Ástríðr Óláfsdóttir

Astrid is the Swedish-born widow of St Olaf and the loyal stepmother who champions his son. After the saint-king's death, when the boy Magnus is fetched home from exile in Russia, it is Astrid who receives her stepson gladly in Sweden and throws her weight behind him — summoning a great assembly of the Swedes and speaking for the boy with all her standing, winning him support and safe passage toward the throne that is his by right. Her advocacy is one of the chain of loyalties — Yaroslav's fostering, the repentant chieftains' fetching, Astrid's championing — by which the dead Olaf assembles his son's kingship out of the very people of his exile. Astrid is the saga's image of the stepmother as faithful ally — the widowed queen who, asked to do nothing, instead puts her honour and her voice behind her dead husband's son, and helps carry the boy from exile to the crown.