A sad day for Norwegians. Our king is dead .
. .
July 29: Today is the Feast Day of St.
Martha and King St. Olaf of Norway.
The Ladejarl-Fairhair succession wars: Battle
of Stiklestad: King St. Olaf II fights and dies trying to regain his Norwegian
throne from the Danes in A.D. 1030.
King
St. Olaf of Norway. He was a son of King Harald Grenske of Norway. According to
Snorre, he was baptized in 998 in Norway, but more probably about 1010 in
Rouen, France, by Archbishop Robert. In his early youth he went as a viking to
England, where he partook in many battles and became earnestly interested in
Christianity. After many difficulties he was elected King of Norway, and made
it his object to extirpate heathenism and make the Christian religion the basis
of his kingdom.
He is
the great Norwegian legislator for the Church, and like his ancestor (Olaf
Trygvesson), made frequent severe attacks on the old faith and customs,
demolishing the temples and building Christian churches in their place. He
brought many bishops and priests from England, as King Saint Cnut later did to
Denmark. Some few are known by name (Grimkel, Sigfrid, Rudolf, Bernhard). He
seems on the whole to have taken the Anglo-Saxon conditions as a model for the
ecclesiastical organization of his kingdom. But at last the exasperation
against him got so strong that the mighty clans rose in rebellion against him
and applied to King Cnut of Denmark and England for help. This was willingly
given, whereupon Olaf was expelled and Cnut elected King of Norway. It must be
remembered that the resentment against Olaf was due not alone to his
Christianity, but also in a high degree to his unflinching struggle against the
old constitution of shires and for the unity of Norway. He is
thus regarded by the Norwegians of our days as the great champion of national
independence, and Catholic and Protestant alike may find in Saint Olaf their
great idea.
After two years’ exile he returned to
Norway with an army and met his rebellious subjects at Stiklestad, where the
celebrated battle took place 29 July, 1030. Neither King Cnut nor the Danes
took part at that battle. King Olaf fought with great courage, but was mortally
wounded and fell on the battlefield, praying “God help me”. Many miraculous
occurrences are related in connection with his death and his disinterment a
year later, after belief in his sanctity had spread widely. His friends, Bishop
Grimkel and Earl Einar Tambeskjelver, laid the corpse in a coffin and set it on
the high-altar in the church of St. Clement in Nidaros (now Trondhjem).
Olaf has since been held as a saint, not only
by the people of Norway, but also by Rome. His cult spread widely in
the Middle Ages, not only in Norway, but also in Denmark and Sweden; even in
London, there is on Hart Street a St. Olave’s Church, long dedicated to the
canonized King of Norway. In 1856 a fine St. Olave’s Church was erected in Christiania,
the capital of Norway, where a large relic of St. Olaf (a donation from the
Danish Royal Museum) is preserved and venerated. The arms of Norway are a lion
with the battle-axe of St. Olaf in the forepaws.
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