St. Olav's Shrine was the resting place of the earthly remains of St. Olav, Norway's patron saint, behind the high altar of Nidaros Cathedral in Trondheim, Norway, from the mid 11th century. For nearly five centuries the shrine was of major religious importance to Norway and the other Nordic countries, and also to other parts of Northern Europe. St. Olav's Shrine opens and closes the Middle Ages as a historic period in Norway. The shrine consisted of three shrines, the one covering the other, and was the most important and by far the most valuable object in Norway in the Middle Ages. After the Lutheran reformation in 1536–1537, the valuable parts of St. Olav’s Shrine were destroyed by Danish authorities. Since 1568 St. Olav's remains have been resting in an unknown grave, in Nidaros Cathedral or in the cathedral cemetery.
Background
The night after King Olav II Haraldsson fell in the Battle of Stiklestad east of Trondheim on 29 July 1030, the body was laid in a simple wooden coffin, taken by boat to Trondheim and buried in the sandy bank further up the Nidelven river. According to the saga, those who did this were the farmer at Stiklestad, Torgils Hålmuson, and his son Grim. The following year the coffin was taken up and given a new grave outside St. Clement's Church. Shortly after, on 3 August 1031, the coffin was again taken up and moved into the church, after the King had been examined and canonised by Bishop Grimkjell.
Part of the St. Olav altar frontal in Nidaros Cathedral (ca 1320) depicts Translatio Olavi, when Bishop Grimkjell on 3 August 1031 finds the body intact, sweet-scented and with hair and nails having grown since the King died. Encouraged by the people's demand, he canonises Olav. «The King's body was carried into St. Clement's Church and placed over the high altar. The coffin was covered with costly cloths. Soon many miracles took place because of King Olav's holiness», writes Snorri Sturluson, our main source.
The saint A chapel was built on the river bank where Olav had first been buried, and tradition says the altar was erected over the place where the King’s body had been buried. Tradition also says the high altar of Nidaros Cathedral has since been on this spot. King Olav was 35 when he died, and had taken part in twenty major battles. «Where in the world's northern parts have people known a more prominent prince? The King died far too early», said court poet Sigvat Skald.
Of the earthly Olav Haraldsson the martyr, the heavenly king, was born. The veneration of the saint quickly spread far beyond Norway’s borders. A cathedral was built to hold the King's canonised body. Pilgrimages to St. Olav's Shrine continued for the next five centuries until the reformation in 1537, and Nidaros became the most popular place of pilgrimage in northern Europe. The high choir (the octagon) of Nidaros Cathedral, where the saint King was resting behind the altar, was known as Cor Norvegiae – Norway’s heart.
In 1153 Trondheim's ecclesial significance was enhanced by the erection there of the Archiepiscopal See of Nidaros.
Since the 9th century Norway's kings had been approved at Øretinget, the old ting wall at the Nidelven estuary, in today’s Trondheim. Harald Hårfagre (865–933) was taken king here. Under King Harald Hardråde (1015–1066) the unification of Norway was fulfilled, and Trondheim’s status also as the political capital confirmed. From 1204 an extra dimension was added to the approval of a new king: he now had to swear his oath on St. Olav's Shrine. The ceremony was moved to the cathedral grounds, and Norwegian kings were now understood to reign on behalf of Norway's Eternal King – Rex perpetuus Norvegiae – St. Olav.
Restoration In 1930, 900 years after King Olav's death at Stiklestad, 29 July, St. Olav's Day, was reintroduced in Norway's calendar as Olsok (Olav's Vigil, actually the eve of St. Olav's Day). The day had then been out of the calendar since Danish-Norwegian ecclesial legislation had removed it in 1542, due to the reformation. However, St. Olav's Day had never been absent from the popular calendar and tradition. The axe in Norway's coat of arms and in the traditional ecclesial coat of arms Olavsmerket, show that the memory of the saint king had never left the official language of symbols.
Since its re-establishment in Norway in 1843, the Roman Catholic Church has celebrated Olsok, St. Olav's Day, as a major feast in the church calendar. And since the Olsok renewal from the late 19th century, St. Olav's Day has also been celebrated in some of the (Lutheran) Church of Norway's churches, not the least in Nidaros Cathedral.
The first and the second shrine There were three St. Olav's shrines. The first was the original wooden coffin from Stiklestad, covered by expensive cloth. The second was a costly shrine that according to Snorre Sturlasson was made by King Magnus Olavsson (1035–1047), Olav's son. This shrine was probably a wooden coffin covered by silver plates with religious motifs. To the silver plates were fixed valuable jewels. This shrine was two metres long and with a width and height of about 80 centimetres. The lid had the shape of a house roof. The original coffin was kept inside this shrine.
Some house-roof-like relic shrines preserved in Norway and Iceland are believed to be small copies of Saint Olav's Shrine.
The third shrine
Documents written by Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson in the 1530s, describe the shrine:
« ... St. Olav's Shrine was covered with silver. It had no bottom. It was covering two other shrines, and in the innermost shrine was the entire body of St. Olav ...»
Shrines consisting of several shrines, the one covering the other, are known from other places, like the Shrine of St. Cuthbert in Durham Cathedral in England.
Erik Valkendorf (1465–1522), archbishop of Nidaros 1510 – 1522, allegedly bought a costly jewel which was fixed to one end of St. Olav’s Shrine. For this he paid 20 lasts of butter. Unimaginable values were gathered in Nidaros Cathedral in Catholic times. The only valuable medieval object left in the cathedral today is golden chalice from the 16th century. The rest of the valuables disappeared abroad due to the reformation.
What happened to St. Olav's Shrine?
Rumours have circulated on the shrine's fate after the reformation, one is that it was lost in an unconfirmed shipwreck off Agdenes in the Trondheim Fjord on its way to Copenhagen.
Archaeologist Øystein Ekroll at Nidaros Cathedral's Restoration Works has collected what is known about the shrine's fate in an article.
Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson left Trondheim 1 April, Easter Day, 1537. His intention was to return with a sea and land forces to defend the country against King Christian III. At his castle Steinvikholm off Skatval further east in the Trondheim Fjord, the archbishop had left a military force equipped to withstand protracted siege. At the castle he had also left behind the country's most valuable relics, among them St. Olav's Shrine, which had been moved there from Nidaros Cathedral some months before.
The archbishop fled to Lier in the Netherlands, today in Belgium, since 1523 the exile town for his allied King Christian II of Denmark-Norway. Here Olav Engelbrektsson died already on 7 February 1538, and was buried in the town's St. Gummarus Church. In the meantime his force at Steinvikholm had capitulated, and all valuables at the castle fallen into Danish hands. Five days later, on 3 June 1537, a list was made of all objects at the castle:
«In the tower called the Farmer: Saint Olav's Shrine in which he rests, Saint Augustine's (Archbishop Øystein Erlendsson's) Shrine which is of silver, a saint's shrine of gilded copper, a Saint Olav's bowl of silver-covered tree.»
All valuables were smashed and taken to Copenhagen for melting. A receipt from the King's treasurer Jochum Bech to Christoffer Huitfelt, governor of Trøndelag and responsible for the transport to Copenhagen, is dated 9 September 1540. Bech signed for 95 kilo silver, from Saint Olav's Shrine, two large gilded silver buttons, 170 silver-set crystals and 11 jewels that fell from the shrine when it was smashed. From the shrine holding St. Olav's shirts came 2.6 kilos of gilded silver and a number of enamelled gold plates.
The last part of St. Olav's Shrine During excavations at Steinvikholm in the 1880s several objects were found, among them a rounded transparent crystal. Such stones were popular in the Middle Ages and were often used to decorate relic shrines. According to Øystein Ekroll this stone may be the known part of Saint Olav's Shrine, as it is probably the twelfth in addition to the eleven stones listed in 1537. The stone is exhibited in the Suhm House at the NTNU Museum of Natural History and Archaeology in Trondheim.
Denmark has never paid any compensation to Norway for the destruction of St. Olav's Shrine and the theft of silver and jewels.
What happened to St. Olav's remains? Only the innermost wooden coffin, with St. Olav's remains, was left at Steinvikholm when Danish soldiers had smashed the two outer shrines and taken the silver and other valuables to Copenhagen in 1540. Whether pilgrims came to St. Olav's coffin at Steinvikholm after the archbishop's departure at Easter 1537 is uncertain, but in 1552 the first Lutheran bishop in Trondheim – Danish Hans Gaas – went to Copenhagen to hear the King's opinion on returning St. Olav's remains to Nidaros Cathedral.
Twenty-four years after the shrine had been left behind at Steinvikholm, the Nordic Seven-Year War led to Swedish occupation of the area in the spring of 1564. Swedish soldiers now moved the wooden coffin from the castle to Fløan Chapel on the mainland near by. Already on 8 June that same year, after Swedish forces had been driven back, the coffin with St. Olav's body was brought "in great procession" from Fløan to Nidaros Cathedral, and lowered into a brick grave inside the church. It is now uncertain where this grave is.
Differences between three 16th-century descriptions of St. Olav's body may indicate that it might have been another body that was brought back to the cathedral in 1564. Of the three descriptions, only the first one – former pupil at Nidaros Cathedral School and later Presiding Magistrate Jon Simonsson's from 1521, written down by Lutheran Vicar Peder Claussøn Friis in the 1570s – notes that the King’s face is bearded. Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson's description from the time when the shrine was moved to Steinvikholm, probably in 1536, notes that the King is not bearded, while Palace Chaplain Absalon Pedersson Beyer's description from 1567 is silent on the matter. Should a change of bodies have taken place after 1521, Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson may have found it best for posterity to hide the King’s body at the castle, or even in the cathedral before moving the shrine to the castle.
All three descriptions speak of an intact, dry body, without any trace of decay. Olav Engelbrektsson's description of 1536: