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 laboured
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.
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