Sancta Sunniva

Her name is Old English — Sunngifu, gift of the sun — and almost everything else about her is legend rather than record. By the story she was a king's daughter in tenth-century Ireland, and when a pagan conqueror came demanding her lands and her hand she would sooner trust the open sea than yield either.

She and her brother Alban and their companions put out in boats with neither sail nor oar, steering by nothing, and the tides carried them north to the bare island of Selja off the Norwegian coast. They lived there quietly until the mainlanders accused them of stealing sheep and came across armed. Sunniva and her people withdrew into a sea-cave and prayed to be spared what was coming. A fall of rock sealed the mouth, and it became their tomb instead.

Around 996 a strange radiance was seen hovering over Selja. The cave was opened; her body lay untouched and breathing a sweet fragrance. Olav Tryggvason raised a church on the spot, and the monastery that grew around it became the first in western Norway; in 1170 her relics went on to Bergen, where a diocese rose from them. Norway's first saint, and the only one whose whole story is told in light — the light that took her out to sea, and the light that gave her back.