Olof Skötkonung
Olof Skötkonung was the first king who is known to have ruled both the Swedes of the Malar valley and the Geats of the west and south as one kingdom, the first Swedish king to be baptised, at Husaby in Vastergotland about 1008 by an English missionary, the first to strike coins in his own name, at Sigtuna with English moneyers copying the pennies of Ethelred. He was the last, for a long time, to have his court in the pagan heartland around Uppsala, which would not have his religion. He was the son of Eric the Victorious and of a Polish princess who afterwards married Sweyn Forkbeard of Denmark. He was thus Cnut the Great's half-brother, and he came to the throne about 995. The name means something like tribute-king or lap-king, and nobody agrees what it refers to. In 1000 he joined Sweyn and the Norwegian earls against Olaf Tryggvason of Norway at the sea-battle of Svolder and took a share of Norway as his prize, ruling the district of Ranrike through an earl. The Norwegian Olaf Haraldsson took it back and the two kings, who could not agree, were reconciled by the Swedish lawspeaker Thorgny at the assembly of Uppsala, who told Olof in front of the farmers, in the speech Snorri gives him, that the Swedes had drowned five kings in a bog for pride and would do it again. Olof gave his daughter to the Norwegian and kept his throne. Adam of Bremen says he wanted to pull down the temple at Uppsala and was told he might be Christian in the best province of his kingdom, which is why the bishopric he founded was at Skara in Vastergotland and not in the north, and why the kings who followed him for a century were baptised there and buried there. His coins, the first Swedish ones, say Olaf king of the Swedes in Latin and were minted from about 995 to 1030 in a quantity that dropped after his death, which happened about 1022; the legend says he was martyred by the pagans of Stockholm, a town that did not yet exist.
- Lived: 980 CE – 1022 CE
- Nationality: Swedish
- Roles: king, monarch
