Óláfr Haraldsson (St Olaf)

Olaf Haraldsson — Saint Olaf — finished the work Olaf Tryggvason began, and paid for it with his life. A viking from the age of twelve, he harried in the Baltic and in England before coming home to make himself sole king and drive Christianity hard across Norway, smashing the old idols and breaking the great chiefs. But the chiefs he had broken rose against him with the silver of Canute, and forced him into exile east, to Yaroslav's Christian court at Kyiv, where he left his small son Magnus to be fostered. He came back over the mountains with a small force to reclaim his kingdom and was killed at Stiklestad by his own countrymen — and the king who lost the battle won the country forever. Miracles were told at once; within a year he was a saint, and he became Rex Perpetuus Norvegiae, Norway's eternal king. Hard, proud, and dangerous in life; in death the holy heart of the North.