“HE [St Olaf] had with him,” as Adam of Bremen says, “many bishops and priests from England, by whose admonition and doctrine he himself prepared his heart for God, and to whose guidance he committed the people subject to him; among those famous for teaching and virtues were Sigafrid, Grimkell, Rudolf, and Bernard.”* Bernard later worked in Iceland; so did Rudolph, who returned eventually to England, and became Abbot of Abingdon. Bishop Grimkell, with King Olaf, drew up a Christian law for Norway, in the vernacular. After Olaf’s death he disinterred his body and pronounced him a saint. Because of its dependence on England, the church in Norway stood in ill favour with its overlord, the Archbishop of Bremen.* He forbade Harald Hardrada (1047-1066) to have bishops consecrated in England, but Harald persisted.* Among the Englishmen who came over to Norway in Harald’s reign were Asgaut, nephew of Grimkell and third bishop of Trondheim,* and Osmund, who returned and died, at an advanced age, in the monastery at Ely.
* Grimkell was made Bishop of Nidaros (Trondheim) by King Olaf II Haraldsson (r. 1015-1028). In 1020, he and Olaf set out laws for the Norwegian church and state which closely followed Anglo-Saxon practice. On Olaf’s banishment Grimkell returned to England, and became Bishop of Selsey and later Bishop of Elmham. He died in 1047. Rudolf was a kinsman of King Edward the Confessor. He was appointed Abbot of Abingdon in 1051, but died in 1052.
* As far as the Roman Church was concerned, Norway was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Bremen. King Harald Hardrada preferred to carry on regarding the English Church as Norway’s mother church, and source his clergy from her.
* Harald felt little loyalty to Rome. He had close ties with Constantinople and the Greek Church, having fought in the Varangian Guard of the Roman emperors. Harald’s bond to England was such that in the confusion that followed the death of Edward the Confessor early in 1066, Harald claimed the English crown but was killed in battle at Stamford Bridge, Yorkshire, in 1066. See The Battle of Hastings. See The Luck of the Draw. During his time as King of Norway, Harald brought Armenian clergy over to Iceland to help spread the gospel; he evidently felt closer to the East than the West. Others of Viking ancestry shared his partiality: after the Norman Conquest later that year, hundreds of them emigrated to Constantinople to join the armed forces of the Roman Empire rather than serve William with his Continental ways. See Welcome to Micklegarth.
* Trondheim was the capital of the Kingdom of Norway until 1217. An alternative name was Nidaros, which was adopted when the Roman Church raised the See to an archbishopric in 1152.