Historically a saint was a person who after his death became the object of special respect in the Christian church. Very often this person was a martyr whose day of death was celebrated as "birthdays" towards a "higher life".

The first saint of some stature in the Nordic countries was Ansgar who became generally respected in the late middle ages.

But long before him there was a cultlike respect for missionaries who lost their lives in Scandinavia. In this way Eskil, Botvid, David, Sigfrid became saints without being canonized. Some others who belong in this league are Helena of Skövde, Erik the Holy and Henrik of Åbo. Many of these saints became cult figures and many stories were told of miracles performed by them and many were the followers who made pilgrimages to their graves. Historians have later questioned the validity of many of these saints.

Ansgar, the Apostle of the North was dispatched over a thirty year period between 826-54 by Pope Gregory IV and King Louis the Pious of the Franks to baptize and and civilize the savage Scandinavians whose Viking raids were a cause of constant irritation to Christianity. Ansgar was the first Archbishop of Hamburg. He managed to convert the kings of Denmark and Sweden to Christianity but upon his death Scandinavians once again reverted to paganism.

A saint who had nothing to do with the Nordic countries until 1961 is Henry the Emperor. He was the son of Henry the Quarrelsome of Bavaria. He was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and became a staunch advocate of clerical celibacy when he realized that the lands of childless priests reverted to the crown. To set an example, however, he lived in ostentatious chastity with his queen, Saint Cunegund. For some mysterious reason, Henry was formally declared Patron of Finland in 1961 by the Vatican.

After a long career as a Viking pirate, Saint Olaf, who lived in the eleventh century, returned to Norway and seized power both as king and as a ruthless advocate of Christianity. He resorted to hacking off hands, digging out eyes and plundering and burning farms of reluctant communicants. Olaf married the illegitimate daughter of the king of Sweden, but was ultimately succeeded by his own illegitimate son by a servant girl. By the end of of his bloody twentyfive year reign, he had managed to alienate all his subjects, who joined forces with King Canute II of England and Denmark to defeat Olaf in battle, thus making a martyr of this dubious saint. Olaf died in 1030 and was buried in a riverbank near where he fell in battle. A spring with healing properties is said to have sprung from his grave.

Saint Sigfrid was on the other hand requested by the Swedes to come and renew Christianity among them. This Englishman lived in the eleventh century and was Bishop of York. He managed to convert and baptize the Swedish king, Olaf. He built a wooden church in Växjö. Sigfrid’s memory is still esteemed in Scandinavia where he is invoked against hunger.

Canute was greatly admired by the Danes and after his death they reported many miracles on or near his grave, thus persuading Pope Paschal II to number King Canute among the blessed.

In Sweden Eric IX became king in 1150 and was responsible for the erection of the first cathedral to be built in Sweden, in Uppsala. His mission was to baptize the neighbouring Finns, and his motto was to see each and every Finn either baptized or dead. Saint Eric was beheaded in 1161 and got his name added among the blessed.

In his mission to Finland, Eric had been greatly aided by an Englishman serving as a bishop in Uppsala. Henry took up where Eric had finished but he was also martyred by one of his prospective converts thereby becoming a saint.

Magnus of Orkeny became a patron of fishmongers in Norway. When he was captured by King Magnus Barefoot of Norway, he refused to join the pirate raids, preferring to stay on board the ship reading psalms. Magnus was executed by his cousin Haakon and even though his death was more political than religious, he was a martyr and thereby beatified.
Saint Thoriac was declared to be a saint by the Icelandic parliament, the Althing five years after his death in 1193. This sainthood has not yet been sanctioned officially by Rome. Thoriac went to study in Norway and England and he returned to Iceland as a bishop, full of crusading zeal for such radical ideas as clerical celibacy and a church independent of other authority.

Later on in history a new type of saint emerged in Nordic history. Among these saints one finds Ingrid of Skenninge, Brynolf of Skara, Hemming of Åbo, Nicolaus Hermann of Linköping and above all Saint Birgitta and her daughter Katarina. These saints are historically identifiable and it is the way they lived their lives that created a cult movement after their death. Only Birgitta has been officially canonized, in 1391, while the others have with papal consent been beatified.

Saint Birgitta was born in 1303 and was married at the age of thirteen to Ulf Gudmarsson. In one of her first visions she was ordered to get King Magnus II to mend his wicked ways. The repentant monarch gave Birgitta the money to start up an order of monks and nuns after her husband had died. The layout of her monastery, dictated by another vision, segregated the sexes except for the shared church which was designed, however, in such a way that the men and women couldn’t see each other. Members of the order pledged to live in poverty but they had the right to buy as many books as necessary for study and devotion. Birgitta’s monastery in Vadstena was sanctioned by Pope Urban V in 1370. Birgitta embarked on a series of pilgrimages, the first to Rome in 1349 and the last one to the Holy Land from which she never returned to Sweden. Her body was however returned to Vadstena for burial by her daughter. Birgitta has been canonized a record three times.

Birgitta had eight children. By no means were all her children specially saintlike. In fact her married son who had joined her on one of her pilgrimages became romantically involved with Queen Joanna of Spain. However Birgitta’s fourth child, Katarina Ulfsdotter showed signs of being blessed from a very early age. As an infant, she would refuse her mother’s breast "as if it were absinthe" after those occasions when Birgitta had had carnal relations with her husband. Katarina was herself married at fourteen and even though she was very beautiful, she managed to persuade her husband to respect her treasured virginity. She left her husband five years later to join her mother on one of her pilgrimages to the Vatican and she stayed on in the Holy City as her mother’s assistant. Katarina had a hard time fending off men and to this end she wore ragged, threadbare clothes. She was beatified three years after her death in 1381 .