The King Who Became a Saint — how the Nordmen came to Christ

On 29 July 1030, a Norwegian king who had been driven from his throne two years earlier came back from exile in Kievan Rus Kievan Rus × Koryakov Yuri (map); English translation by Hellerick, CC BY-SA 2.5 Medieval Norse-Slavic river-trade kingdom centred on the cities of Kiev and Novgorod, covering most of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and the western half of European Russia. Traditionally founded around 862 by the Norse warlord Rurik, the polity took its name from the Rūs — the Norse traders who had moved down the Volga and Dnieper river-routes through Slavic country to the Black Sea and the Caspian. Olav II Haraldsson of Norway spent his two-year exile (1028–1030) at the court of his brother-in-law Yaroslav the Wise in Kiev before returning to die at Stiklestad. After Olav's death, Yaroslav raised the young Magnus the Good until his return to Norway in 1035. (the medieval Norse-and-Slavic river-trade kingdom that lay across what is today Ukraine, Belarus, and western Russia) with the army he had been able to raise — the sagas put it at thirty-six hundred men. He met a coalition of Norwegian farmers and chieftains several times stronger on a sloping field at Stiklestad Stiklestad × Unknown artist, in P. Chr. Asbjørnsen, Norge fremstillet i Tegninger (1848), National Library of Norway Village and battle site in the Verdal valley of Trøndelag, about eighty kilometres north of Trondheim. Site of the battle on 29 July 1030 in which King Olav II Haraldsson of Norway, returning from exile in Kievan Rus to reclaim his throne, was defeated and killed by a coalition of Norwegian farmers and chieftains several times stronger than his own army. Olav's death made the cult that became medieval Norwegian Christianity. Marked today by the Stiklestad National Cultural Centre, the open-air theatre where Spelet om Heilag Olav is performed each summer, and the medieval Stiklestad Church (built shortly after the battle as a memorial). On the trip Day 4 of the trip — Wednesday 29 July 2026 — is the 996th anniversary of the battle. The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) spend that day out in the Stjørdal valley — the battlefield at Stiklestad lies an hour further north up the E6 — on the same date the saint died and the medieval cult was made. Stiklestad, Verdal , in the Verdal valley Verdal × H. E. Eide / Mittet & Co., Stiklestad Kirke (early 20th c.), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Municipality in Trøndelag at the inner end of the Trondheim Fjord, about eighty kilometres north of Trondheim. The Verdal valley opens inland from the fjord through the farming countryside of central Trøndelag. Stiklestad — the battle site where Olav II Haraldsson was killed on 29 July 1030 — lies in the valley a few kilometres east of the modern town centre. Verdal, Trøndelag , eighty kilometres north of what is now Trondheim Trondheim × Knud Knudsen, Parti af Havnen i Trondhjem (1888-1894), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Norway's third-largest city, founded by Olav Tryggvason in 997 as Nidaros at the mouth of the Nid River on the inner Trondheim Fjord. Capital of the Norwegian kingdom for much of the medieval period; seat of the Norwegian archbishopric from 1153 and of the Olav cult that anchored medieval Norwegian Christianity. Renamed Trondheim in 1931 — after a controversial one-year spell officially named Nidaros from 1930 — replacing the Danish-era spelling Trondhjem and reviving the medieval Old Norse district name (Þrándheimr). About two hundred thousand people in the municipality today. Home to Nidaros Cathedral, NTNU (the Norwegian University of Science and Technology), and the Trondheim Fjord harbour. On the trip Day 3 of the trip routes the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) through Trondheim. The visit centres on Nidaros Cathedral — the building the Olav devotion raised, and the architectural inheritance of Bishop Grimkell's pronouncement on a summer day in 1031. Trondheim Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayBefore There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldDriving in Norway — tolls, ferries, and a near-zero alcohol limitEveryday etiquette — quiet voices, wide space, no smiling🚨 Emergencies - important numbers, hospitals, and what you can doLanguage basics — just enough Norwegian to be polite . In the sagas’ telling, his army called itself forward into the battle with the cry Fram, fram, kristsmenn, krossmenn, konungsmenn — forward, forward, men of Christ, men of the cross, men of the king. The farmer-army answered with Fram, fram, búandmenn — forward, forward, free men of the land. The king took a wound in the knee, and as he leaned against a large stone a spear-thrust under his mail-shirt and into his belly, and at last a blow to the neck. By the afternoon it was over. The king was dead at thirty-five. The farmers went home.

He was Olav Haraldsson Saint Olav × Saint Olav from Austevoll church (c. 1450), University Museum of Bergen; photo Wolfmann, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ Olav Haraldsson, king of Norway 1015–1028, killed at the Battle of Stiklestad on 29 July 1030 and canonized one year and five days later by his English bishop Grimkell. Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae — the Eternal King of Norway. His shrine at Nidaros became the northernmost pilgrimage destination in medieval Christendom and the binding narrative of a converted country. The Norwegian Lion on the modern coat of arms — a golden lion bearing a golden axe on a red shield — is Saint Olav's iconography. On the trip The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) visit Nidaros Cathedral on Tuesday 28 July 2026 — the day before the 996th anniversary of the Battle of Stiklestad. The Olafskrinet was broken up at the 1537 Reformation and the body buried somewhere inside the cathedral in a spot no medieval source preserved. The building is what the nine-and-a-half centuries of devotion built. The pilgrim road, the Pilegrimsleden, runs past the cathedral's south door — the same door the medieval pilgrims walked through. Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in Norway . He had reigned thirteen years. About a year after his death his English bishop would declare him a saint, and the veneration begun in a small wooden church on the river Nid would, before the next century was out, organise the religious life of Norway from the Skerries to the Greenland Greenland × Grønlands historiske Mindesmærker vol. 3 (1845), plate VIII, British Library About this image ▸ The world's largest island, lying between the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans west of Iceland. Colonised by Norse settlers led by Erik the Red beginning in 985 — the name "Greenland" was Erik's marketing, chosen to attract colonists to a marginally agricultural land. The Norse Eastern and Western Settlements on the southwestern coast sustained perhaps two or three thousand people at peak across four centuries before steadily diminishing in the cooling climate of the Little Ice Age and disappearing by around 1450. Today a self- governing territory within the Kingdom of Denmark. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormant ice. The Christianization the king had failed to impose by sword and law was carried through by his sainthood. The country that had refused him in life accepted him, in something close to worship, in death.

The thirteen years

He had been a viking before he was a king. Born around 995 into a chieftain family of Vestfold Vestfold × Edvard Munch, Summer in Asgardstrand (1889), Woll 185, private collection About this image ▸ Coastal region on the western shore of the Oslofjord in southeastern Norway, the richest of the petty-kingdom-era Norwegian polities. Controlled the trade routes through the Skagerrak between the North Sea and the Baltic; the wealth in its royal mounds at Borre marks it as the dominant southern Norwegian power of the seventh through ninth centuries. The Yngling dynasty held the throne here. Modern Vestfold is the county containing Tønsberg, Sandefjord, and the Borre Mound Cemetery archaeological site. Vestfold Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churches , the Oslo-fjord region that had been the cradle of the Norwegian royal line for generations, he spent his teens and early twenties on raiding voyages down the English, Frankish, and Iberian coasts under the Norse banner. Somewhere in Normandy Normandy × Photochrom print, Mont St. Michel at high water (c. 1900), Library of Congress About this image ▸ Historical region of northwestern France along the lower Seine and the Channel coast. The territory was ceded to the Norse warrior Rollo and his followers by the West Frankish king Charles the Simple in the Treaty of Saint-Clair-sur-Epte (911), in exchange for nominal vassalage and defence against further Norse raiding. The name comes from Normanni, "Northmen." Rollo's descendants ruled as Dukes of Normandy; his great-great-great-grandson William the Conqueror invaded England in 1066, putting a Norse-descended Norman dynasty on the English throne. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway" around 1014 he was baptised. In 1015 he came home to Norway, fought down the surviving sons of the Earl of Lade Earl of Lade × Christian Krohg, Håkon jarl, illustration for Olav Tryggvasons saga, Heimskringla folk edition (J.M. Stenersen & Co, 1899) About this image ▸ The Lade dynasty held the rich Trøndelag farmland from its seat on the inner Trondheim Fjord — for two centuries the principal rival to the Fairhair-line Norwegian crown. From Hákon Sigurdsson (Hákon Jarl, d. 995) through Eirik Hákonsson (d. ~1023), the Lade earls ran central Norway as their own polity, sometimes acclaimed king, sometimes regent under a foreign overlord, always in tension with the southern royal court. Their seat at Lade is now a quiet residential district on the inner Trondheim Fjord. Lade peninsula, Trondheim Fjord In this article Olav Haraldsson conquered the throne from the surviving sons of the last Lade earls in 1015. After his death at Stiklestad, the surviving Lade-line claimants did not recover the kingdom in any lasting way. The dynasty effectively ended with the early eleventh century. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the world — the rival Trøndelag Trøndelag × Johannes Aas, Prospect af Staden Trondhiem (1826), Municipal Archives of Trondheim (CC BY 2.0) About this image ▸ Region of central Norway around the Trondheim Fjord, north of Stadt and south of Hålogaland. Its agriculturally rich Trondheim plain is the second-largest area of arable land in the country and the base of the medieval earls of Lade. Trondheim — founded by Olav Tryggvason in 997 as Nidaros — became the seat of the Norwegian archbishopric in 1153 and remains the country's third-largest city and ecclesiastical capital. On the trip Day 3-5 of the trip routes the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) through Trøndelag for the Slektsreisen heritage drive — Trondheim and the Nidaros Cathedral on Day 3, then Stjørdal and Hegra, then on up the Stjørdalen valley to Kylloplass. Trøndelag (Trondheim) Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedDraugen — the drowned man who never came homeThe Hytte — a sacred pastime of modern Norway dynasty whose seat lay near the modern Trondheim — and the Norwegian partisans of the Danish crown — soon gathered under Cnut King Cnut the Great × New Minster Liber Vitae, BL Stowe MS 944 fol. 6r (1031), British Library Cnut Sweynsson (c. 995–1035), Danish king who ruled the North Sea Empire — Denmark, England (from 1016), Norway (from 1028), and parts of Sweden. His silver bought the Norwegian magnates against King Olav II Haraldsson in 1028 and drove Olav into exile; Olav's attempted return ended at Stiklestad in 1030. After Olav's death and the rapid emergence of his sainthood, Cnut's regime nevertheless took up the dead king's veneration without hesitation, and within five years brought Olav's son Magnus the Good back from Kievan Rus as king of Norway — the Christianization Olav had failed to impose in life carried through, in part, by his enemies. , who within a few years of Olav’s homecoming was king of England and Denmark both, building the North Sea empire that would dominate the Atlantic for a generation. Olav took the throne and held it.

What he then made was something that has lasted.

The Christian Law

At an assembly held in 1024 — the Mostertinget Mostertinget × Krage52, Kongesteinen ved Moster gamle kirke (2020), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ The assembly at Moster on Bømlo island, off the southwestern coast of Norway, around 1024 — where King Olav II Haraldsson and his English bishop Grimkell promulgated the Kristenrett (the Christian Law). Conventionally treated as the legal beginning of the Christianisation of Norway, and the moment from which the Christian provisions in the subsequent regional law codes descend. The Mostertinget millennium was kept by Norway as a national event in 2024. — at Moster Moster × Anders Beer Wilse, Moster gamle kyrkje (1926), Wikimedia Commons Coastal settlement at the southwestern end of Bømlo island in Vestland County. Site of the assembly (the Mostertinget) where Olav II Haraldsson and his English bishop Grimkell promulgated the Kristenrett — the Christian Law — around 1024, conventionally treated as the legal beginning of Christianisation in Norway. The Mostertinget millennium was kept by Norway as a national event in 2024. The medieval Old Moster Church on the site is one of the oldest stone churches in Norway, traditionally said to have been founded by Olav Tryggvason in 995. Moster, Bømlo , on the island of Bømlo Bømlo × Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway), Espevær, Bømlo (c. 1890–1900) Island and municipality in Vestland County off the southwestern coast of Norway, the location of Moster — the assembly site where Olav II Haraldsson and his English bishop Grimkell promulgated the Kristenrett (the Christian Law) around 1024. Moster is the southwestern end of Bømlo island. The Mostertinget millennium was kept by Norway as a national event in 2024. Bømlo, Vestland off the south-western coast, Olav and his English-born bishop Grimkell Bishop Grimkell × Krage52, exhibition depiction of Grimkjell and Olav, "Fra hedendom til kristendom," Moster Amfi (2020), Wikimedia Commons, CC0 About this image ▸ English missionary bishop (d. c. 1047) who served King Olav II Haraldsson of Norway from c. 1015 through Olav's death at Stiklestad in 1030. Of Anglo-Scandinavian background, probably ordained at Bremen, brought from Wessex to Norway with Olav in 1015. Co-author of the Kristenrett — the Christian Law promulgated at Moster around 1024. On 3 August 1031, a year and five days after the battle, Grimkell convened the examination of Olav's body before the clergy and people of Nidaros, declared him a saint, and inaugurated the formal devotion. Returned to England after Olav's death; later bishop of Selsey. promulgated a body of law called the Kristenrett Kristenrett × Codex Rantzovianus (E don. var. 137 4to), fol. 7r, c. 1250, Royal Danish Library — via Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ The Christian Law promulgated at Moster around 1024 by King Olav II Haraldsson and his English bishop Grimkell. The Moster text itself does not survive; what is known is reconstructed from the Christian sections of the later Gulating and Frostating regional law-codes attributed to Olav and Grimkell. The Kristenrett began the long abolition of slavery, criminalised the exposure of unwanted infants, banned ritual human sacrifice, established Christian marriage, gave women a voice in spouse-choice, prohibited blood-revenge in favour of church-court mediation, and structured the year around the Christian calendar. The thousandth anniversary of its promulgation was kept by Norway as a national event in 2024. — the Christian Law. The Moster text itself does not survive; what is known of its provisions is reconstructed from the later regional law-codes attributed to Olav and Grimkell — the Christian sections of the Gulating Gulating × Jeblad, Steinkorset ved porten til Eivindvik kirke (2008), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 About this image ▸ The regional thing-law assembly of southwestern Norway, meeting traditionally at Gulen in present-day Sogn og Fjordane. One of the four great medieval Norwegian regional law traditions; its jurisdiction covered the western coast from Agder to Sunnmøre and produced the Gulatingslova, recorded in writing by the twelfth century. The Gulating tradition was rolled into Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov of 1274. The modern Gulating Court of Appeal in Bergen inherits the name. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you think and Frostating Frostating × Frostatingslova fragment (c. 1260), National Archives of Norway (Riksarkivet), CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ The regional thing-law assembly of central Norway, meeting at Frosta on the Trondheim Fjord. Jurisdiction covered Trøndelag and the surrounding northern districts. Its codification, the Frostatingslova, dates to the twelfth century in its surviving form but preserves substantially older customary law. Rolled into Magnus Lagabøte's Landslov of 1274. The modern Frostating Court of Appeal in Trondheim carries the name. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you think laws set down in the decades that followed. By that reconstruction, the Kristenrett reached well beyond the institutional Norwegian church that was its visible product.

It began the long abolition of slavery, by requiring that slaves be redeemed and freed at the major assemblies and on the holy days. It made the exposure of unwanted infants a crime where it had been a recognised heathen custom. It banned the ritual human sacrifice that had occasionally accompanied the great blóts Blót × Peter Nicolai Arbo, Håkon den Gode og bøndene ved blotet på Mære (1860) About this image ▸ The central religious act of pre-Christian Norse society. A blót was a sacrifice — typically of an animal — followed by a communal feast that bound the household to its gods for the season ahead. The shape held across rituals: an animal killed, the blood caught and used to redden the altar and the worshippers (rjóða, "to redden"), the meat boiled and shared between the gods (through the flames) and the people (at the table), the drinking horn passed with each draught dedicated to a god or to the dead. There was no liturgy in the medieval-church sense — no book, no creed — just the form the household had always done at that turn of the year. Also discussed in Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayNordisk Mytologi — Odin, the giants, and Ragnarok . It established Christian marriage in place of concubinage and gave women a voice in the choice of a spouse. It prohibited blood-revenge. It set Sunday aside as a day of rest and structured the year around the Christian calendar.

The Kristenrett did not transform Norwegian society in a generation. Slavery died out only across the next two centuries, and the old religion held on in the inland districts well into the twelfth. But it set the legal direction the country would travel for the next nine hundred years. Norway in 2024 kept the thousandth anniversary of its promulgation as a national event.

Violence and refusal

Alongside the law-making, the sagas describe a king of considerable violence. They have Olav forcing conversion at sword-point in the inland farms of Trøndelag, cutting sacred trees, burning hov Hov × Halfdan Egedius, illustration for Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, Heimskringla folk edition (J.M. Stenersen & Co, 1899) About this image ▸ The Norse indoor cult-house — a timber building, often the chieftain's own longhouse serving double duty as the cult-house of the district. Benches down its length, a fire down its centre, the images of the gods set at the high seat. Floor deposits thickening over the generations with animal bone and broken cooking-ware are the archaeologist's signature of the place. The clearest case excavated in Norway lies under the medieval church at Mære, in Trøndelag, where the floor of the older timber hall still holds a scatter of gullgubber. The hov was a hall, not a temple in the Mediterranean sense — no paid clergy lived inside it doing nothing else. Also discussed in Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian Norway -sanctuaries, killing chieftains who resisted, and mutilating those who relapsed. Modern scholarship treats much of this as hagiographic embellishment — the pious dramatisation that medieval Christian writers added to the lives of warrior-saints to make their later sanctity look the more striking. The contemporary record of Olav’s missionary work is thin. Christianity had been moving forward through earlier kings and through trade with Christian Europe for decades before he came home in 1015.

The opposition that killed him at Stiklestad was as much political as religious. The chieftains who marched against him included Christians as well as pagans. They were defending their regional power against a centralising king at least as much as they were defending the old gods against the new. In 1028, after losing political support across most of the country and finding that King Cnut of Denmark was willing to buy the Norwegian magnates with silver, Olav fled east across the Baltic to the court of his brother-in-law Yaroslav the Wise Yaroslav the Wise × Abraham van Westerveld, after the St Sophia fresco, Kyiv (1651 copy) About this image ▸ Grand Prince of Kievan Rus (978–1054), the most powerful eastern European ruler of the early eleventh century. Brother-in-law to Olav II Haraldsson of Norway through Olav's marriage to Yaroslav's sister-in-law Ingegerd (or through Yaroslav's wife Ingegerd Olofsdotter of Sweden, depending on the version followed). Hosted Olav at his court in Kiev from 1028 to 1030 during the king's exile before Stiklestad, and afterwards raised Olav's son Magnus the Good until the boy was returned to Norway in 1035. , the grand prince of Kievan Rus. He spent two years there gathering men and waiting for an opening. Stiklestad Battle of Stiklestad × Peter Nicolai Arbo, Olav den helliges fall i slaget på Stiklestad (1859), Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ Battle fought on 29 July 1030 at Stiklestad in the Verdal valley of Trøndelag between King Olav II Haraldsson of Norway, returning from his two-year exile in Kievan Rus to reclaim the throne, and a coalition of Norwegian farmers and chieftains organised against him by the regime that ruled Norway in King Cnut of Denmark's name. Saga tradition puts Olav's army at thirty-six hundred men, the farmer-army at several times that. Olav was killed late in the day, struck three times — knee, neck, belly — as he leaned against a large stone. His death made the cult that became medieval Norwegian Christianity. Conventionally treated as the end of the Viking Age in Norway. Also discussed in Tradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year was his attempt at return. The opening had not been there.

The making of a saint

The veneration began almost at once. The saga tradition reports a strange light over the field where Olav fell on the night of his death; that the sun had darkened over the battle that afternoon; and that the wounded received healing the next day from water touched by the dead king’s blood. The only solar eclipse over Norway in 1030 fell on 31 August, a month after Stiklestad, and most historians read the darkened sun as a second remembered event folded back into the day of the king’s death. The body was hidden in a sandbank along the river Nid — the river that ran past the small Norwegian trading town of Nidaros at its mouth — by a local farmer, Torgils Hålmuson, his son, and a handful of loyal men. From there it was secretly translated to a small wooden church Church of Saint Clement (Nidaros) × The small wooden church at Nidaros where Olav Haraldsson's body was first laid after its translation from the sandbank along the Nid River where the farmer Torgils Hålmuson and his son Grim had hidden it. Bishop Grimkell examined the body in the church on 3 August 1031 and pronounced Olav a saint there, beginning the formal devotion. The wooden church was eventually replaced by Christ Church (the predecessor of Nidaros Cathedral); the precise location of Saint Clement's has been the subject of long archaeological debate. A 2016 excavation on Søndre gate in central Trondheim may have identified the site, but the identification is not yet universally accepted. in the town itself, where Grimkell, the English bishop Olav had brought from Wessex Wessex × John Speed / Jodocus Hondius, Heptarchy, The Theatre of the Empire of Great Britaine (1610–11) Anglo-Saxon kingdom of southwestern England, the only major Anglo-Saxon polity to survive the Viking Great Heathen Army of the late ninth century. Under Alfred the Great (r. 871–899) and his successors Wessex unified England across the tenth century. By Olav II Haraldsson's time the kingdom had been absorbed into Cnut's North Sea Empire, but the English cathedral schools of Wessex continued training the kind of missionary bishops Olav brought home — including Bishop Grimkell, the English-ordained bishop who declared Olav a saint at Nidaros in 1031. (modern-day southwestern England) in 1015 and who had been administering the rough Norwegian church through the king’s reign, took charge of the relics.

On 3 August 1031 — a year and five days after the battle — Grimkell convened an examination of the body before the assembled clergy and people of Nidaros. The coffin was opened. Witnesses reported that the body was uncorrupted, that the hair and nails had grown, that a fragrance like the smell of summer came from the casket, and that the wound in the king’s throat had closed. Grimkell pronounced Olav a saint, the body was moved to a place of honour in the church of Saint Clement, and the formal devotion began. The English-Norman canonisation procedure of the eleventh century required no Roman ratification. A local bishop with the will to do it could declare a saint. Grimkell had the will.

The new devotion found its sponsors in an unexpected quarter. The Danish-installed regime that now ruled Norway in Cnut’s name took up the dead king’s veneration without hesitation; praise-poems on the miracles at his grave appeared from court poets working for the men whose silver had bought the magnates against him. Within five years the same chieftains who had stood against him at Stiklestad brought his eleven-year-old son Magnus Magnus the Good × Halfdan Egedius, Kong Magnus og Kalv Arnesson på Stiklestad (1898), Heimskringla 1899 ed. About this image ▸ Magnus Olavsson (1024–1047), only son of King Olav II Haraldsson (Saint Olav) of Norway. Taken to Kievan Rus as a child of around four after his father's exile in 1028; raised at the court of Yaroslav the Wise. Brought back to Norway in 1035 by the same chieftains who had stood against his father at Stiklestad five years before, and acclaimed king at age eleven — the country now venerating its dead king as a saint. Reigned 1035–1047 in Norway; also king of Denmark 1042–1047 after the death of Cnut's son Harthacnut. The first reigning Norwegian king to hold the throne as the eternal saint-king's deputy. home from Kievan Rus and acclaimed the boy king of a country that was now venerating its dead king as a saint. The Christianization the living Olav had failed to impose was being carried through, before his bones were five years cold, by his own enemies.

Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae

What Grimkell began locally, the wider Church confirmed a century later. Pope Alexander III Pope Alexander III × Spinello Aretino, Coronation of Pope Alexander III (fresco), Palazzo Pubblico, Siena Pope from 1159 to 1181 (Rolando Bandinelli, c. 1105–1181), one of the most consequential popes of the High Middle Ages. Confirmed the canonisation of Olav Haraldsson from Rome in 1164 — the formal papal sanction of a sainthood that had been functional in Norway since 1031. Best known internationally for his protracted conflict with King Henry II of England that produced the murder of Thomas Becket at Canterbury in 1170 and for his presidency over the Third Lateran Council of 1179. confirmed Olav’s canonization from Rome Rome (medieval pilgrim city) × Michael Wolgemut & Wilhelm Pleydenwurff, Roma, in Hartmann Schedel's Nuremberg Chronicle (1493) Capital of the medieval Papal States and the most important Western Christian pilgrimage destination of the Middle Ages, drawing pilgrims to the tombs of Saint Peter and Saint Paul, the catacombs, and the seven principal basilicas. In the high medieval era the pilgrimage to Rome stood alongside Santiago de Compostela in Spain, Canterbury in England, and Nidaros (Trondheim) in Norway as one of the great pan-European pilgrimage routes. The Roman road network — and the inn-and-hospice infrastructure built along the Via Francigena from Canterbury south to Rome — set the pattern that the Norwegian sælehus and the Pilegrimsleden inherited. in 1164, and the title fixed to him from that period forward was Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae × Photo of a replica of the Olav Altar Frontal (Nidaros, c. 1320–30), Wikimedia Commons, public domain About this image ▸ "Eternal King of Norway" — the title formally fixed to Saint Olav from 1163 forward, when the realm was dedicated to him at the coronation of Magnus Erlingsson and the new ceremony (designed by Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson) treated every reigning Norwegian king from that day as the saint's deputy on the throne. Pope Alexander III confirmed Olav's canonisation from Rome in 1164, cementing the formula. The Rex Perpetuus language became the constitutional shorthand of medieval Norwegian kingship and survives in modern Norwegian ceremonial usage. — the Eternal King of Norway. The formula had been set the year before, at Magnus Erlingsson Magnus Erlingsson × Erik Werenskiold, Kongen tek hyllest av lendmennene etter vigsla (1899), Heimskringla 1899 ed. About this image ▸ King of Norway 1163–1184 (1156–1184 depending on dating), son of the chieftain Erling Skakke. Crowned in 1163 at age seven in the first Norwegian royal coronation rite — the new ceremony, designed by Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson, formally dedicated the realm to Saint Olav as Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae (the Eternal King of Norway), with the reigning king holding the throne as the saint's deputy. The formula became the constitutional language of medieval Norwegian kingship. Killed in 1184 at the Battle of Fimreite by Sverre Sigurdsson. ’s coronation in 1163, when the realm itself was formally dedicated to Saint Olav: every reigning Norwegian king from that day forward held the throne, in the language of medieval royal documents, as the eternal king’s deputy.

The devotion spread quickly. Within two decades of the death, miracle stories were collecting at the Norwegian shrine; by 1170 they filled a book. Within a generation, pilgrim traffic to the tomb was the most consistent source of cash income for the church in Nidaros. Within a century, the route to the tomb was marked, the inland network of pilgrim hostels — the sælehus Sælehus × Pilgrim hostels — literally "soul-houses" — built along the medieval Norwegian pilgrim routes to Nidaros. A network of small wooden inn-buildings where a walking pilgrim could expect food and a bed without payment, stationed at roughly day-march intervals along the principal routes. The sælehus network was maintained by the medieval Norwegian church and supported by donations and pilgrim offerings. Closed at the Reformation in 1537; in stages replaced by the modern Pilegrimsleden hostel-and-stamping system along the reopened pilgrim paths from 1997 onward. — was in place, and the veneration had spread to Iceland Iceland × Frederick W. W. Howell, Galtalækur and Hekla (c. 1900), Fiske Icelandic Collection, Cornell University Library About this image ▸ The North Atlantic island settled from Norway in the ninth and tenth centuries by chieftains and their followings who refused to accept Harald Fairhair's authority on the Norwegian mainland and emigrated rather than submit. They built a country without a king, governed by an annual open-air assembly at Þingvellir called the Alþing — the oldest parliament in the world by date of founding. Three centuries after the migration, their descendants (notably Snorri Sturluson) composed the prose sagas that became almost the only literary memory of the Norwegian petty kingdoms. Also discussed in Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldThe Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormant , the Faroes Faroe Islands × O. Schulz, Thorshavn, from A. Baumgartner, Nordische Fahrten: Island und die Färöer (1889), British Library About this image ▸ Archipelago of eighteen volcanic islands in the North Atlantic between Norway, Iceland, and Scotland. Settled by Norse colonists beginning in the early ninth century, the Faroes were under Norwegian sovereignty by 1035; passed with Norway to Denmark in 1380 and remained under Danish rule after Norway's independence in 1814. Today a self-governing nation within the Kingdom of Denmark, with about fifty-three thousand people speaking Faroese (a North Germanic language closely related to Icelandic and to the western Norwegian dialects of Old Norse). The devotion to Saint Olav was carried across the Faroes by the medieval Norwegian archbishopric of Nidaros, and Olsok is still observed there. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormant , Greenland, the Norse settlements in the British Isles, and across the Baltic to the Russian Orthodox cathedrals at Novgorod Novgorod × Apollinary Vasnetsov, Medieval Novgorod in Winter (1909) About this image ▸ City on the Volkhov River in northwestern Russia, traditionally founded by the Norse Rūs warlord Rurik around 862 as part of the Varangian river-trade network. With Kiev to the south, one of the two principal centres of the Kievan Rus state that emerged from the Norse trading towns. The chronicle tradition that traces the Russian state to a Norse founding (the "Varangian thesis") is contested in modern Russian historiography but supported by both archaeology and the linguistic record. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen Wharf (in modern-day northwestern Russia).

In Novgorod he appears as a saint in the icon-corner — the household prayer-niche of Eastern Christianity, where families keep the painted images of the saints they venerate. He is one of the Western saints venerated in the Orthodox East, and he survives in that tradition because his canonisation in 1031 predated the Great Schism of 1054 The Great Schism (1054) × Lead seal of Michael Keroularios (1043–1058), photo Classical Numismatic Group (CNG), CC BY-SA 2.5 About this image ▸ The formal break between the Eastern (Greek-speaking, Constantinople-based) and Western (Latin-speaking, Rome-based) Christian communions in 1054, producing the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches as the two principal branches of medieval Christianity. Saint Olav of Norway's 1031 canonisation predated the Schism by twenty-three years, which is why he is one of the few Western saints venerated in the Eastern Orthodox tradition — particularly in Russia, where he appears in icon-corner devotions to this day. by twenty-three years — the formal split that produced the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches as separate communions. His feast day on 29 July, the anniversary of his death, became the great summer holiday across northern Europe, kept under the name Olsok Olsok × Åsen Museum og Historielag (1930), CC BY 2.0 About this image ▸ The feast day of Saint Olav — Olav's wake, observed on 29 July, the anniversary of the king's death at Stiklestad in 1030. Across the medieval period Olsok was the great summer holiday of the Norse Atlantic, kept across Norway, Iceland, the Faroes, Greenland, and the Norse colonies of the British Isles. The Reformation stripped the religious content from the Norwegian observance after 1537, but the day persisted as a folk holiday and was made the national flag-day of Norway in 1948. Today Olsok centres on the Stiklestad commemoration, with the open-air Spelet om Heilag Olav drawing audiences in the tens of thousands. On the trip Day 4 of the trip is olsok itself — 29 July. The Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) spend it in the Stjørdal heritage country and return to Trondheim for the night, with the Olavsfest filling the city around the cathedral. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year — Olav’s wake — in Norway, the Faroes, and across the Norse Atlantic.

The pilgrim economy that grew around the devotion became the backbone of medieval Norwegian Christianity. The longest single route, the Gudbrandsdalsleden Gudbrandsdalsleden × Johannes Flintoe, Vårstigen over Dovre (1835), Nasjonalmuseet About this image ▸ "The Gudbrandsdal Way" — the longest of the medieval Norwegian pilgrim routes to Nidaros, running 643 kilometres from Oslo north through the long Gudbrandsdalen valley in central Norway to Trondheim. Named for the valley it followed through the central Norwegian highland. Marked in the medieval period by stone crosses and small wayside chapels and serviced by the network of sælehus (pilgrim hostels). Closed at the Reformation; reopened and re- marked in stages between 1997 and 2013 as the principal route of the modern Pilegrimsleden. Walked again every summer. Also discussed in The Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposed , named for the long Gudbrandsdalen valley it followed through the central Norwegian highland, ran from Oslo north to Trondheim — six hundred and forty-three kilometres on foot, marked by stone crosses and small wayside chapels and the network of sælehus where a pilgrim could expect food and a bed without payment. The St. Olavsleden St. Olavsleden × Vogler, Olofsmärke Greåker (2019), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ "Saint Olav's Way" — the 580-kilometre pilgrim route from the Bothnian Sea coast at Selånger (in modern eastern Sweden) west through Jämtland and across the border to Trondheim. The route retraces the actual path Olav II Haraldsson took on his return from exile in Kievan Rus in the summer of 1030. One of the two principal modern Norwegian pilgrim routes (alongside the longer Gudbrandsdalsleden from Oslo); reopened in 2013 as a marked walking path with the modern Pilegrimsleden hostel and stamping system. Also discussed in Tradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year , five hundred and eighty kilometres from the Bothnian Sea coast at Selånger (in modern-day Sweden) through to Trondheim, retraced the actual route Olav had taken on his return from Kievan Rus in the summer of 1030. The pilgrimage to Nidaros stood alongside Rome, Santiago de Compostela Santiago de Compostela × Ramón Gil Rey, lithograph of Santiago cathedral from the Praza do Obradoiro (1838) About this image ▸ City in northwestern Spain, capital of Galicia. The discovery of what was believed to be the tomb of Saint James the Greater in the early ninth century made the city one of the three great pilgrimage destinations of medieval Western Christendom — alongside Rome and Jerusalem, and from the twelfth century alongside Nidaros and Canterbury as the principal national pilgrimage sites of northern Europe. The Camino de Santiago network of pilgrim roads converging on the cathedral is the largest pilgrim infrastructure that survives from the Middle Ages, walked again by hundreds of thousands of pilgrims each year. Also discussed in The Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy Land in Spain, and Canterbury Canterbury × Frank Mason Good, Christ Church Gate, Canterbury Cathedral (c. 1850–1880), Rijksmuseum About this image ▸ Cathedral city in Kent, southeastern England. The seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the mother church of the Anglican Communion since the conversion of England in 597. After the murder of Archbishop Thomas Becket at the high altar of Canterbury Cathedral on 29 December 1170 — at the instigation of King Henry II — the city became one of the principal pilgrimage destinations of medieval Europe, alongside Rome, Santiago de Compostela, and Nidaros in Norway. in England as one of the great pilgrimages of medieval Europe. The traffic funded the rebuilding of the small wooden church at Nidaros into a Romanesque-Gothic cathedral Nidaros Cathedral × Unknown photographer, Nidaros Cathedral from the northeast (1857), Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ The principal cathedral of Norway and the burial place of Saint Olav, on the bank of the Nid River in Trondheim. Built and rebuilt in stages from the late eleventh through the early fourteenth centuries around the shrine site at the cathedral's east end. The octagonal east end, raised directly over Olav's grave, was the devotional core of the medieval building. Substantially damaged by fires and the 1531 lightning strike, then by neglect across the Lutheran centuries. The west front a visitor sees today is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century reconstruction, completed only in 1983. The cathedral is the coronation and consecration church of Norwegian kings; Haakon VII was crowned there in 1906, Olav V consecrated in 1958, Harald V in 1991. On the trip Day 3 of the trip brings the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) to Nidaros Cathedral. The shrine is gone but the spot is marked on the cathedral floor in the octagonal east end. The west front is the twentieth-century reconstruction of the face the medieval pilgrims saw. The pilgrim road comes in past the south door — the same door medieval pilgrims walked through. Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year whose octagonal east end, raised over the shrine site itself, was the medieval devotional core of the building; the west front a visitor sees today is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century reconstruction, its rebuilding finished in 1969 and the last of its statues set in place only in 1983. The bishop of Nidaros became an archbishop in the winter of 1152–53, and the archdiocese that the English papal legate Nicholas Breakspear Nicholas Breakspear (Pope Adrian IV) × Adrian IV, Chartularium monasterii Casauriensis (c. 1150-1200), Bibliothèque nationale de France (Gallica) About this image ▸ English cardinal (c. 1100–1159) and, as Pope Adrian IV (1154–1159), the only Englishman to have held the papacy. In 1152 — two years before his election to the throne of Saint Peter — Breakspear was sent as papal legate to Scandinavia and reorganised the Norwegian church around a new archdiocese at Nidaros, raising the bishop of Nidaros to archbishop and giving Norway its own ecclesiastical province independent of Lund. The province stretched from Trondheim to the Faroes, Greenland, and the Norse colonies of the British Isles. Died at Anagni in 1159. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy Land — the future Pope Adrian IV — organised for the Norwegian church stretched from Trondheim to the Faroes, Greenland, and the Norse colonies of the British Isles.

What the saint built

Norway became, in the high medieval period, the farthest-north member of Latin Christendom. The country built stave churches and stone cathedrals on the continental model. It produced the first generation of Norwegian Latin literacy in the cathedral schools at Nidaros and Bergen Bergen × Photochrom print, General view from Fjeldveien, Bergen (c. 1890–1900), Library of Congress About this image ▸ Norway's western trading capital, founded around 1070 on the inner Byfjorden. For four centuries the largest city in the country and the wharf through which the entire western export economy ran — dried cod from the Lofoten fisheries, stockpiled and traded by the Hanseatic merchants at Bryggen from 1360 to 1754. Norway's commercial and intellectual heart through the Hanseatic period; overtaken in size by Christiania (Oslo) in the 1830s. The painted wooden Bryggen wharf is on the UNESCO World Heritage list and substantially what it was in the late seventeenth century. In this article Bergen produced one of the early Catholic cathedral schools and the first generation of Norwegian Latin literacy alongside Nidaros. Less central to the Olav cult than Nidaros itself, but the secondary western anchor of medieval Norwegian Catholicism. On the trip The Ungdommene (the Youngsters) reach Bergen late on Day 3 via the Norway-in-a-Nutshell train-and-ferry route from Oslo. On the Day 4 morning they walk Bryggen and ride the funicular up Mount Fløyen before flying back to Oslo and driving on to Lillehammer that evening — a day ahead of the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters), who spend the split days north in Trondheim and the heritage country of Stjørdal, Hegra, and Kylloplass and come south on Day 5. Bergen Also discussed in The Germans Who "Ruled" Bergen — the Hanseatic merchants on Bryggen WharfBefore There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayKraken — the island-sized beast, logged as factSjøormer — the serpents in the deep lakes and fjordsPesta — an old woman walking from farm to farmFossegrimen — the waterfall fiddler who teaches you to playAlcohol and Vinmonopolet — when and where to buy a drinkEveryday etiquette — quiet voices, wide space, no smilingFood and dining customs — having patience, free water, brunost on everything🚨 Emergencies - important numbers, hospitals, and what you can doLanguage basics — just enough Norwegian to be politeWhat to wear — the layering system, on the ground . It exported its dried cod to feed the Lenten tables of Catholic Europe, where the practice of abstaining from meat during Lent and on Fridays drove an enormous demand for preserved fish. By the early thirteenth century, the longest single saga in the great medieval Icelandic king-collection, the Heimskringla Heimskringla × Kringlublaðið (the Kringla leaf), Lbs fragm 82, c. 1260 — National and University Library of Iceland About this image ▸ Snorri Sturluson's prose history of the kings of Norway, composed in the 1220s. Sixteen sagas running from the semi-mythical Yngling line through to the late twelfth century. The single most extensive medieval source for Norway's Viking and Christianization centuries — trusted on the broad shape of political history, questioned in the literary expansions, and written by a Christian Icelander three hundred years after the events. In this article The longest single saga in the Heimskringla is the Saga of Olav the Holy — Snorri's expansive life of the saint-king whose story this article tells. The Stiklestad battle cry quoted here is one of its most-cited passages. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Worshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy Land — and by a substantial margin — was the Saga of Olav the Holy. The man who could not hold his throne in life held the country’s narrative for the next five hundred years.

1537

The Reformation broke the official devotion. In 1537 the Lutheran settlement imposed from Copenhagen abolished the veneration of saints, dissolved the monasteries, and ordered the relics destroyed. The silver shrine over the high altar at Nidaros — the Olafskrinet Olafskrinet × Finn Bjørklid, sketch of a presumed medieval Norwegian reliquary shrine, public domain About this image ▸ The silver reliquary shrine of Saint Olav at Nidaros Cathedral — the principal devotional object of the medieval Norwegian church and the centre of the pilgrim economy that funded the cathedral. Commissioned across multiple decades of the eleventh and twelfth centuries, the shrine stood on the high altar of the cathedral through the medieval Catholic period. The Lutheran Reformation imposed from Copenhagen in 1537 dissolved the cult of saints and ordered the shrine destroyed; the silver was sent at once to the Copenhagen mint. The body itself outlasted the silver by a generation. The final destruction of the remaining shrine came in 1568; Olav was reburied somewhere within the cathedral after that, in a location that has not been recovered since. Also discussed in The Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposed — was broken up at once and the silver sent to the Copenhagen Copenhagen × Georg Braun & Frans Hogenberg, view of Copenhagen from Vesterbro (1587), Civitates Orbis Terrarum About this image ▸ Capital of Denmark, on the eastern coast of the island of Zealand across the Øresund strait from Sweden. Founded as a fishing town in the early medieval period, formal city in 1167, royal capital from the early fifteenth century. The administrative centre of the Danish kingdom and, from 1380 to 1814, of the Danish-Norwegian union — the place where the 1537 Lutheran Reformation in Norway was decided and from which the silver of the Olafskrinet was sent to the Copenhagen mint after the destruction of the shrine at Nidaros. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in Norway mint. The body itself outlasted the silver by a generation. The final destruction of what remained of the shrine came in 1568; the saint was reburied somewhere within the cathedral after that, in a place that has not been recovered since. The pilgrim hostels were closed, the route markers came down, and Olsok became a folk holiday with the religious content stripped out.

What ended in 1537 was the Norwegian state-administered devotion to Olav. The wider Catholic Church did not stop. Olav’s feast day was kept across Catholic Europe through the four centuries of Protestant rule in Norway, and Catholic missionaries returning to the country in the nineteenth century carried the devotion back with them. The first Catholic parish in Norway since the Reformation was established in Oslo in 1843. The St. Olav Catholic Cathedral St. Olav's Catholic Cathedral (Oslo) × Andreas Ludvig Søborg, St. Olavs kirke og Trefoldighetskirken (1871), Oslo Museum, CC BY 4.0 About this image ▸ The cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oslo, at Akersveien 5 in central Oslo. Opened with its first mass on 24 August 1856 — the first Catholic parish church in Norway since the 1537 Reformation. A relic of Saint Olav was transferred from the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen and given to the Cathedral in 1862; modern forensic examination has identified it as the left calf-bone of a male who died around 1030 from battle wounds, at least consistent with the king who fell at Stiklestad. The relic is venerated at the cathedral today. St. Olav's Catholic Cathedral, Oslo in the same city opened with its first mass on 24 August 1856. A relic was given to the new Cathedral in 1862, transferred from the Danish National Museum in Copenhagen. Its earlier provenance is undocumented; it had been identified with Olav only in the early nineteenth century, and was traditionally called his arm-bone. Modern forensic examination has identified it as the left calf-bone of a male who died around 1030 from battle wounds — at least consistent with the king who fell at Stiklestad. It is venerated in the Cathedral today.

What did not die

Inside Lutheran Norway, the folk-memory of Olav as a hero-king survived in the rural districts through the four centuries between the Reformation and the modern revival. Place-names along the old pilgrim routes still carry his name — Sankt Olavs vei, Saint Olav’s road; Olavsstenen, Olav’s stone; Olavskilden, Olav’s spring. Local churches kept stone crosses and weathered altar-fragments from the medieval period.

The 1930 commemoration of the nine-hundredth anniversary of Stiklestad was a major Norwegian national event. In 1954 the playwright Olav Gullvåg Olav Gullvåg × Unknown photographer, portrait of Olav Gullvåg (c. 1930), via Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ Norwegian playwright and journalist (1885–1961), best remembered as the author of Spelet om Heilag Olav ("The Play of the Holy Olav"), the open-air drama about Olav II Haraldsson and the Battle of Stiklestad that he wrote in collaboration with the composer Paul Okkenhaug. The play premiered at the Stiklestad battle site in 1954 and has been performed there every summer since 1960, broken only by the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021, drawing audiences in the tens of thousands across the days leading up to the Olsok feast on 29 July. and the composer Paul Okkenhaug Paul Okkenhaug × Stiklestad Nasjonale Kultursenter, Gisle Straume as the King in Spelet om Heilag Olav (1954), CC BY-SA 3.0 About this image ▸ Norwegian composer (1908–1975), best remembered as the composer of the musical score for Spelet om Heilag Olav — the open-air play about Olav II Haraldsson and the Battle of Stiklestad written by Olav Gullvåg. The play premiered at Stiklestad in 1954 and has been performed there every summer since 1960, broken only by the pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021, with Okkenhaug's score carried forward as the central musical tradition of the modern Olsok observance. premiered Spelet om Heilag Olav — the play of the holy Olav — at the battle site; after early stagings in 1954–55 it has been performed at Stiklestad every summer since 1960, broken only by the two pandemic summers of 2020 and 2021. The pilgrim routes were re-marked and reopened in stages between 1997 and 2013; the modern Pilegrimsleden Pilegrimsleden × Øyvind Holmstad, Pilegrimsleden between Hoff church and Kapp, Toten (2021), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ The modern network of marked pilgrim walking paths to Trondheim — the inheritance of the medieval pilgrim economy around the Olav cult. The two principal routes are the Gudbrandsdalsleden (Oslo to Trondheim, 643 km) and the St. Olavsleden (Selånger in Sweden to Trondheim, 580 km); a network of shorter feeders and side- routes connects to both. Re-opened in stages between 1997 and 2013 with a modern hostel-and-stamping system; the Pilegrims- kontoret in Oslo and the Pilegrimssenter in Trondheim issue the pilgrim's passport. Walked again every summer by thousands. Also discussed in The Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposed800,000 Norwegians Leave — the century that built a Second Norway , the network of marked walking paths to Trondheim, is walked again every summer.

The figure on the modern Norwegian coat of arms — the red lion with the golden axe known as the Norwegian Lion Norwegian Lion × Nico Jungmann, title page, Norway (1905), Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 About this image ▸ The crowned golden lion bearing Saint Olav's silver axe on a red shield — the central charge of the Norwegian coat of arms, and the iconographic survival of the medieval Olav cult into modern national emblem. The lion appears on every Norwegian government document, every Norwegian passport, every official building. The axe is the weapon with which Olav is conventionally portrayed in medieval painting, occasionally identified with the spear that killed him at Stiklestad; the lion itself is the heraldic addition of the High Middle Ages. The arms have been adapted forward through every reorganisation of the country since the medieval period. — is the iconography of Saint Olav. The axe is the weapon with which he is conventionally portrayed in medieval painting, remembered as the instrument of his martyrdom at Stiklestad. The lion is the heraldic addition of the high Middle Ages. The coat of arms appears on every Norwegian government document, every Norwegian passport, every official building. Through every reorganisation of the country in the centuries between Stiklestad and the present, the iconography of Saint Olav has been adapted forward.

The cathedral on the river

Nidaros Cathedral stands today on the bank of the river where the body was hidden in 1030 — pale stone in twin towers above the saint’s burial place, the architectural inheritance of a bishop’s pronouncement on a summer day in 1031. It is the principal Norwegian Lutheran cathedral and the coronation-and-consecration church of Norwegian kings. Haakon VII Haakon VII × Mittet & Co., King Haakon VII of Norway (c. 1942), Library of Congress About this image ▸ King of Norway 1905–1957. Born Prince Carl of Denmark in 1872, the thirty-three-year-old career naval officer was offered the Norwegian throne after the dissolution of the Norwegian-Swedish union in 1905, accepted after a confirmatory referendum, and took the regnal name Haakon — last used by a Norwegian king at the death of Haakon VI in 1380. Crowned at Nidaros Cathedral on 22 June 1906 — the last coronation in Norwegian history; the coronation requirement was struck from the constitution in 1908. His refusal to recognise the Quisling government in April 1940 became the founding constitutional act of the Norwegian wartime resistance. Returned to Oslo on 7 June 1945 after five years of exile in London; died in 1957. Also discussed in The Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in NorwayPolitikk — the left, the right, and the Norwegian way was crowned there in 1906, the last coronation in Norway; the coronation requirement was struck from the constitution in 1908, and his successors — Olav V Olav V × Yousuf Karsh, H.R.H. Crown Prince Olav of Norway (c. 1943), Library and Archives Canada About this image ▸ King of Norway 1957–1991. Born Prince Alexander Edward Christian Frederik in Sandringham, England, in 1903 to the future Haakon VII and his British wife Princess Maud; renamed Olav on the family's arrival in Norway in 1905, after the medieval patron saint of the country. Crown Prince through the German occupation, during which he served alongside his father as the public face of Norwegian resistance from London. Acceded in 1957 on his father's death; consecrated at Nidaros Cathedral in 1958 rather than crowned (the coronation requirement had been removed in 1908). Bynamed Folkekongen — the People's King — for his unaffected approachability across thirty-four years on the throne. Also discussed in 800,000 Norwegians Leave — the century that built a Second NorwayThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warWorld War II — the King’s “No” and the Nazis in Norway in 1958 and Harald V Harald V × Vaino Rensberg/Sametinget (2021), CC BY 2.0 About this image ▸ King of Norway since 1991, born 1937, son of Olav V and grandson of Haakon VII. Acceded on his father's death; consecrated at Nidaros Cathedral on 23 June 1991 — the first Norwegian monarch consecrated under the post-1908 rite, in which the 1818 crown is borne into the cathedral and displayed but not placed on the king's head. Married to Sonja Haraldsen (Queen Sonja) since 1968. Has reigned through the country's transformation into the wealthiest small democracy in modern history; one of the longest reigns in Norwegian history. Also discussed in Politikk — the left, the right, and the Norwegian way in 1991 — have been consecrated at Nidaros instead, with the 1818 crown borne into the cathedral and displayed but not placed on the king’s head. The pilgrim road comes in past the south door, the same door the medieval pilgrims walked through. The shrine is gone, but the spot is marked. The saint himself is buried somewhere within the cathedral, in a location no medieval source preserved through the Reformation and no modern excavation has yet conclusively located.

The king lasted thirteen years on the throne. The saint has lasted nine hundred and ninety-six.

Sources & further reading

Primary sources

• Snorri Sturluson Snorri Sturluson × Christian Krohg, Snorre Sturlason (1899), from Norges Kongesagaer; scan: National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Thirteenth-century Icelandic chieftain, poet, and historian. Composed the Heimskringla and the Prose Edda in the 1220s from oral tradition and skaldic verse — three hundred years after the Viking-age events he describes. The single richest source for Norway's pre-conversion centuries and also the most aware Christian-Icelandic editor of them. Modern scholarship accepts what other sources independently confirm and treats his richest expansions as the work of a poet writing about a kingdom he had never seen. Assassinated at Reykholt on 23 September 1241 by agents of King Hákon IV after a falling-out at court. In this article Snorri's Heimskringla supplies the Stiklestad battle cry quoted in this article. The depiction of Olav's pre-saintly violence — conversion at sword-point, the burning of hov sanctuaries — is also Snorri's, and modern scholarship treats much of it as hagiographic dramatization rather than documentary record. Also discussed in The Viking Age — longships, legends, and the first "Norway"Before There Was Norway — petty kingdoms at the edge of the worldWorshiping Odin and Thor — the lived religion of pre-Christian NorwayA Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandNordisk Mytologi — Odin, the giants, and Ragnarok , Heimskringla, “Óláfs saga helga” (c. 1230). The longest saga in the Norwegian king-cycle and the principal medieval narrative of Olav’s reign, death, and sainthood. English translation in Snorri Sturluson, Heimskringla, trans. Alison Finlay and Anthony Faulkes, 3 vols. (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2011–2015).
• Passio et miracula beati Olavi Passio et miracula beati Olavi × The Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Olav — the medieval Norwegian shrine's collected miracle-book, compiled in Latin at Nidaros around 1170, in association with the archbishopric of Eystein Erlendsson. Records the dramatic miracles credited to Olav's intercession across the first century of the devotion: healings at the shrine, restorations of sight, the recovery of the lost or possessed, the safety of seafarers calling on the saint. The principal medieval Latin source for the institutional cult, alongside Snorri's later vernacular saga and the short Latin history of Theodoricus Monachus. (twelfth century). The Norwegian shrine’s collected miracle-book, compiled at Nidaros around 1170. Critical edition by Lenka Jiroušková, Der heilige Wikingerkönig Olav Haraldsson und sein hagiographisches Dossier (Leiden: Brill, 2014). English translation in Devra Kunin and Carl Phelpstead, eds., A History of Norway and the Passion and Miracles of the Blessed Óláfr (Viking Society for Northern Research, 2001).
• Theodoricus Monachus Theodoricus Monachus × Editio princeps of Theodoricus, in Commentarii historici duo (Amsterdam, 1684), National Library of Norway About this image ▸ Norwegian monk and historian, active in the late twelfth century (probably c. 1175–c. 1185). Author of Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium ("History of the Antiquity of the Norwegian Kings"), a short Latin history covering the Norwegian kings from Harald Fairhair to the death of Sigurd the Crusader (d. 1130). One of the earliest written accounts of Olav II Haraldsson's sainthood; pre-dates Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla by half a century. Almost certainly a Premonstratensian or Augustinian canon attached to the cathedral at Nidaros, though the precise identification has not been settled. Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy Land , Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium (c. 1180). A short Latin history of the Norwegian kings, with one of the earliest written accounts of Olav’s sainthood.
• William of Jumièges, Gesta Normannorum ducum (eleventh century). The Norman chronicle that places Olav’s baptism in Normandy around 1014.

Modern scholarship

• Sverre Bagge, Cross and Scepter: The Rise of the Scandinavian Kingdoms from the Vikings to the Reformation (Princeton University Press, 2014). The standard modern synthesis on the political-religious formation of medieval Scandinavia, with extensive treatment of Olav’s reign and the devotion.
• Knut Helle, ed., The Cambridge History of Scandinavia, Volume 1: Prehistory to 1520 (Cambridge University Press, 2003). The reference treatment of Norway’s Christianization and the medieval archbishopric.
• Øystein Ekroll, The Octagonal Shrine Chapel of St Olav at Nidaros Cathedral (NTNU, 2015). The architectural and devotional history of the shrine chapel.
• Erik Gunnes, Erkebiskop Øystein: Statsmann og kirkebygger (Aschehoug, 1996). The standard Norwegian biography of the twelfth-century archbishop who shaped the devotion’s institutional reach.
• Eric Waldram Kemp, Canonization and Authority in the Western Church (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1948). On the eleventh-century English-Norman canonisation procedure that allowed local bishops to declare saints without Roman ratification.

Reference

• Store norske leksikon (snl.no). The Norwegian peer-reviewed encyclopedia. See in particular Olav 2 Haraldsson den hellige, Stiklestad, Mostertinget, kristenrett, Nidaros domkirke, Olsok, and Pilegrimsleden.

Visit

• Nidaros Cathedral Nidaros Cathedral × Unknown photographer, Nidaros Cathedral from the northeast (1857), Wikimedia Commons About this image ▸ The principal cathedral of Norway and the burial place of Saint Olav, on the bank of the Nid River in Trondheim. Built and rebuilt in stages from the late eleventh through the early fourteenth centuries around the shrine site at the cathedral's east end. The octagonal east end, raised directly over Olav's grave, was the devotional core of the medieval building. Substantially damaged by fires and the 1531 lightning strike, then by neglect across the Lutheran centuries. The west front a visitor sees today is a nineteenth- and twentieth-century reconstruction, completed only in 1983. The cathedral is the coronation and consecration church of Norwegian kings; Haakon VII was crowned there in 1906, Olav V consecrated in 1958, Harald V in 1991. On the trip Day 3 of the trip brings the Gråhårsklubben (the Oldsters) to Nidaros Cathedral. The shrine is gone but the spot is marked on the cathedral floor in the octagonal east end. The west front is the twentieth-century reconstruction of the face the medieval pilgrims saw. The pilgrim road comes in past the south door — the same door medieval pilgrims walked through. Nidaros Cathedral, Trondheim Also discussed in A Catholic Norway — the faith that gave the kingdom its first institutions and the stave churchesThe Crusades?!!!! — sixty ships from Bergen, bound for the Holy LandThe Golden Age — a North Atlantic empire … reaching farther than you thinkThe Long Fall — the sudden loss of Norwegian nobility, the end of the kings, and half of Norway gone foreverThe 400-Year Night — when the Northern Lion lay dormantThe Reformation, 1537 — one church eradicated and another imposedLutheran Norway and Pietism — a farmer named Hans Nielsen Hauge and a lay revival that could not be silencedThe Quiet Revolution — how Norway won its independence without a warTradisjoner — celebrations across the Norwegian year , Trondheim. The cathedral over Olav’s burial place. The west front, the south door (the pilgrim entrance), and the rebuilt octagonal east end behind the high altar are the architectural heart of the site. The Norwegian crown jewels are on display in the adjoining Archbishop’s Palace.
• Stiklestad National Cultural Centre Stiklestad National Cultural Centre × Cultural-historical centre and open-air theatre at the Stiklestad battle site in Verdal, Trøndelag, about an hour's drive north of Trondheim on the E6. Includes museums covering the battle and its medieval afterlife, the open-air amphitheatre where Spelet om Heilag Olav is performed each summer in late July, and the twelfth-century Stiklestad Church on the battlefield itself. The Centre opened in 1992 and serves as the principal site of the modern national Olsok observance on 29 July. Stiklestad National Cultural Centre , Verdal, about an hour’s drive north of Trondheim on the E6. The battle site, the medieval Stiklestad church Stiklestad Church × Christian Christensen Thomhav (1930), Norwegian Directorate for Cultural Heritage Medieval stone church at Stiklestad in the Verdal valley of Trøndelag, founded shortly after the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030 as a memorial to King Olav II Haraldsson. Built into the church's interior wall is a stone said to be the one against which Olav leaned as he received his death-wound. The current building dates to the twelfth century and has been substantially restored, most recently in the 1920s; it remains an active parish church and a focal point of the modern Olsok observance. Stiklestad Church (founded shortly after the battle as a memorial), and the open-air theatre where Spelet om Heilag Olav is performed each summer in late July.
• St. Olav’s Catholic Cathedral, Akersveien 5, Oslo. The Catholic cathedral opened in 1856, holding the 1862 relic of the saint.
• The Pilegrimsleden, the marked pilgrim-route network. The Gudbrandsdalsleden from Oslo to Trondheim (643 km) and the St. Olavsleden from Sweden (580 km) are the two principal modern routes; the Pilegrimskontoret in Oslo and the Pilegrimssenter in Trondheim issue the pilgrim’s passport for those walking either.