Trondheim without worms - echoes of a lost legend of Saint Olaf?

In medieval art, Saint Olaf of Norway is commonly depicted standing on top of a figure. The nature of this figure appears to have changed over time, although I myself have not mapped the evolution of this iconography, and I should emphasise that there might be several parallel iconographical traditions. In any case, very often we see that in images from the thirteenth century, the figure in question is a human being, the interpretation of which is uncertain. Later on - I hesitate to be precise - the figure takes the shape of a serpent or a dragon, very often with a crowned human head. It is very common in medieval art to see saints standing on such figures, presumably because of Psalm 90:13 in the Vulgate, where God is verbally depicted as trampling lions and dragons underfoot. Consequently, the shift in Olaf's iconography might be part of a wider trend, or perhaps a more localised offshoot that came to take on a life of its own in Northern Europe. The interpretation of this human-headed serpent has been subject to much debate, and I will not enter into here. However, I was reminded of this iconography while I was reading passage from a text written in the seventeenth century, and which might represent some sort of echo of a lost legend of Saint Olaf, or perhaps rather a confusion that ultimately has its root in this late-medieval iconography.   

Saint Olaf stepping on the beast 

Image from the right-hand door of a winged altarpiece, Bygland Church (after 1470) 
Museum of Cultural History, Oslo, C6113

The text in question is the utopian novel La Terre Australe Connue (1676) by Gabriel de Foigny, which David Fausett has translated into English as The Southern Land, Known. Foigny, a Franciscan-turned-Protestant who published the book while living in exile in Switzerland. The novel records the life and travels of Nicholas Sadeur, a hermaphrodite who ends up in a utopian society called Australia in the Southern Land, which in this case refers to the hypothetical southern continent - Terra Australis - which came to give its name to modern-day Australia. As most of the novel's fascinating content is superfluous to the subject at hand here, I will refrain from most of the details. However, in the opening of one of its chapters, there is a claim which becomes very interesting in light of the debate about the iconography of Saint Olaf. When reflecting on the marvellous properties of various landscapes and regions, Foigny - through his narrator Sadeur, mentions that "in Norway's Trondheim worms are unknown". At the time of writing, I have not checked what kind of worm is meant here, whether the serpent-like animal, or the earthworm. It is likely that the worm in question is a more formidable beast than the earthworm, yet later in the novel a note about the positive consequences of the absence of insects might suggest that the more humble creature is meant here. 

Whichever animal Foigny had in mind when writing this passage, it is a claim that I have not encountered elsewhere. The claim is not to be found in Latin medieval chronicles from Norway, even though these books do mention various marvellous properties of various Norwegian locations. It is possible that the claim appears in Olaus Magnus' Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (History of the Northern peoples) from 1555, which was printed in Rome and - due to being in Latin - would have been accessible to a man like Foigny, but such a connection remains to be verified. At the present, I remain at a loss to explain the inclusion of Trondheim in this list of marvellous topographies. What is possible, however, is that there is a connection with the legends of Saint Olaf, and that the absence of worms in Trondheim is based on some now-lost miracle story.    

From David Fausett's translation of Gabriel de Foigny's La Terre Australe Connue (The Southern Land, Known)

During the Middle Ages, several miracle stories were told about Saint Olaf. The earliest of them are likely to have emerged among the Norse mercenaries who had followed the living king into battle, and became some of the most effective disseminators of his cult. Sometime around 1180, a number of these stories were collected and recorded in Latin in a text now known as Miracula Olavi, the miracles of Olaf. This work contains a broad range of miracles that God is said to have brought about in order to prove Olaf's holiness, and the selection includes both old and contemporary stories. However, it is important to note that this collection was never complete, and that several stories are likely to have emerged after this particular text was compiled. Miracula Olavi does not mention any worms or serpents, so even in the unlikely event that Foigny would have had access to this text, it would not have provided the basis for this idea. Other stories might have circulated, however, and it is possible that there once existed a story about how Olaf had liberated Trondheim - which was the centre of his cult and the place of his shrine until the Danish-Norwegian Reformation of 1536/37 - from worms. Such a claim might be based on the beast frequently seen under Olaf's feet in late-medieval art. There might have been some inspiration from the story of Saint Patrick in Ireland, who was believed to have chased the serpents out of the island - a story available to Norwegians in the thirteenth-century book Konungs Skuggsjá (The King's Mirror), which contains a description of the marvellous properties of Ireland. Similarly, a story of how Saint Hild of Whitby chased away the snakes - a legend believed to have been confirmed by the ammonite fossils often found in that region - is also likely to have been available to late-medieval Norwegians. These various elements, as well as others that I have not thought about, might have mixed in the Norwegian mind and produced a story about how Trondheim had been liberated from worms by Saint Olaf. 

Now, Gabriel de Foigny does not mention Saint Olaf, just as he does not mention Saint Patrick when he mentions the absence of spiders and worms in the forests of Ireland. Consequently, if there is a lost story in the distant background of this claim, it was also lost to Foigny. It is very likely that he had never heard about Saint Olaf, a saint whose cult never gained any strong following outside of the Nordic Sphere, eleventh-century England, and the late-medieval Baltic theatre. Some echoes might have arrived, however, possibly in the form of Catholic exiles from Norway, historical figures about whom we know practically nothing, yet of whose existence we can be certain. Such a surmise is hypothetical, however, and I must emphasise that I do not suggest that such a tenuous transmission of stories actually did appear. Yet the possibility remains - the possibility that some warped version of such a legend did reach Foigny, albeit a version evacuated of its explanatory content, a version where the cause - divine intervention on behalf of Saint Olaf - was divorced from the effect, namely the absence of worms in Trondheim.   

Other explanations also exist. The absence of worms - if these are earthworms - might be based on the perceived coldness of the land, the cultural trope of a frozen North willingly believed by someone who had not ventured into that North themselves. Ultimately, however, we do not know, and most likely we will never know. Such a lack of certainty does not give licence to completely free and unbridled speculation. On the other hand, the lack of certainty does force us to reflect on the intangible yet forceful nature of stories - their ability to subsist on very little and to be transported far and wide, even if not always in their original form.