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Martyrology of St Olaf
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Authored by Frank Redmond, 2005
“The weaker its power of reasoning, the more vigorous the human imagination grows” - Gimabattista Vico
I.
What happens after a martyr’s death? Usually we just don’t know. Most accounts end with the martyr’s trip to heaven and a coda of remarks. Beyond this point nothing really mattered to believers in a saint and this is why we know so little about the posthumous lives of martyr’s were their real births actually lie. Frankly, the answer lies somewhere between the martyr’s physical death and their incorporation into a broader community of believers. They are the ones who wrote the script of the martyr in question. It is understandable that the cult had no interest in this matter; they were not historians. Therefore, the process, or fermentation, of a martyr’s posthumous life is frequently lost to the modern reader simply because it was never recorded. Afterall, it may have even been opaque to the martyr’s near contemporaries. This leaves the modern scholar, one who may wish to reconstruct the becoming of a martyr, with a dilemma. What went on between these two points becomes an speculative exercise. Hints may be gathered from textual analysis or even outside sources, however, this achieves little in the way of understanding this time gap. The only way to fill this knowledge gap is to find a aource which covers a long span of time. Only then can we tell how a martyr has been recieved within the context of a specific community.
For this reason, we are fortunate to possess the Saga of St. Olaf. Here we can see and piece together how St. Olaf became a martyr, as well as, information on what components are necessary for this to occur. My contention is that when a martyr dies, they are not instantly born as such. Only after a period of fermentation and the formation of a cult will a person become a martyr. Furthermore, I argue that this formation follows a certain pattern which is based on the interplay of power and imagination. Hopefully, this investigation will not only show how Olaf became a martyr, but will intuitively shed light on how others became martyrs as well.
II.
The Saga of St. Olaf, as recorded by Snorri Sturluson, gives us one of the most complete and critical depictions of a king from the Middle Ages. What makes it so compelling is that its is only a portion of his whole output, which includes the tome Heimskringla, from which our text is taken. This work in itself covers a period of about 600 years spanning from the mythical age to the 12th Century AD. The reason we know so much about St. Olaf’s life and posthumous fate is because of Sturluson's detailed work and also because it was not written as a martyrology. The work’s purpose was to recount the deeds of past Norse kings, and only secondarily does it act as an account of a martyr. Furthermore, St. Olaf’s Saga is easily the longest of Sturluson’s lives indicating the imporatance of St. Olaf both before and after this death. These are its strengths. If the opposite were true, the narrative we have been given would have been completely different, and little hints between the blinds about St. Olaf’s legacy might have been lost. For our evidence comes from the small creases within the Heimskringla.
So who was St. Olaf after all? In short, he was a member of long line of Norse Kings from Norway. Born in 995 AD, he spent a part of his youth battling in England helping to fight the Danish. During this period alone he established himself as a great warrior, taking part in over two dozen battles. While still in England, Olaf became convinced of the truth of Christianity. Upon reaching maturity, Olaf returned to Norway (1015) to reclaim the land that had been robbed from his father and began to zealously convert the country to Christianity. He then proceeded to politically unify the country under the aegis of Christianity both legally and religiously, only to find great resistance to his rule. He was antagonized by the nobility of the region and he had a distinctive distrust of the people. This led to a mass desertion of Olaf, and began his acute downfall from political power (1027). In a last breath, he attacked Denmark, only to be crushed in a naval battle. Thereby he fled to Russia losing all of Norway to the English king Canute. Olaf made one last stand at the Battle of Stiklestad, where he perished. What is striking about Olaf’s saga is his failure as a ruler. But the vissitudes of his reign certainly added to his legacy as the patron saint of Norway, and of Norwegian solidarity, especially after the complete adoption of Christianity in Norway in the following decade. Olaf thereby became the perfect example of a knight for Christ and a martyr for the truth of their new found faith. But don’t be confused; by no means did Olaf become a saint overnight.
When reading the Heimskringla, one senses that Sturluson constructed the narrative and personality of Olaf around two themes: personal power and the imagination of people (i.e. in dreams, visions, miracles, folktales, etc.). Sturluson insinuates that it is for these two reasons that the legacy of St. Olaf is so rich. For Olaf had the power of a king, but also the power to fascinate his subjects and the future. Without these two elements, King Olaf might have failed to have become St. Olaf, and been left to history as another mere king who happened to sympathize with Christianity. For this reason, I believe his martyrdom to be not only a death at the hand of an adversary, but the continuation of a rich legacy, one which began long before his death.
III.
The foundation of Olaf’s legacy was not built purely on faith, but policy and destiny. In other words - power. Only after an edifice of power was erected did Olaf’s legacy begin to form. Early in the saga, Sturluson writes:
“[Olaf] saw in a mighty dream that there came to him a strange, strong man but equally fearsome and this man spoke to him and bade him give up the thought of going out to these lands [Palestine]: ‘get thee back to thy own land, for thou shalt become King of Norway forever’. He understood the dream to mean that he would become king of the land, and his kin would rule the land for a long time” (229).
From an early point of time Olaf began to believe he held an important role. Although he knew not what this dream would specifically mean, it gave him the impetus to attempt to take Norway back into his possession rather than serving in the Holy Land. (Clearly, this is an examplke of how the imagination anf power are closely coorelated.)
Olaf was also a master builder, one who knew that his legacy was built upon legal and religious law. In Chapter 58 we first see Olaf consolidating church and state. We are told that Olaf rose early, clothed himself, and proceed to join in Mass. From the church’s stairs, he dictated to his followers that he wished to vanquish heathenry and “set up Christian law according to the advise of Bishop H. and other teachers; he set his mind on taking away heathenry and those customs which seemed to him to be opposed to Christianity. And it came that the bonders2 agreed with the laws which king set up” (256). Olaf was just as concerned about the beliefs of the common people as their political policies:
“The king then went south over the land, and he stayed in every folk district and held things with the bonders. At every thing3 he had the Christian laws read out. […] He then straight-away did away with many ill habits amongst the folk and much heathendom, for the jarls had kept well the old laws rights of the land, but about the holding of Christianity they had let everyone do as he would. At that time things were gone so far that folk in the districts by the sea were christened but Christian laws were unknown to most.” (259).
Clearly Olaf saw himself as the king of Christianity, and the harbinger of religious truth. But Olaf’s concern was coercive as well as religious. This gained him the reputation of a Christian, a greedy one at that.
Along with policy, Olaf began a huge push to build churches and Christian centers in Norway. We are told in Chapter 62 that he built a market town in the heathen district of Vik, building houses around his new church to St. Mary. Clearly Olaf wished to consolidate his power and use religion as a way to control to economic function of the district. He even “forbade the carrying of goods from Vik up to Gautland, both herrings and salt, which the Gauts could ill be without. [Then], he held a great Yule feast” (263). And so, the theme of power and coercion continues within the saga of Olaf.