page_title: Olaf Tryggvason
section_title: Reign
hierarchical_section_title: Olaf Tryggvason / Biography / Reign
context_page_description: Olaf Trygvasson was King of Norway from 995 to 1000. He was the son of Tryggvi Olafsson, king of Viken, and, according to later sagas, the great-grandson of Harald Fairhair, first King of Norway.
  Olaf is seen as an important factor in the conversion of the Norse to the Roman Catholic religion. Many of these new converts were converted under threat of violence. He is said to have built the first Christian church in Norway, in 995, and to have founded the city of Trondheim in 997. A statue of Olaf Tryggvason is located in the city's central plaza.
  Historical information on Olaf is sparse. He is mentioned in some contemporary English sources, and some skaldic poems. The oldest narrative source mentioning him briefly is Adam of Bremen's Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum of circa 1070.
  In the 1190s, two Latin versions of "Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar" were written in Iceland, by Oddr Snorrason and by Gunnlaugr Leifsson - these are now lost, but are thought to form the basis of later Norse versions. Snorri Sturluson gives an extensive account of Olaf in the Heimskringla saga of circa 1230, using Oddr Snorrason's saga as his primary source.
context_section_description: In 997 Olaf founded his seat of government in Trondheim, where he had first held a thing with the revolters against Haakon. It was a suitable site because the River Nid twisted itself before going into the fjord, creating a peninsula that could be easily defended against terrestrial attacks by only one short wall.
  Olaf continued to promote Christianity throughout his reign. He baptized the explorer Leif Ericson, who took a priest with him back to Greenland to convert the rest of his kin. Olaf also converted the people and Earl of the Orkney Islands to Christianity.  At that time, the Orkney Islands were part of Norway.
  It has been suggested that Olaf's ambition was to rule a united Christian Scandinavia, and it is known that he made overtures of marriage to Sigrid the Haughty, queen of Sweden, but negotiations failed because of her steadfast pagan faith. Instead he made an enemy of her, and did not hesitate to involve himself in a quarrel with King Sweyn I of Denmark by marrying Sweyn's sister Tyra, who had fled from her heathen husband Burislav, the semi-legendary "King of Wends", in defiance of her brother's authority.
  Both his Wendish and his Irish wife had brought Olaf wealth and good fortune, but, according to the Sagas, his last wife, Tyra, was his undoing, for it was on an expedition undertaken in 1000 to wrest her lands from Burislav that he was waylaid off the island Svolder by the combined Swedish, Danish, and Wendish fleets, together with the ships of Earl Haakon's sons. The Battle of Svolder ended in the death of the Norwegian king. Olaf fought to the last on his great vessel Ormrinn Langi (Long Serpent), the mightiest ship in the North, and finally leapt overboard and was seen no more.
caption: Slaget ved Svolder
  Peter Nicolai Arbo
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