Battle of Stiklestad - Aftermath

Aftermath

The year after the battle, his grave and coffin were opened and according to Snorri the body was incorrupt and the hair and nails had grown since he was buried. The coffin was then moved to St. Clement's Church in Trondheim. Olaf came to be venerated as a saint and given the name Saint Olaf. Stiklestad Church (Stiklestad kyrkje) was erected on top of the stone against which he died. The stone is supposedly still inside the altar of the church.

One hundred years later, Nidaros Cathedral was built in Trondheim on the site of his original burial place. Olaf's body was moved to this church and enshrined in a silver reliquary behind the high altar. This reliquary took the form of a miniature church, common to medieval reliquaries containing the entire body of a saint, but was unique in that it is said to have had dragon heads at the apex of the gables similar to those still seen on Norwegian stave churches. In the 16th century, during the Protestant Reformation period, Olaf's body was removed from this reliquary, which was melted down for coinage by order of the Dano-Norwegian king. His remains were reburied somewhere in Nidaros Cathedral—exactly where is still today an unsolved mystery. Queen Josephine of Leuchtenberg of Norway and Sweden, the consort of Oscar I, asked for the one known remaining relic of St. Olaf, an ulna or radius in a medieval reliquary in the Danish National Museum, from King Frederick VII of Denmark, which he gave to her and which she in turn gave to St. Olaf's Cathedral in Oslo in August 1862.