Today, July 29, is the feast of Saint Olaf. He was killed at the Battle of Stiklestad in 1030, in an attempt to regain his kingship of Norway after two years in exile. The following year, he was proclaimed a saint on episcopal authority, and Olaf become one of the most widespread and popular saints in the Norse North Atlantic and in the Baltic region. The cult underwent several surges of popularity and cult activity, as is the case of all saints. However, because the veneration of Olaf spread far and wide, and because this dissemination happened early and at a point in time when no single cult centre or ecclesiastical authority could control it, the surges of Olaf's cult developed differently at different parts of Latin Christendom. For those of us who research the cult of Saint Olaf, this complexity is both exciting and exhausting, as we have several parallel strands of development.
Measuring the popularity and importance of a given saint is always difficult, because the surviving source material will rarely provide us with much information. And if there is information, it is usually limited to a specific time period, or it favours the perspective of a particular societal class, or it might do both. In the case of Olaf, the surviving sources allow us to attest to the wide geographic reach and broad societal appeal of his cult. But although he was venerated from Greenland to Estonia, this does not mean that he was always and everywhere equally important. Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and Finland, for instance, were cultural geographies with their own native saints. In some cases, Olaf remained more important on what we might call a geography-wide level, but within the different parts of those geographies - landscapes, counties, however you want to call it - a different saint might be more important.
In the case of Olaf, there is a particularly interesting altarpiece which serves as a very good demonstration of Olaf's importance in the hierarchy of saints. This is an altarpiece from the now-lost Skjervøy Church, located in Troms in Northern Norway. The altarpiece was most likely produced in Northern Germany or the Low Countries and commissioned by the parish priest and probably also high-ranking laypeople of the community. In the centre of the altarpiece is a depiction of God lifting up or supporting the dead Christ, which at the same time communicates the dual nature of Christ - both God and man - and the primary, central position of God in the holy hierarchy of Christian cosmology. On God's right-hand side is the Virgin Mary carrying the Christchild, shown as the second-most important figure in this hierarchy. On God's left hand we find Saint Olaf, holding a ciborium and clutching a now-lost axe (which was his main attribute). The saint-king is standing atop a human-faced dragon, a common aspect of representations of Saint Olaf in medieval art, and its exact meaning is still a matter of debate.
In this altarpiece, the importance of Saint Olaf is communicated very clearly: He ranks third in the hierarchy of Heaven, which puts him as the most significant and effective saint in all Creation next to the Virgin Mary, who in turn was regarded as the intercessor above all others. The importance is clear, but we are left with the following question: Importance for whom? Should we infer from this very clear depiction of the top tier of the holy hierarchy that Olaf had a similarly high rank throughout all of the Norse world? Throughout all of Norway? Throughout the diocese? Or just for the parish community in Skjervøy?
We know from the Breviarium Nidrosiense, a liturgical manual printed in 1519 that set the standard liturgy for the entirety of the Norwegian church province, that Olaf had a high rank. But this standard was set at the metropolitan see of Trondheim, which was also the saint-king's cult centre. Throughout the church province itself, other saints could - and did - rank more highly. Similarly, within Norway, as well as within the diocese of Trondheim - which included the Skjervøy parish - there were communities who turned first of all to other saints. Perhaps the dedicatee of their parish church, or the diocesan patron - such as Sunniva in Bergen or Hallvard in Oslo - or any other saint to whom the a given community felt particularly attached.
The top of Heaven's hierarchy as depicted in the Skjervøy altarpiece is probably only reflective of Skjervøy and its community. They had commissioned the altarpiece, which meant that they had most likely specified which figures to include. Even within the Skjervøy community, however, we should expect that there were individuals who might accept that Olaf was an important saint, but who turned more readily to other saints for reasons of personal attachment, for instance.
In short, the Skjervøy altarpiece tells us a lot about Saint Olaf's importance, but only for a very specific community, and at least for the leaders of that community. In this way, the altarpiece is a good example of why the question of importance needs to be approached with great care, lest we exaggerate how popular a given saint actually was.
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