ABSTRACT
How does one establish the cult of a saint in a newly Christianized country where the concept of saints and cults are almost unknown? Where does one look for inspiration? To England, to Rome, to Jerusalem? Did established cults act as models for the new cult? How should a cult be constructed, by whom and for whom? And how was knowledge of the cult disseminated in a largely illiterate society? The following paper will argue that the construction of the cult of St Olav borrowed heavily from older royal cults, and that his cult was a means of bringing Norway, a country on the European fringe, into the European religious mainstream, thereby establishing it as an integrated part of Christendom.
