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NOTES 155
guarded. First there was made a chapel there, and the altar was reared
where had been the tomb of the king; but now stands on that stead
Christ Church ; and Archbishop Eystein had the high altar set up on
that same stead, where the king’s tomb had been, when he reared the
great minster which now standeth, and on that same stead had also
stood the altar in the ancient Christ Church. So it is said, that Olaf’s
church now stands, where that waste outhouse stood where the body
of King Olaf was set nightlong. That is now called Olaf’s-lithe where
the holy relic of the king was borne aland up from the ship, and is
now in the midst of the town.” (Chapter 259.)
The foregoing extracts from the Saga of Olaf the Holy, together
with the Note on the Fifteenth Song, are given for the purpose of show-
ing how the death of the King impressed even those who had fought
against him. In the final scene between Kalv Arnesson and Tore, we see
that doubt is already invading their minds— doubt of the justice of the
cause in which they have fought, and of their conception of the King as
the enemy of his country. After his death his fame as a miracle-worker
grewrapidly, and tale after tale added to thelegend which caused Bishop
Grimkel, a year after the battle of Stiklestad, to confer official saint-
hood upon him. Tore was driven by remorse to make a pilgrimage to
Jerusalem not long thereafter, and it was Kalv who, breaking with the
Danish King, went to Russia to fetch Magnus, Olaf’s illegitimate son,
and place him upon the throne of Norway. The reliquary of King Olaf
in St. Clement’s Church became a shrine for hosts of pilgrims, and the
St. Olaf cult led to the erection of the great Domkirke (or cathedral)
upon the site, as well as to the building of nine other churches and
five monasteries in Throndhjem. The Reformation ended these pilgrim-
ages, swept away most of the churches and monasteries, and caused
the reliquary to be carried off, and the King’s remains to be buried in
some unknown spot. The Domkirke has been partly destroyed by fire
several times, but judiciously restored, and it stands to-day the noblest
monument of architecture in the Scandinavian north. It is the burial-
place of many of the kings of Norway, and the place where the Eids-
vold Constitution of 1814 requires the kings to be crowned, as was
done in 1873 in the case of Oscar the Second, and in 1903 in the case
of Haakon the Seventh.
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