Saint Olaf of Norway

Saint Olaf II Haraldsson was a king of Norway who brought the country under a single rule and strengthened the Christian faith in it, and who fell in the battle of Stiklestad. The Roman Martyrology commemorates him on July 29 as a martyr. It records that, as king of his people, he spread in his kingdom the faith he had come to know in England and fought against idolatry, and that in the end he was struck down by the sword in an attack by his enemies. He is the patron saint of Norway.

He was born around 995, probably in Ringerike; the exact year is not known. He was a son of Harald Grenske, one of the local kings in Norway. As a young man he went on Viking expeditions and fought in England, among other places, where, according to the sources, he became interested in Christianity. It is most often said that he was baptized in Rouen in Normandy around 1014, but the accounts do not agree on the place or the year.

In 1015 he returned to Norway, and after his victory in the naval battle of Nesjar in 1016 he began to win recognition as king of the whole country. He sought to join the divided lands into one kingdom and to found it on the Christian faith. He brought bishops and priests from England, among them Bishop Grimkel, and together with them gave the Church in Norway its first laws. In place of the pagan temples he built churches.

He acted harshly, however, and punished those who resisted him severely. He was opposed by the powerful chieftains, who welcomed neither the new faith nor a strong royal power that curtailed their old rights. They turned for help to Canute the Great, king of Denmark and England. In 1028 Olaf had to leave the country and took refuge in Rus’ at the court of Prince Yaroslav the Wise.

In 1030 he returned with an army to win back his kingdom. On July 29, 1030, at Stiklestad, north of Nidaros, today’s Trondheim, he faced an army made up mostly of his own subjects, many of whom were Christians. Olaf fell in that battle. Medieval accounts differ in describing his death.

Soon after his death many people in the region of Nidaros began to speak of him as a saint and to ask for his intercession. On August 3, 1031, Bishop Grimkel placed the coffin with his body on the high altar of the church of Saint Clement in Nidaros. According to the custom of the time, this was the recognition of his holiness by the local bishop, long before canonization processes were introduced. Nidaros Cathedral was later built over his grave and became the goal of many pilgrimages. By 1060 a liturgy in his honor was already in use in Northumbria in England, and the Orthodox Church also venerates his memory.

Saint John Paul II said that the figure of King Olaf symbolizes forever the belonging of the Norwegian people to Christ. On June 2, 1989, the pope visited Trondheim and prayed with Lutherans in Nidaros Cathedral, recalling that both Catholics and Protestants in Norway look to Saint Olaf for their roots.