C o n s t r u c t i n g a Sa i n t : T h e Le g e n d

of St Su n n i v a i n T w e l f t h -C e n t u r y N o r w a y

A lexander O H ara

unniva is arguably Scandinavias most enigmatic saint. She is undoubtedly its

S oddest. This Irish virgin-princess martyr with an Anglo-Saxon name stands

out from her saintly companions in Scandinavia by her gender, ethnicity, and
the unusual manner of her martyrdom.1In contrast to the native saints, the royal
martyrs such as St Olaf of Norway or St Knut of Denmark, Sunniva cuts an eccen
tric and surprising figure for a cult.2 It is not only that Sunniva is a woman and
Irish that makes her unique. Her martyrdom too was remarkable for the fact that
it was caused not through human agency, but through divine aid: an angel caused
the cave in which she and her companions were taking refuge from pagan aggres
sors to collapse. Also, in contrast to other royal martyrs from Scandinavia, she was
not an active agent in the Christianization process. What then is the significance
of this saint? In this article I wish to offer some preliminary observations on the

1 For a general overview of saints cults and relics in Scandinavia, see now Haki Antonsson
(2005).
2 The most recent commentator, Thomas DuBois, in a comparative study of the cults of
Sunniva and Henrik of Finland (an English bishop martyred on the frozen Lake Kyli in 1158),
noted that both saints present a rather puzzling image of Christianization and the role of the cult
of the saints in early Scandinavian religiosity (2008, 65).

Alexander OHara (alexanderjohara@gmail.com) is visiting research fellow at Institut fur

Mittelalterforschung, sterreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna.
Abstract: The Irish princess-virgin-martyr St Sunniva is one of the most enigmatic of Scandinavian
saints. The site of her martyrdom, the island of Selja on the west coast of Norway, became an
important monastic and episcopal centre during the eleventh century. Towards the end of the
twelfth century her relics were translated to Bergen, the new centre of the bishopric, and a hagio-
graphical text was written for liturgical use. This article presents a new reading of the Sunniva
legend based on the wider hagiographical, political, and ecclesiastical contexts in which it developed.
It argues that the legend, drawing from a continental hagiographical tradition of attributing Irish
origins to obscure saints, sought to forge an identity for the bishopric of Bergen in its new royal and
ecclesiastical environment.
Keywords: St Sunniva, Scandinavian saints, hagiography, twelfth-century Norway

Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5 (2009) 105-21. 10.1484/J.VMS.1.100675

106 Alexander O H ara

Sunniva legend which will, I hope, lead to a new reading of the Sunniva legend
based on the wider hagiographical, political, and ecclesiastical contexts in which it
developed. Although the legend exists in both Latin and Old Norse sources my
principal focus here will be on the Latin source from which the Old Norse
accounts derive.3
On 7 September 1170 the relics ofSunniva were enshrined in the new cathedral
in Bergen following their translation from the island ofSelja to the new urban epis
copal centre. Although the surviving Latin account was not written until after the
death of Paul,4 the bishop responsible for the translation (who died in 1194), the
abbreviated liturgical legend most probably derived from a fuller account written
at the time ofthe translation.5This hypothetical Passio S. Sunniuaeprovided a new
history for the Selja relics as the ritual relocation of relics (as was often the case)
provided an opportunity to cement an existing tradition or to construct a new one.
It was standard for literary production to follow a translation, as an account would
invariably have to be written to record the spate of miracles that would ensue. Al
though we can only speculate as to the existence of a now lost Passio, what survives
in a number of late manuscripts is a short liturgical account produced for the cele
bration of the saints feast day in Bergen.6 This epitome, the Acta Sanctorum in
Selio, is nevertheless a remarkable and fascinating text.7 It tells of a beautiful and
pious Irish princess called Sunniva who became the ruler of a kingdom in Ireland
on the death of her father. However, in order to escape an unwanted marriage to
a heathen tyrant, she and her people decided to undertake ascetic exile (peregrinatio
pro Christo) by setting sail into the unknown (Acta, 1-3, 279-80). Unaided by any

3 The Sunniva legend appears in sagas of Olaf Tryggvason written in Iceland: Saga lafs
Tryggvasonar, an Old Norse translation of a Latin work written by an Icelandic monk, Odd
Snorrason, in around 1190, and lafs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta, a fourteenth-century work pre
served in Flateyjarbk, a compilation dealing with the history of the kings of Norway. It is
interesting that Snorri Sturlusons Heimskringla, his magnum opus on the same theme, mentions
nothing of Sunniva or the saints of Selja perhaps due to doubts concerning their historicity.
4 It refers to him as uenerabilis memorie.
5 See below, note 10.
6 The work survives in a manuscript from the beginning of the sixteenth century, a transcript
made by the Icelandic antiquarian Arne Magnusson (d. 1730) of a fourteenth-century Icelandic
manuscript no longer extant, and in two early printed Scandinavian breviaries. Despite such late
copies, the recent editor of the text, Stephan Borgehammar, dates the work to the twelfth century
on philological grounds. On the manuscript evidence, see Borgehammar (1997, 274-76).
7 The title of the work as edited by Gustav Storm in 1880. All citations here are to
Borgehammars 1997 edition.
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 107

means of navigation, they were led by God towards the northern parts (uersus
partes aquilonares) and to the west coast of Norway where they encountered a peo
ple of hostile reasoning, wild in habit, lax in morals, bestial in bearing and in mind
(rationis alieni, cultu siluestres, moribus incompositi, gestu et animo bestiales)
who drove them from land with stones and arrows (Acta, 4, 280). The flotilla of
ships was then hit by a storm and separated so that Sunniva and some of her com
panions made land on the island of Selja while the other group settled on another
offshore island, Kinn. We hear nothing further about the community on Kinn
except that they followed similar ascetic lives as their compatriots on Selja, living
in caves and subsisting on a diet of fish. The islands, although close to the main
land, were deserted except for some livestock belonging to the Norwegians. When
some of the livestock went missing, however, the locals suspected that the ascetic
strangers to them strange in appearance, unintelligible in language, different in
religion and worship (ignotos sibi forma, lingua non intelligibiles, religione et
cultu dissimiles) had been indulging themselves on their mutton (Acta, 5, 281).
They then sought the help of the countrys tyrannical pagan ruler, Hakon the
Mighty, jarl of Hladir, to come with his men to the island and murder the Chris
tians. When Sunniva and her companions saw their assassins approach, they took
shelter in a cave where they prayed for death. They asked that God would send an
angel to cause the cave to collapse, thereby preventing the pagans from reaching
them. This duly took place (Sicquefactum est, as the author pithily notes), and the
refugees were crushed by the rocks.8 When the Jarl and his men arrived on the
island, no trace of the Christians could be found. Shortly after this the Jarl, a son
of iniquity, a scion of the Devil (filius iniquitatis, membrum diaboli), was mur
dered by his slave, and Olaf Tryggvason, a Christian, became King of Norway
(Acta, 6-7, 281-82). It was through this King and his missionary-bishop Sigward,
notes the author, that the gens Noruegie converted from their pagan idolatry to the
Christian faith. It was also during this transitional period that Sunnivas relics were
miraculously discovered when traders (mercatores') sailing past Selja noticed a beam
of bright light shining from the island. When they investigated they found a frag
rant head glowing beneath the column of light (Acta, 7, 282). They took the head
with them to Trondheim where they met the new king who, on discovering that
they were pagans, persuaded them to become Christians. They told him about

8 Sunniva is, appropriately, iconographically recognizable from the painfully jagged-looking

piece of rock which is her emblem. The best example is the ornate, sixteenth-century Austevoll
triptych (now in the museum of the University of Bergen) where Sunniva, with rock in hand, can
be seen flanked by Saints Peter and Mary Magdalene.
108 Alexander O H ara

their strange experience on Selja and about the head which they had found, now
placed by the Bishop with other relics of the saints. Similar reports of strange hap
penings on Selja reached Trondheim prompting the King and the Bishop to travel
to the island to investigate for themselves. There they found more sweet-smelling
bones among the rocks as well as the entire body of St Sunniva which they placed
in a shrine (in scrinio collocatum est). A church was also erected on the site where
miracles were accustomed to take place (usque in presentem diem). These events
are dated to the year 996, and the account concludes by briefly mentioning Bishop
Pauls translation of the relics to Bergen in 1170 (Acta, 8-9, 282-83).
This remarkable proto-martyr account, one of the earliest Latin works written
in Norway, is thus a conversion narrative set during the transitional period be
tween two religions. The arrival and martyrdom of a group of unwitting Irish exiles
serves as the prelude to the Christianization of Norway under the aegis of Olaf
Tryggvason and his missionaries. Perhaps the account should be read as a founda
tional Christian myth that teleologically celebrated the coming of Christianity to
Norway. The figure of Sunniva and her unusual Anglo-Saxon name meaning sun
giftcould, if understood in such a way, personify the notion of Christianitys arri
val in the country. The image of the sun was a hagiographical motif often used by
hagiographers to denote Christ and the Christian faith. The manner in which the
relics were discovered (by a column of light shining from the island) might have
suggested to the hagiographer this clever literary conceit. It is interesting that in
Saga Olafs Tryggvasonar, an Old Norse translation of a Latin work written by an
Icelandic monk, Odd Snorrason, in around 1190, and which contains the Sunniva
legend, Odd begins his account with the discovery of the relics by the traders rather
than with the prior events leading to the martyrdom (Saga Olfs Tryggvasonar,
28-30, 96-103).9He thus gives narrative priority to the inventio rather than to the
historia (the opposite to the Latin account).10It is therefore possible that the mem
ory of the inventio, or discovery of the relics, gave rise to the development of the
legend of Sunniva and her companions.
A resume of the Sunniva legend should make it clear that we are dealing with
a hagiographical romance that cleverly tacks onto a martyr-type narrative a variety

9 On this, see Theodore Anderssons translation (2003, 76-79), and his comments on Odds
sources for the legend (142, n. 4).
10 Odd also provides additional information not found in the Latin source. He gives the names
of the two men who found the relics and relates a miracle account of how a man who had lost his
horse saw the same miraculous light on Selja. This suggests that Odd either relied on oral tradition
or on a now lost Passio from which our liturgical work may be derived.
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 109

of hagiographical motifs the pious princess fleeing an unwanted marriage, the

ascetic voyager in the ocean, the cave-dwelling Christians in an effort to con
struct a particular image of a saint for a new ecclesiastical and urban environment.
The legend of St Sunniva is exactly that, a legend. It can tell us nothing about
events in the tenth century or about links between Norway and the British Isles
during this period. Rather, it is an account full of the romanticism and fantasy of
the twelfth century. As such, it is more a mirror of twelfth-century perceptions
than tenth-century realities. Yet it is an account that we cannot entirely dismiss as
the legend clearly has a basis in much more ancient traditions stretching back into
the early Middle Ages. A number of earlier sources, although making no mention
of Sunniva, may suggest that there was an older tradition ofa group of Irish ascetics
who suffered martyrdom on the island sometime in the distant past.
Before turning to look at select aspects of the earlier sources, it should be noted
that the premise that a group of Irish ascetics lived and died on Selja has provoked
conflicting opinions in Norwegian historiography. The Victorian editor of the
legend, Gustav Storm (1878, 22), argued that the account preserved the memory
of a community of Irish ascetics who had settled on the islands of Selja and Kinn.
His contemporaries, P. A. Munch (1853, 296-99) and Nicolay Nicolaysen (1892,
1), suggested, on the other hand, that Selja may have been a pagan cult site that was
later given a Christian context. More recent scholars, such as Jan Erik Rekdal
(1998, 2003-04), have seen the legend as being illustrative of the close contacts
between western Norway and the British Isles during the Viking Age, particularly
in terms of saintly cult, while others have maintained the view that Selja was fore
most an ancient pagan cult site. Archaeological excavations on the island in the
early 1990s led Alf Tore Hommedal (1997, 58-69) to view the site in a prehistoric
light, while historians of religion, such as Gro Steinsland (1997), have suggested
that there may have been a cult to female giants centred on the cave. Certainly, the
islands location on the busy seaways and as an anchorage for those venturing into
the perilous waters off the Stadt peninsula towards Trondheim meant that Selja
was a natural nodal point. There was a tradition of cave dwelling in the area predat
ing the Viking Age, while on the mainland opposite the island, in what is now the
village of Selje, the pagan cult place-name Hove is attested. Between twenty and
thirty burial mounds dating from c. 570 to 1030 were once situated in this area
(Hommedal 1997, 59-63). This would indicate the area was by no means a desert
in the ascetic sense but, on the contrary, was of some importance in the early Mid
dle Ages. Whether pagan or Christian, however, what is without doubt is that the
island was perceived as a sacred place from early on. The name Selja may literally
mean blessed island.
110 Alexander O H ara

Although the sources antedating the twelfth century tell us little about who the
saints of Selja, the Seljumenn, were or where they came from, they do attest to the
antiquity and importance of the cult on the island. The earliest Norwegian eccle
siastical law codes from the eleventh century, for example, uniformly decreed that
the feast-day of the Seljumenn (8 July) was to be celebrated and honoured as
Sunday (Larson 1935). Also in the eleventh century, Adam of Bremen, writing in
northern Germany around 1075, mentioned a cult based in a cavern offthe ocean
in the farthest northern partswhere seven men lie as if asleep. There was no defi
nite consensus as to who these men were. Some people believed they were har
bingers of the Apocalypse who would preach to those heathen about the time the
world will end, while others said they were women, some of the Eleven Thousand
Virgins, who had come to the region, where their attendants and ships are buried
in a mountain. Miracles took place there and a church had been built on the site
(Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiaepontificum, 4. 32, scholion 145 (141), 266).
This was, therefore, plainly a cult to a group of Christians, the characteristics
of which were similar to two other well-known Christian myths: the Seven Sleep
ers of Ephesus and St Ursula and her Eleven Thousand Virgins. The mysterious
beings in the cave, whoever they were, were apparently a source of wonder and
speculation. Moreover, the basic components of the legend as it would appear
towards the end of the twelfth century are already present: a group of immigrants,
both men and women, who came to the place in ships and who were buried in a
cave in a mountain. Adam does not mention explicitly where these people came
from, or mention a saint called Sunniva, although his remark that some people con
sidered them a group ofthe Eleven Thousand Virgins might suggest an origin from
the British Isles. Then again, it could simply indicate that he was familiar with that
well-known legend. But what is extraordinary about his account is that he asso
ciated what was, most probably, oral evidence about the cult on Selja with an
account by a Lombard monk writing in southern Italy around 790.
At the beginning of his Historia Langobardorum, Paul the Deacon relates a
story remarkably similar to that of the Seljumenn. He tells of a cave on the furthest
boundaries of Germania, towards the west-north-west, situated by the ocean
under a high cliff, where seven men lay sleeping. No one knew how long they had
been there, but the perfect preservation oftheir bodies and clothes (despite the fact
that they must have been there for many years) assured their veneration by those
ignorant and barbarous peoples who lived there. Their unusual style of clothing
marked them out as Romans, and they possessed frighteningly effective power.
When one man attempted to strip one of the bodies, his arms immediately
withered, terrifying others who did not dare attempt similar acts. Paul concludes
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 111

his account by considering the reason why these strange beings were thus preserved
for such a length oftime. Perhaps, he speculated, they would convert those people,
since they cannot be reckoned to be anything but Christians (Historia Langobar
dorum, 1. 4, 14-16).
In the next chapter, the whereabouts of this cave can be more precisely located
thanks to Pauls ethnographical inquisitiveness. He mentions that the people who
live close to this place are the Scritobini who live in a land where snow is found even
in summer, a time of year when there is incessant daylight while in winter there is
continual darkness. They make clothes from the hides of a kind of deer while they
construct implements from pieces ofwood bent like a bow on which they can hunt
wild animals through the snow. These, of course, are the Sami, the indigenous
inhabitants of northern Norway, who, from a southern Italian perspective, would
indeed have appeared as living next to Selja. Pauls name for them derives from
Scridifinni, a Germanic compound noun, which literally means the skiing Lapps
(Historia Langobardorum, 1. 5, 16-18 and, on the name, 374).
Pauls source for this remarkable account, which appears to point to a location
in Norway, seems to have been an oral one (Historia Langobardorum, 374). The
likeliest time and place Paul may have heard such a travellers tale was the four years
he spent north of the Alps in the Frankish kingdom (781-85). Here, at the peripa
tetic court of Charlemagne, his skills as a writer and teacher were duly appreciated
by the king of the Franks. Charlemagnes court, wherever it happened to be, was
the kind of multiethnic focal point where Paul was most likely to have heard such
a story. He himself mentions that he saw a coat made from reindeer hide, such as
the Scritobini use, while his account of the long northern summer days and short
winter nights compelled him to consider how a persons shadow could be of vary
ing lengths depending on where that person happened to be in the world. Thus, if
you measured your shadow at midday sometime around Christmas in Italy you
would find that it measured nine feet but, he recalls, when he was at the Carolin-
gian palace of Thionville (where he was during Christmas 782) he found that his
shadow came to nineteen and a half feet (Historia Langobardorum, 1. 5, 16-18).
Whether it is in any way significant that Paul goes from talking about the winter
sun in the land of the Scritobini to his own solar experiments at Thionville is, of
course, impossible to say.
The similarities of Pauls account with the main characteristics of the cult of the
Seljumenn are striking, while his specific geographical directions and mention of
the northern lands of the Scritobini seems to point to a site in western Norway.
Particularly notable is Pauls reference to the mysterious men as Romans and his
conviction that they must be Christians. Romanhere should be understood in the
112 Alexander O H ara

ecclesiastical sense of the word as implying priests or monks men whose style of
clothing derived from late Roman fashions. Paul was writing at a time when
seafaring ecclesiastics from Ireland and northern Britain were enduring an ascetic
existence on remote islands off the coast of the British Isles and in the North
Atlantic. Paul was also writing at the dawn of the Viking Age which put an end to
the possibility for seafaring ascetics to realize their ideal on these remote islands.
The Norse warriors who colonized these islands preserved the memory of these
milites Christi, whom they calledpapar, a title originally meaning fathers, in the
place-names they now gave to the landscape (see Crawford 2002 and The Papar
Project Web site: <http://www.paparproject.org.uk/>).
A successor of Pauls at the Carolingian court, the Irish scholar Dicuil, writing
in 825, wrote of distant islands to the north of Britain, which can be reached from
the northern islands of Britain in a direct voyage of two days and nights with sails
filled with a continuously favourable wind. A devout priest told me that in two
summer days and the intervening night he sailed in a two-benched boat and
entered one of them (Liber de mensura orbis terrae, 7. 14, 75). In the same expanse
of ocean could be found
another set of small islands, nearly all separated by narrow stretches of water; in these for
nearly a hundred years hermits sailing from our country, Ireland, have lived. But just as they
were always deserted from the beginning of the world, so now because of the Northman
pirates (causa latronum Normannorum) they are emptied of anchorites, and filled with
countless sheep and very many diverse kinds of sea-birds (Liber de mensura orbis terrae,
7. 15, 77).

These islands were very likely the Faeroes, which derive their name from Old Norse
Faer-eyar, the sheep islands (Liber de mensura orbis terrae, 115). This is very early
evidence by a man who himself lived in and visited such islands (Liber de men
sura orbis terrae, 7. 6, 73) for Irish hermits voyaging to and inhabiting islands in
the North Atlantic. In this context it is possible that some of these hermits may
have ventured even further east or have been blown off course towards Norway.
When we consider Dicuils accounts, Gustav Storms original hypothesis that a
community of Irish priests were martyred on Selja does not seem so farfetched. A
glance at a map shows that Selja is almost directly parallel to the Faeroes from
which, depending on conditions, one could reach it in a couple of days fair-
weather sailing.
The earlier sources, an eclectic mix of Norwegian legal documents and two
historical works written at different times and in places geographically distant
(northern Germany and southern Italy), throw tantalizing light on the origins of
the Sunniva legend. The evidence of Paul the Deacon is particularly remarkable.
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 113

But while these sources attest to the ancient origins of the cult, we are none the
wiser as to who these nebulous Seljumenn were, although we can speculate as to
whether they were indeed a group ofpapar and that, therefore, the underlying basis
of the legend is sound. The one conspicuously absent element from these sources,
however, is Sunniva.
In 1968 Arne Odd Johnsen raised the question why Sunniva was not men
tioned in these earlier sources and concluded that she must have been a relatively
recent addition to the pantheon of saints when her relics were translated to Bergen
in 1170. Similarly, in 1934, the eminent Bollandist scholar Pre Paul Grosjean con
cluded, in a review of an article on Sunniva which had appeared in a Norwegian
journal the previous year, that the saints Irishness was but a pure hagiographical
invention of which there were plenty of other examples (Grosjean 1934, 121). If
we accept, along with Arne Odd Johnsen, that Sunniva was a constructed saint,
then we must wonder why she was given an Irish background. Why, for example,
given her Anglo-Saxon name, was she not passed off as a Northumbrian like those
pious princesses one encounters in BedesHistoria ecclesiastica ?As is apparent from
the earlier sources, the cult to a group of anonymous saints on Selja was ancient and
well established. But the Latin account produced in the twelfth century and in
which the figure of Sunniva first emerges is clearly a hagiographical romance. The
legend, as it was developed in the twelfth century, may have elaborated on an exist
ing tradition on Selja that Irish ascetics were martyred on the island or, alterna
tively, the ethnicity of these saints might be nothing more than a hagiographical
motif.
While a small cottage industry has developed in Norwegian historiography
around this enigmatic saint, the significance of the attribution of Irish origins to
St Sunniva in the context of contemporary twelfth-century and former hagiograph
ical and ethnographical writing has not been addressed. Sunnivas questionable
Irish provenance has a historical interest for a number of reasons. Geographically,
Sunniva is the most northern case of a purported Irish saint. Chronologically, the
attribution of Irish origins to this saint occurred at a time when Irelands fortunes
were rapidly on the wane both politically and perceptually. As Sunnivas relics were
being elevated in the cathedral in Bergen in September 1170, the Anglo-Norman
conquest of Ireland was in its early stages. Also, during the course of the twelfth
century, the rosy image of Ireland as an island of saints, an image that had devel
oped during the course of the early Middle Ages, was beginning to be undermined.
Negative views of Ireland and the Irish, which had first been voiced by classical
ethnographers, were resurrected in the wake of a perceived ecclesiastical and moral
decline in Ireland which was compounded by conquest. Historically, furthermore,
114 Alexander O H ara

the attribution of Irish origins to Sunniva stands towards the end of a long tradi
tion of a hagiographical phenomenon that sought to enhance the prestige of a saint
by associating that saint with Ireland because of a perception of the island as a
special locus sanctus. This association tied the subject to ethnographic notions of
sanctity whereby the subjects sanctity became enhanced by its association with a
particular people and to a particular place.
The origins of what I shall term Hiberno-ethnosanctity can be traced back to
early medieval continental hagiographical works dealing with Irish saints and,
accordingly, I will argue, Sunniva should be seen as part of this tradition. The in
vention of Sunnivas Irish origins at a time when the traditional image of Ireland
as a holy place was being eroded also highlights a considerable paradox behind such
an attribution: one between barbarity and sanctity. As Sunniva emerged as Bergens
patron saint at the end of the twelfth century, ecclesiastics in Britain and on the
Continent had already largely reverted to a view that saw Ireland and the Irish as
particularly barbaric. In Antiquity, Ireland was considered comparable to any other
barbarian land outside the Roman Empire. The norms of civilized behaviour were
not expected to be practised there, and its remoteness further lent itself to the
projection of the fantastic and the exotic.11In the seventh century, however, a new
rhetoric emerged that was arguably the genesis ofthe idea ofIreland as an especially
holy place. Now, Irelands liminality contributed to its sanctification. This shift is
first glimpsed in Jonas of Bobbios Vita Columbani written in around 640 where
the hagiographer inserts a complex allegorical poem on Ireland and comments on
how the Irish are considered more pious than all the surrounding peoples:
The location of the island, as they say, is beautiful and lacking the wars of hostile foreign
peoples. The Irish (Scottorumgens) inhabit this island, a people, although without the laws
of other peoples, are nevertheless vigorously flourishing in Christian teaching; in faith, they
are pre-eminent over all the neighbouring peoples. (Vita Columbani, I. 2, 153)

Jonass more benevolent attitude towards Ireland was undoubtedly the out
come of his monastic experience in a community of exiled Irish monks in northern
Italy (Bobbio). His Vita concerns the great Irish saint and monastic founder
Columbanus (d. 615), who travelled to the Continent in c. 590 and established a
number of important monasteries in Burgundy and Lombard Italy. It also

11 Killeen (1976) discusses the barbarian-ethnographic motifs, such as cannibalism and sexual
debauchery, that were applied indiscriminately to remote peoples, including the Irish, by ancient
authors. On classical and late antique perceptions of Ireland and the Irish, see Freeman (2000) and
Scully (2000). I am very grateful to Dr Diarmuid Scully for sending me a copy of the first part of
his PhD thesis dealing with perceptions of the British Isles in classical and patristic sources.
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 115

chronicled the monastic movement that took place in the generation after the
saints death under the aegis ofColumbanuss Frankish disciples. Because ofthe in
fluence ofColumbanus and his disciples on the monastic landscape ofthe Frankish
lands in particular, it became common from the Carolingian period onwards to
ascribe Irish origins to founders of monasteries whose origins were obscure. The
hagiographic works dealing with such saints often passed off their subjects as
disciples of famous seventh-century Irish saints.12These productions were fantas
tical concoctions, such as the Vita S. Magni, written in Bavaria at the end of the
ninth century, in which Magnus, an Irish disciple of Columbanus and Gall, busies
himselfamongst other things by slaying dragons (on this Life, see Walz 1989). This
phenomenon of ascribing Irish origins to obscure saints continued into the High
Middle Ages and was transplanted into England following the Norman Conquest
where the most brazen example is to be found.13 In the late twelfth century the
early Anglo-Saxon saint Cuthbert (d. 687) received an Irish background in a work
that was probably written at the Cistercian monastery of Melrose in the Scottish
Borders (see Clancy 2003). The Libellus de natiuitate Sancti Cuthberti de historiis
Hybernensium exceptus et translatus recounts Cuthberts Irish birth, royal descent,
and subsequent arrival in Scotland. This text is remarkable because it wholly
departs from the assumption of the earliest Cuthbertine hagiography, inherent in
its silence, that the holy man was Anglo-Saxon.
How then do we account for a saint that crops up on the west coast of Norway
in the twelfth century whose name is Anglo-Saxon but who is represented as an
Irish princess? I would argue that the hagiographer was well aware of this hagio-
graphical tradition and by ascribing an Irish origin to his subject was attempting
to raise the status of the saint by tapping into a venerable tradition of Ireland as an
insula sanctorum. This then is the early medieval background to St Sunnivas Irish
origins: a hagiographical and ethnographical topos that lies behind the attribution
of Irish origins to this saint and of which she is the most northern example. It
shows the translation of an idea that emerged in monastic centres on the Con
tinent during the early Middle Ages and is of significant interest because it occurs
at a time when this perception of Ireland as a holy place had begun to change.

12 Gougaud (1931) referred to these pseudo-Irish saints as surnumraires de lmigration

scottique. For a case study of one such saint, St Fridolin, whose Life dates from the end ofthe tenth
or the beginning of the eleventh century, and the general background to such an attribution, see
Koch (1959).
13 On the veneration for Celtic saints in Angevin England including the ascribing of Irish
origins to a number of obscure saints, see Bartlett (1999).
116 Alexander O H ara

Sunnivas Irish origins have a much wider significance than the Norwegian context
in which they developed. They have to be seen in the wider historical and hagio-
graphical context. In the Norwegian context, the attribution of Irish origins to this
saint may be understood as a mythopoetic moment, symbolizing not only the
transmission of a continental hagiographical phenomenon to the North, but also
the transmission of a Latin Christian polity (on mythopoetic moments, see
Mortensen 2006).
I began this paper by proposing a new reading of the Sunniva legend based on
seeing Sunniva as a figural representation ofthe coming of Christianity to Norway.
I argued that the legend is essentially a foundational Christian myth that may have
arisen from the unusual way in which certain relics were discovered. I wish to con
clude with some thoughts on the political and ecclesiastical climate in which the
Sunniva legend developed and whether this had any bearing on the hagiographical
construction of this saint.
None of the early sources mention a cardinal female figure by the name of Sun
niva. Rather, they suggest a cult to an anonymous group of saints, the Seljumenn.
The single most unusual feature of the Sunniva legend, therefore, is that the saint
is a woman. Moreover, she is a woman, we are told, who succeeded to a kingdom
a highly unlikely scenario in early medieval Europe. What then is the signifi
cance of Sunnivas gender? We might explain it as a gendering of a notion. As was
common in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, abstract notions such as philosophy,
faith, love, and so forth were often personified as female. We need only think of
Prudentiuss Psychomachia, Boethiuss Lady Philosophy, or Dantes Beatrice, the
personification of beatific love, to realize the persistence of this literary phenome
non over time. If we choose to see Sunniva as a personification of the Christian
faith (the sun geofa), then it was natural for the hagiographer to characterize this
notion as a woman. We might also think about the prominent role that women
played in medieval origin myths (Geary 2006) and particularly how the Sunniva
legend relates to these as a foundational Christian myth about the coming of
Christianity to Norway.
There may also be another reason. Following the death of Sigurd the Crusader
in 1130, there were two rival claims to the Norwegian throne: his son, Magnus, and
his half-brother, Harald Gille. Both became co-rulers until Magnus drove Harald
into exile in 1134. The following year, however, Harald returned with Danish
backing and blinded Magnus. From this point onwards there were rival pretenders
to the throne, resulting in a prolonged period of civil war (1130-1240). In the
mid- 1150s internecine strife again broke out between the sons of Harald that led
to the death of King Inge in battle in 1161. The infant Magnus Erlingsson was
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 117

chosen as his successor, though he descended through his mother. Nevertheless,

due to the efforts ofhis father, the powerful Erling Skakke, Magnus succeeded with
the support of the Danish king Valdemar I and through an alliance with the
Church under the Archbishop of Nidaros, 0ystein Erlendsson. Descent from the
female line, however, was obviously a point of some contention as, in 1163/64,
Magnus son of the daughter of a king became the first Scandinavian monarch
to receive a coronation.14 This ritual was performed by Archbishop 0ystein in
Bergen and was no doubt thought necessary in order to bolster Magnuss claim to
be able to inherit. When we consider that the Sunniva legend was written during
Magnus Erlingssons reign, on the impetus of the Bergen see Magnus was
crowned on the site of the cathedral to which Sunnivas relics were translated
we may well wonder whether Magnuss claim to the crown had an impact on the
manner in which the saint was said to have succeeded her father by lawful heredi
tary right (the Latin here is quite specific; Acta, 1, 279: iure hereditario). Thus, just
as the holy Sunniva, a woman, had, in the past, ruled after her father, so too could
Magnus, who descended via his mother to the kingship.
Whatever the reason for Sunnivas gender, what is without doubt is that Bergen
needed a powerful patron during a period of political instability and civil war. The
man who orchestrated the cult was Bishop Paul, of whom we know little. He is
fleetingly mentioned in Sverris saga as having been appointed to the bishopric by
King 0ystein but later replaced when 0ysteins son, Inge, assumed power during
the civil wars. Paul seems to have been uncannily lucky or clever in maintaining no
apparent fixed alliance during the period. He was reappointed to his see during
Magnus Erlingssons reign, a position he held until his death in 1194. The Bishop
is further linked to the cult of St Sunniva from an unusual charter he conferred on
the cathedral chapter in which he granted them half the diocesan revenues and all
the offerings from the shrine of St Sunniva:
Paall biskop sender allum biskopom och lerdom monnum, the(i)m er effther hans dage
komme til Krist kircke q. g. och sine, kunigtt er allom theim monnom er Norie byggie,
vdferder ock auden er aa leggist land thetta, och tecker thet bode til lerd(r)a och wlerdra,
ok haffue korsbrodre worer fore miskund skade aff thuj bode att prouendor there mincka
och jorder leggiast i audom. Nu haffuer eg geffuit theim till weduestar hielper halffuar offer
end alle er kommer till allas i skrins hine hillige Suniwe och hette fee, j huerium fee som
thet er, for uthan guldt. Saa haffum wir geffuit theim alt wox thet som met kirckiuni komer
och allen jernburdt, effther thuj som fore oss wor. End saa er thette riffuer wider, tha ligge

14 The coronation was the first of its kind in the North and a revolutionary event in
Norwegian public life according to Helle (1964, 38).
118 Alexander O H ara

hann wid band almectige gudtz och hin hillige Suniue och alle the hillige som i Christ
kircke huille, och til tisse gaffuer er windisbyrdt N. biscop Joen abbott i Lysa, Seffider ad
Marie kircke och Haluarder ad apostola kircke och mange andere gode mendt. (DN 8 (no.
4), 6)15
[Paul, bishop, sends God's greetings and his own to all the bishops and learned men, and
to those in the future who come to Christ Church. It is known to all men who live in
Norway the emigrations and devastation that have beset this land, so that this instruction
reaches to the learned and to the unlearned [he then states that his collegiate church has
been sorely affected by these troubles]. Now I have given to them [the chapter] for support
half the offerings and all that comes to the altar of the shrine of Saint Sunniva, and
property vow, in what sort it is, apart from gold. So we have given to them the income that
comes to the church and all the iron-bearing, according to what was before our time. But
he who abrogates this, then let him lie in ban of Almighty God and holy Sunniva, and all
the saints who in Christ Church dwell [there then follows a list of ecclesiastical
witnesses].]

This document therefore voices Paul's concern for his bishopric during the civil
war period and states that his see had not been immune from the political unrest
besetting the country. Ecclesiastical property and lands were not free from those
who would exploit such conditions for seizing what they would. He was anxious
to protect and support his see, granting his canons half of the revenues and all that
came from the shrine of Sunniva, while threatening those who might disregard this
with excommunication. The document intimates why a saint, a patron and pro
tector, might have been expedient.
Saints were powerful and often fearsome upholders of the property of the
ecclesiastical foundations to which they were associated. In an anarchic society like
that of Norway in the twelfth century, or southern France in the eleventh, saints
were seen as lords of their demesnes in the face of encroaching land-grabbing
magnates and the lack of a strong, central authority to maintain order. The miracle
accounts of St Foy of Conques, for instance, give a vivid impression of the saint's
power in protecting her Auvergne community and punishing those who sought to
undermine it. In a similar context, Sunniva became, potentially, the upholder and
protector of the Bergen see against those who sought to infringe on its rights and
property.
While the unstable political climate may have influenced the development of
the legend, we also have to consider the changing ecclesiastical environment. The
second half of the twelfth century was a momentous period in the rise of the
Church's power in Norway and in the establishment of new ecclesiastical power

' I am very grateful to Paul Bibire for his help with translating this document.
CONSTRUCTING A SAINT 119

structures. Norway had, until the mid-twelfth century, been under the jurisdiction
of the metropolitan sees of, first, Hamburg-Bremen and then Lund. In 1152/53,
however, the papal legate, Cardinal Nicholas Breakspear (Pope Hadrian IV), ele
vated Nidaros (Trondheim) to archiepiscopal status. The elevation of Nidaros to
metropolitan status was reflected in the building of a magnificent new cathedral
and in the production of historical and hagiographical works such as the Historia
de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium of Theodoricus monachus and the Passio
beati Olavi that celebrated St Olaf as the apostle of the Norwegians. Although the
cult to St Olaf was already well established, it was from this period that it became
more widely disseminated. Perhaps the proto-martyr account produced for the
Bergen see and its emphasis on the influence of Olaf Tryggvason (not Olaf
Haraldsson) on the Christianization of Norway was meant to provide the bishop
ric with a more venerable and ancient tradition than Nidaros. The cult to a group
of unknown saints known as the Seljumenn was no longer sufficient as, in response
to changing circumstances, an individual saint was needed who could serve as the
patron and protector of the see, just as Nidaros had St Olaf and Oslo, St Halvard.
In St Sunniva, Bergen chose to present its saintly history as one that stretched back
to a period before the imposition of Christianity in Norway by the two Olafs, and
one that drew on the idea of Ireland as an insula sanctorum to give an added patina
of prestige to its new saint. In this sense, perhaps we can see the Sunniva legend as
the first instance of Bergens pretensions to be the political and spiritual capital of
Norway.
These observations on the Sunniva legend, it must be emphasized, are intended
as a prolegomenon to further studies on this subject but which will, I hope, lead to
a new consideration of the legend in its wider hagiographical and contemporary
contexts. What emerges from the legend of St Sunniva, in both its Latin and Old
Norse versions, is a fascinating myth on the periphery of Latin Christendom. The
legend, drawing from a continental hagiographical tradition of attributing Irish
origins to obscure saints, sought to forge an identity for the bishopric of Bergen in
its new royal and ecclesiastical environment and in so doing created the most
interesting and enigmatic of Scandinavian saints.16

16 My thanks to Dr Haki Antonsson, Dr Barbara Crawford, and Dr Alf Tore Hommedal for
discussion and especially to Dr Margaret Cormack for helpful editorial comments.
120 Alexander O H ara

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