The Complete Book of Hymns Quotes

“In 1885, Carl Boberg, a twenty-six-year-old preacher, wrote a poem titled in Swedish, “O Store Gud.” Translated into English, it’s “O Great God.” Boberg had no thought of his poem’s becoming a hymn, so a few years later he was surprised to hear his poem sung to the tune of an old Swedish melody. A generation later, in the early 1920s, English missionaries Stuart Hine and his wife were ministering in Poland, where they learned the Russian version of Boberg’s poem sung to the Swedish melody. Later, Hine created English words for it and arranged the Swedish melody to fit. This is the hymn we now know as “How Great Thou Art.”
― William J. Petersen, The Complete Book of Hymns: Inspiring Stories about 600 Hymns and Praise Songs