Grimkell

Grimkell made a defeated king into a saint within a year of the battle that killed him, and it changed the country. He was an English bishop, probably of Anglo-Danish family, who came to Norway in Olaf Haraldsson's service and was the king's principal churchman during a reign spent forcing Christianity on a country that had not asked for it. Olaf was killed at Stiklestad in 1030 by an army of Norwegian farmers and chieftains - not by a foreign invader, which is the uncomfortable fact the cult had to absorb. Miracles were reported almost at once. Grimkell had the body exhumed a year and five days after the battle, declared it uncorrupt, and proclaimed Olaf a saint in 1031 on his own episcopal authority - the ordinary way saints were made before Rome reserved canonisation to itself, and fast even by that standard. The politics of the timing are not subtle. Cnut's rule in Norway proved unpopular quickly, and a martyred native king was the argument against it; Olaf's son Magnus was brought back to the throne in 1035. Olaf became Norway's eternal king, his shrine at Nidaros the greatest pilgrimage site in Scandinavia, and the church he had imposed became the institution around which the kingdom was organised. Grimkell is also credited with the Christian law of the Gulathing, the first church law in Norway, agreed at the assembly with Olaf and surviving in later manuscripts. He went back to England and was Bishop of Selsey from about 1039 until his death in 1047.

• Nationality: English
• Roles: religious_leader