Ingigerðr

Ingegerd is the Swedish princess who became queen of Kyiv — and the protectress of St Olaf in his eastern exile. Once betrothed to Olaf himself before politics gave her instead to Yaroslav the Wise of Russia, she receives the exiled king at the eastern court with honour and kindness, and it is through her that the saga shows his sanctity first stirring: when a poor widow's dying son can find no cure, Ingegerd sends the mother to Olaf — 'he is the best physician here' — and the exiled king heals the boy with his hands. She and Yaroslav offer Olaf a kingdom of his own in Russia, and keep his son Magnus when he turns home to his death. Ingegerd is the saga's image of the queen who shelters a king's exile — the princess who might have been Olaf's wife and became instead his protectress in a foreign land, the gentle power at the eastern court through whom his holiness is first revealed.