LEACH. — NORWEGIAN AND ENGLISH CHURCHES, 1066-1399. 533 



In view of Taranger's results, only the briefest outline is necessary 

 for the period preceding 1066. King Hakon the Good (reigned 

 935-961) was educated in England at Athelstan's court. After he 

 became king he sent to England for a bishop and other teachers and 

 made several ineffectual attempts to convert Norway from heathendom. 

 The work was left for Olaf Tryggvason (995-1000), and he accomplished 

 it with the aid of the sword. He was converted in England, and had 

 with him in Norway, Sigurd, an English bishop. Iceland, too, was 

 christianized in Olaf's reign, largely through Thangbrand, a missionary 

 from England. 8 Olaf Haraldsson (c. 1016-1030), afterwards " St. Olaf/' 

 also received his Christian education in England. He continued 

 Tryggvason's labors and organized the church in Norway. " He had 

 with him," as Adam of Bremen says, 9 " 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, 

 Grimkil, Rudolf, and Bernard." Bernhard 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. 10 Because of its dependence 

 on England, the church in Norway stood in ill favor with its overlord, 

 the Archbishop of Bremen. He forbade Harald Hardrade (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 Trondhjem, and Osmund, 

 who returned and died, at an advanced age, in the monastery at Ely. 



The Period after the Norman Conquest. 



Although our records are slight for the half-century after 1066, they 

 indicate that the intimate relations between the Norwegian and the 

 parent church remained unbroken. Symeon of Durham tells of a 

 monk Turgot, who was imprisoned in Lincoln, and, escaping, hid as a 

 stowaway on a ship sailing from Grimsby to Norway (c. 1069). King 

 Olaf Kyrre (1066-1093) received him well. "Having heard that a 

 clerk had come from England, he took him for his master in psal- 



8 A Fleming in origin. The Althing of Iceland adopted Christianity 

 1000 a. d. Shetland, the Orkneys, and the Faeroes yielded about this time. 



9 II, 55. 



10 For the cult of St. Olaf in England, cf. F. Metcalfe, Passio Olaui, Oxford, 



1881, pp. 33 f. 



