Yesterday, June 29th, was
the dies natalis of Saint
Olaf, patron saint of Norway. In Norwegian this day is known as
"olsok", which comes from "olavsvaka", the wake
of Olaf, and in Trondheim the day is celebrated as a part of the Olaf
days, a fair held in honour of the saint-king. Saint Olaf is an
interesting figure in Norwegian history, and although we have been a
Protestant country since 1536/37 and are becoming increasingly
secular, Olaf occupies an important place in our national
consciousness.
For me, on the other hand, he is chiefly
interesting from an academic point of view, since part of my PhD
thesis will deal with the medieval cult of Saint Olaf. Therefore, I
want to take this opportunity to write about some of the texts about
Olaf from medieval Norway, or more precisely, the texts written
within the milieu of Archbishop Eystein Erlendsson.
Eystein
Erlendsson received the pallium in 1161 and began his office as
archbishop of Norway which had been established only very recently
after the archbishop of Lund was divided into three. In the course of
his office, which he held until his death in 1188, Eystein did his
best to establish Nidaros, modern-day Trondheim, as the
ecclesiastical centre of Norway. In his first year as archbishop, he
consecrated an altar to SS John the Baptist, Vincent and Silvester,
and in the course of his career he was deeply embroiled in the
political struggels of his time, even leading a brief exile in
England in the early 1180s.
An important part of Eystein's
effort was the cult of Saint Olaf, who became known in the twelfth
century as rex perpetuus Norvegie,
meaning that the kings of Norway were seen as vassals of the saint.
As a consequence of Eystein's engagement with the cult, there grew up
a significant body of literature within or connected to the
archiepiscopal court at Nidaros, and furthermore a literature that
was at times at odds with the literature steeped in
non-ecclesiastical traditions. Books of the latter kind, such as the
royal sagas of Snorri Sturlusson, are today most widely famous and
widely referred to by the non-academic public. This means that the
public debates often give the impression that before Snorri there was
nothing, or at best there is a fleeting mention of Passio
Olavi, the Latin vita
of Olaf's deeds, death and miracles. In this blogpost, I want to
present the ecclesiastical literature connected to the cult of Olaf
before Snorri's Heimskringla.
The
following is a brief introduction to various works written from
c.1180 onwards, it is not an exhaustive list of twelfth-century
Norwegian literature, and nor does it enter into a discussion about
the literature of the Olaf cult prior to 1180, of which little is
known with certainty.
The martyrdom of Olaf Haraldsson
Detail from an antependium from an unknown Norwegian church, c.1320-40
Historia
Antiquitate Regum Norwagiensium
The
History of the Old Kings of Norway
was written around 1180 by a monk belonging to the retinue of
Archbishop Eystein who gives his name as Theodoricus Monachus, most
likely a latinised form of the Norwegian name Tore. The work is
dedicated to Eystein, and although its prime focus is the kings of
Norway, here and there we read chapters that treat other issues, such
as the age of the world and the placement's of Homer's Scylla and
Charybdis in the Norwegian waters. The work is also suffused with
references to contemporary learning and recent writers, and it
appears that Theodoricus – like his patron Eystein – had received
his education in France, for instance in Paris or Chartres. This was
not the first Latin historiography written in Norway, but for its
effect it might be said to be the most significant: Theodoricus' use
of French sources introduced the suggestion that Saint Olaf had been
baptised in Rouen, not in Norway as was held by the vernacular
tradition. This made its way into Olav's
vita
which was being compiled at the time and founded the Ecclesiastical
tradition in the question of Olaf's baptism.
Passio
et Miraculi Beati Olavi
This
work has been compiled in several redactions, and the most recent
scholarly suggestion is four, the final one being overseen by
Archbishop Eystein, who himself dictated one of the chapters in which
we learn of a
miracle that healed the archbishop himself. This
captivating passage – narrated in the first person and with great
emotional intensity – led early scholars of the Olaf cult to the
conclusion that Eystein had written the entire book himself, which we
now know is far from the case. The book is comprised of a short
passage of Olaf's passio, and this section might be the oldest and
most well known. After that there follows a catalogue of Olaf's
miracles which were performed mostly in Norway but also in Ireland,
in Russia and as far away as Byzantium where the Varangian guard
ensured Saint Olaf's presence also in Constantinople. Some of these
miracles are probably from the eleventh century and are referred to
in a poem written by the Icelandic cleric Einar Skulasson in 1153 for
an assembly of ecclesiastical and secular magnates in Nidaros. The
poem is a celebration of Saint Olaf, and is today referred to as
Geisli,
the Sun-ray, being one of Olaf's many names in the poems.
Passio
Olavi
was probably compiled from old stories and miracle-reports written
down at the shrine in Nidaros cathedral (as suggested by Lars Boje
Mortensen). That Archbishop Eystein inserts himself in the narrative
shows how deeply invested he was in the project, and it also suggests
that many of the other miracles have been reported in Eystein's
lifetime. Since Eystein was such a key figure in this compilation,
the terminus ante quem for
Passio
Olavi
should be set at 1188, or possibly a few years after, but its end
result appears to have been envisioned and orchestrated by Eystein,
who may or may not have lived to see it completed.
Officium
Olavi
The
Passio Olavi
was the foundational text for the new liturgical office for Saint
Olaf. This was not the first liturgical text to celebrate Olaf –
that one is found in an eleventh-century English document known as
The Leofric
Collectar
– but it was an important part of the renewed cult under Eystein.
We don't know exactly when the office was written, but surviving
fragments tell us that it was in relatively wide circulation around
1220, and given the intensity of veneration under Eystein it is
likely that the office was at least begun during his archiepiscopacy.
The text is a more or less verbatim rendition of the
Passio
and the music – as shown by Roman Hankeln – is taken from the
office of Saint Augustine, which points to a strong connection to the
order of Augustine friars with whom Eystein had come into close
contact during his student days in Paris.
Saint Olaf the king
Wooden sculpture from Överselö Church in Sweden, date unknown
Courtesy of Wikimedia
Ágrip
af Noregs konungasogum
Extracts
from the Sagas of the Norwegian Kings
is the modern, academic name given to a vernacular history written
c.1190. Little is known of its author or where it was written, but it
is possible that it was written in Denmark by a monk belonging to the
retinue of Archbishop Eirik Ivarsson, Eystein's successor, who was
driven into exile after a quarrel with King Sverre of Norway. The
book is a short vernacular account, but it owes its debt to the Latin
literature and although it does not go into the specifics of Olaf's
baptism, it does belong within the ecclesiastical literature rooted
in the archbishop's see at Nidaros.
The
Old Norwegian Homily Book
The
last example here is like Ágrip
only part of the Nidaros literature by extension as it was written in
Bergen around 1200, possibly connected to the Augustinian monastery.
The book is a collection of sermons or exempla for sermons, and there
is still no consensus about whether it was compiled as a guidebook on
homiletics or whether the sermons included were actually preached to
the lay public. The homily book is written in the vernacular, and it
also includes a selection from Alcuin of York's De
Virtutibus et Vitiis.
For its sermon on July 29 it borrows from Passio
Olavi
and next to the extract from Alcuin it is the longest text in the
collection. This text, too, follows the ecclesiastical tradition by
placing Olaf's baptism in Rouen, and from its dependence on Passio
it belongs to the wider Nidaros literature.
The Fall of King Olaf ("Kong Olafs fald")
Drawing by Halfdan Egidius for the 1899 translation of Snorri's Heimskringla
Courtesy of Wikimedia
Concluding remarks
As
we see, the literature that grew up around the cult of Saint Olaf at
the turn of the twelfth century is quite wide-ranging and numerous,
especially considering that Norway was a country whose Latinity very
much was in its early stage and where there had only been an
archiepiscopal power structure for a few decades. I have here
emphasised how various texts have treated the baptism of Olaf
Haraldsson, since this is the feature which allows us to see that
these texts are connected and form part of the ecclesiastical
tradition which in this respect differs from the older, vernacular
tradition which is supported by for instance Snorri Sturlusson. This
list is also a way of showing that there is much more to Norwegian
medieval literature than the sagas of Snorri.
For similar blogposts, see:
A nineteenth-century hymn for Saint OlafA brief history of the twentieth-century church of Saint Olaf in Trondheim
