Óláfr kyrri (the Quiet)

Olaf the Quiet is the strangest king in Heimskringla — the one who chose peace. He had stood at Stamford Bridge and watched his father Harald Hardrada throw away his life and his army reaching for England; and the lesson seems to have made him. He reigned twenty-six years without a single war, the longest peace Norway ever knew, between his viking father and his viking son Magnus Barefoot. He built towns and the stone Christ Church over St Olaf's grave, brought chimneys and courtly refinement and guilds to the North, softened his father's harsh laws, and presided over the best harvests since Harald Fairhair. When his friend Canute the Holy pressed him to join a great war on England, he gave ships but would not lead it — the harder courage of not going to war. A handsome, cheerful, beloved king remembered, almost uniquely in the sagas, not for what he conquered but for the quiet prosperity he kept. Proof that the chronicle of kings has room for one who simply ruled well.