Olaf II of Norway - Reign

Reign

A widely used description of Olaf's life is found in Heimskringla, from c. 1225. That saga cannot be taken as an accurate source for Olaf's life, but most of the following description is based on the narrative there.

About 1008, Olaf landed on the Estonian island of Saaremaa (Osilia). The Osilians, taken by surprise, had at first agreed to pay the demands made by Olaf, but then gathered an army during the negotiations and attacked the Norwegians. Olaf nevertheless won the battle.

As a teenager he went to the Baltic, then to Denmark and later to England. Skaldic poetry suggests he led a successful seaborne attack which pulled down London Bridge, though this is not confirmed by Anglo-Saxon sources. This may have been in 1014, restoring London and the English throne to Æthelred the Unready and removing Canute.

Olaf saw it as his call to unite Norway into one kingdom, as his ancestor Harald Fairhair had largely succeeded in doing. On the way home he wintered with Duke Richard II of Normandy. This region had been conquered by the Norseman in the year 881. Duke Richard was himself an ardent Christian, and the Normans had also previously converted to Christianity. Before leaving, Olaf was baptised in Rouen.

Olaf returned to Norway in 1015 and declared himself king, obtaining the support of the five petty kings of the Uplands. In 1016 at the Battle of Nesjar he defeated Earl Sweyn, one of the earls of Lade and hitherto the virtual ruler of Norway. He founded the town of Borg, later to be known as Sarpsborg, by the waterfall Sarpsfossen in Østfold county. Within a few years he had won more power than had been enjoyed by any of his predecessors on the throne.

He had annihilated the petty kings of the South, subdued the aristocracy, enforced the acceptance of Christianity throughout the kingdom, asserted his suzerainty in the Orkney Islands, and conducted a successful raid on Denmark. He made peace with King Olof Skötkonung of Sweden through Þorgnýr the Lawspeaker, and was for some time engaged to his daughter, Princess Ingegerd Olofsdotter, though without Olof's approval.

In 1019 Olaf married Astrid Olofsdotter, Olof's illegitimate daughter and the half-sister of his former fiancée. Their daughter Wulfhild married Ordulf, Duke of Saxony, in 1042. Numerous royal, grand ducal and ducal lines are descended from Ordulf and Wulfrid, including the House of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Maud of Wales, daughter of King Edward VII of the United Kingdom, was the mother of King Olav V of Norway, so Olav and his son Harald V, the present king of Norway, are thus descended from Olaf.

But Olaf's success was short-lived. In 1026 he lost the Battle of the Helgeå, and in 1029 the Norwegian nobles, seething with discontent, supported the invasion of King Canute the Great of Denmark. Olaf was driven into exile in Kievan Rus. He stayed for some time in Sweden in the province of Nerike where, according to local legend, he baptised many locals. In 1030, Canute's Norwegian regent, Jarl Håkon Eiriksson, was lost at sea. Olaf seized the opportunity to win back the kingdom, but he fell at the Battle of Stiklestad, where some of his own subjects from central Norway were arrayed against him.

Canute, though distracted by the task of governing England, managed to rule Norway for five years after Stiklestad, with his son Svein and Svein's mother Ælfgifu (known as Álfífa in Old Norse sources)as regents. However, their regency was unpopular, and when Olaf's illegitimate son Magnus (dubbed 'the Good') laid claim to the Norwegian throne, Svein and Ælfgifu were forced to flee.