"[A] seminal and scholarly study that reads with all the inherent
narrative storytelling flair of an historical novel." -- Midwest Book
Review
The Vikings and sainthood are not concepts normally found side by side.
But Norway's King Olaf II Haraldsson (c. 995-1030) embodied both to an
extraordinary degree. As a battle-eager teenager he almost
single-handedly pulled down London Bridge (as in the nursery rhyme) and
took part in many other Viking raids. Olaf lacked none of the
traditional Viking qualities of toughness and audacity, yet his routine
baptism grew into a burning missionary faith that was all the more
remarkable for being combined with his typically Viking determination
and energy - and sometimes ruthlessness as well. His overriding mission
was to Christianize Norway and extirpate heathenism. His unstinting
efforts, often at great peril to his life, earned him the Norwegian
throne in 1015, when he had barely reached his twenties. For the next
fifteen years he labored against immense odds to subdue the rebellious
heathen nobles of Norway while fending off Swedish hostility. Both
finally combined against Olaf in 1030, when he fell bravely in battle
not far from Trondheim, still only in his mid-thirties. After his body
was found to possess healing powers, and reports of them spread from
Scandinavia to Spain and Byzantium, Olaf II was canonized a saint 134
years later. He remains Norway's patron saint as well as a legendary
warrior. Yet more remarkably, he remains a saint not only of the
Protestant church but also of the Roman Catholic and Greek Orthodox
Churches - perhaps the only European fighting saint to achieve such
acceptance.
