Sanctus Halvardus

Halvard Vebjørnsson was born around 1020 at Husaby in Lier, and by tradition a kinsman of St Olav. He belonged to the first generation of Norwegians born into the faith Olav had imposed by force, and almost nothing is known of him — no office, no campaign, no writings. He is remembered for about ten minutes of one spring afternoon.

He was at the shore of the Drammensfjord, about to push off, when a serving-woman came running down to him — poor, pursued, accused of a theft she said she had not committed. He took her into his boat and rowed out. Her pursuers came after him across the water and demanded he hand her over. He refused, staking his own life on the word of a woman he had never met, and they shot him dead where he sat.

They lashed his body to a millstone and sank it to hide what they had done. It surfaced. The stone meant to bury him carried him up instead, and the accusation with it. Oslo took him as its patron and raised its cathedral over his shrine; the Reformation scattered the relics, but its seal still bears his millstone and the arrows — the only saint in the Norwegian calendar raised to the altars for a single refusal.