymns","tag-carl-boberg-en","tag-greatness","tag-hymn","tag-praise","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":283,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110\/revisions\/283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/musicascristianas.online\/historias-de-canciones\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}