Saint Olav - King of Norway

IX. The man Olav

Before we follow the further course of Olav's life, let us stop for a little and ask what impression the saga has given us hitherto of Olav as a man.20 It is certainly not the way of those who wrote the sagas to describe their heroes in psychological terms; that belongs to later times. They give us insight into people's character by describing what they do. The saga tells us about a development in Olav Haraldsson's life. First we meet the young sea-king, who emerges victorious from a number of battles. He proves to be an excellent strategist who is a master of many tricks of the art of war. At this time, there is no distance separating Olav from his men. Religious meditations and moral scruples are something unknown to him.

Later in the saga, we meet the king and the Christian statesman. Now there is greater weight to Olav's person. One who is king by the grace of God never looses his self-control, never acts over quickly. Word and deed are to be well thought through. It appears that Snorre particularly admires this side of Olav's character: when the men sent by the king of Sweden come to exact taxes and full submission in his kingdom, Olav spoke to them «quietly and calmly». When the Swedish king broke his promise to Olav about giving him his daughter Ingegjerd in marriage, «he was exceedingly angry and beside himself, and no one could get a word out of him for many days». Then he brightens up again and holds an assembly with those who belong to his court. When the news comes that his good friend and courtier Øyvind Urarhorn has been killed in Orkney, «the king did not say very much in response to this, but one could realise that he felt he had lost a good man, and that this must have been done in sheer defiance of him». He was almost always a man of few words about things that went against him. When Asbjørn Selsbane struck Tore in the court chamber at Avaldsnes «so that his head fell on to the table in front of the king, and the body over his feet, the king was very angry, but he controlled himself when he spoke, as he always did». When Erling Skjalgsson and his men surrounded the church in Avaldsnes, where the king was present at Mass, there was much noise and din with the weapons. «Those who were in the church all looked out together, with exception of the king. He remained standing and did not look about him.» When the Mass had been sung to its close, the king went out of the church. He strode calmly and with self-control between two ranks of armed men. One word from Erling would have been enough - he would have been killed. It is this silent dignity and incomprehensible self-control that Snorre admires. Behind these narratives we glimpse the Christian king, God's anointed, who finds strength from a higher world. Despite his introverted nature, he is described as a cheerful man who could make jests in words and songs. «He has a strong sense of the dignity of the kingdom, but it is not his own self that he takes with such un-Christian solemnity» (Sigrid Undset).

Snorre tells us at the beginning of the saga that «king Olav was a good Christian: deliberate, a man of few words, but fond of money». At the close of the saga, he writes: «It was not true what people said about him, that his was stingy in giving money to his men; for he was very generous to his friends.» He is not the type who would ever become a celebrity. He is not a brilliant man of the people like Olav Trygvasson the extravert, generous, convivial sports hero. We are told of Olav Haraldsson at the beginning of the saga: All his relatives and those who knew him thought well of him.» These words denote a certain limitation: those closest to him prized him, but not all the others. The historian of literature Fredrik Paasche holds that Olav never broke through this limitation. His men admired him, but they never understood him. There was something alien about him, something they could never penetrate. The idea that fired him - to gather the nation in one kingdom under a Norwegian king - was something that met with indifference, lack of understanding, and hostility. There were few who understood his burning zeal for Christianity and the Church: here too he was a lonely man. The one who understood him best was Sigvat the poet. These two were on the same spiritual wavelength; but then, Sigvat too was just as much a widely-travelled European as the king himself.

Snorre indicates that the king was fond of women when he relates that the king had a servant-woman who accompanied his court. She was called Alvhild and was «very beautiful». So it happened one spring «that Alvhild became pregnant, and the king's closest friends knew indeed that he was the child's father.» This was his illegitimate son Magnus. Snorre mentions only this one infidelity to queen Astrid, but other saga traditions tell that he was obsessed by the attraction to several women. The verses he is said to have composed in Gardarike about Ingegjerd, the Swedish king's daughter, are according to Sigrid Undset «among the loveliest erotic poems we have in the Norse language». Olav's infidelities attest that his unbridled life as a Viking, combined with the Norseman's claim (from pagan times until well on into the Christian period) to have concubines alongside with his wife, overshadows the Christian commandment about infidelity and continence - a commandment he will certainly have acknowledged, but without succeeding in integrating it into his conscience.

Can we trust Snorre as an historian? Does he give us a correct picture of Olav Haraldsson? For he is also an author who delights in telling his story. Where the sources were silent, he no doubt filled out the empty spaces with his own composition. Thus it is possible for a whole number of details about times and places, and the way things happened, to he incorrect. But he would never have dared, nor even wished, to give a completely false picture of the king's person. For Snorre's saga about Olav bears witness on every page to a writer who struggles passionately to get to the bottom of the king's personality. He indeed write two hundred years after the king's death, but many threads run back from his saga all the way to the oral tradition on Iceland and in Norway. And if there was something Norsemen were interested in, that was the character and temperament of the great chiefs they had known in war and in peace. we can agree with the historian Erik Gunnes when he says that «We can be tolerably secure about the chief lines in Olav's biography».

We have another question: to what extent is Snorre's picture of Olav influenced by the ecclesiastical legend, as this took shape after the king's martyrdom? As we have come to know him up to this point, the answer is: very little. We find the ecclesiastical legend for example in the book archbishop Eystein Erlendson wrote in the 1180's with the title «The sufferings and miracles of St Olav».21 In the first part, Olav's life is described with so much gold paint that those familiar with the figure of Olav in Snorre can wonder if we have one and the same person here. But then, the Church's legends about saints have never had the purpose of giving an exact historical portrait of the lives of holy men and women: their aim is to be edifying, to tell about people who lived up to the Christian ideal as we find it in the Bible. Sin and weakness are excised from their lives: it is the light of the halo that shines in these narratives. They do not lie, for their aim is not to give a complete picture of a person's life for better or worse. It is only the good, that which resembles Christ, that is to be given prominence. Snorre is an historian, and as we have come to know his portrait of Olav hitherto, he cannot be influenced by the ecclesiastical legend: for Snorre does not exaggerate the king's good sides - he does not let the superlatives rain down. He does not omit to tell us about the king's wild life as a young man, about stubborn wilfulness and passionates that cannot be tamed. He even lets Olav himself admit his weaknesses, when he asks the seer Dag Raudson what blemishes he has, and afterwards concedes that Dag has seen him aright.22 No, as far as we have studied Snorre's Olav, it is difficult to find traces of the ecclesiastical legend.

Things are different when Snorre tells us about the king's piety, his life as a Christian. Here there can be influence. When Snorre has Olav keep vigil and pray for whole nights before some important event, we can safely shorten this by a few hours. It also seems a little contrived when he has Olav go to Matins and Mass every single day. But we have no reason to doubt that Olav was a man of prayer who gladly participated in the Mass.

To tell the truth, there is one area in particular where the Church's legend has influenced Snorre's biography of Olav: namely, where he describes the king as a wonder-worker. Snorre was himself a believing Catholic, who did not doubt that miracles take place. But he also understood that these were matters for the Church: in solidarity with the clergy, he interwove many accounts of miracles into his historical work. This has weakened his credibility somewhat, although he brings the miracles down to the grassroots level by excising the most edifying details; he also prevents the miracles from piling up, by spreading them evenly over the following sagas about kings in his «Heimskringla». Even if Snorre exaggerates here, that does not give us any reason to doubt that miracles did take place through the king's prayer - especially after his death.