Sigfrid of Sweden
Saint Sigfrid of Sweden
was a missionary-bishop in Scandinavia during the first half of the 11th century. Originally from England, Saint Sigfrid is credited in late medieval king-lists and hagiography with performing the baptism of the first steadfastly Christian monarch of Sweden, Olof Skötkonung. He most likely arrived in Sweden soon after the year 1000 and conducted extensive missions in Götaland and Svealand. For some years after 1014, following his return to England, Sigfrid was based in Trondheim, Norway. However, his position there became untenable after the defeat of Olaf Haraldsson.
While in Norway, Sigfrid continued to participate in the Christianization of Sweden, to which he devoted the remainder of his life. According to Swedish and Icelandic tradition, he retired to Värend. Sigfrid later died in Växjö on an unknown date within the life-time of Adam of Bremen. Sigfrid's burial-place in Växjö became the centre of a cult. According to a statement by Johannes Vastovius, an antiquarian writing in the 17th century, Sigfrid was canonized by Pope Hadrian IV c. 1158. His feast day is 15 February.
Sigfrid is remembered in the Church of England with a commemoration on 15 February.
Historical background
In the ninth century, Anskar, 'Apostle of the North', had already made a missionary journey to Sweden and found Christians among those in captivity there. Subsequently, archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen, as Anskar's successors, and on the basis of papal documents which are now considered of varying degrees of authenticity, regarded themselves as likewise charged with the evangelization of the Far North. Attempts to bring Christianity to Sweden continued sporadically through the ninth and tenth centuries with a considerable measure of success, as is attested particularly by the archaeology of Västergötland.At the time, the Swedish Kingdom comprised Svealand in the north and Götaland in the south, in addition to provinces bordering Norway, and various offshore islands including Gotland. For a short period after the Battle of Svolder, the King of Sweden controlled a considerable part of Norway and throughout the period of Sigfrid's missions, control of Skåne was disputed between Sweden and Denmark. However, the Swedish Kingdom, as a whole, long remained a conservative bastion of traditional Nordic polytheism, defending itself against Christian missions by a law forbidding forcible conversion. The destruction of its principal cult-centre of Thor, Wodan, and Fricco in Uppsala was not carried out until late in the eleventh century, and the thorough Christianization of the kingdom had to wait until the twelfth century.
Sigfrid's career, therefore, belonged to a period when neither of these goals had yet been achieved, but his success, fame, and influence on younger missionaries nevertheless sufficed to earn him recognition as the primary 'Apostle of Sweden'. That he also worked in Norway, something not at all evident from his hagiography, is stated as a fact by Adam of Bremen, while an anonymous Historia Norvegie additionally reports that Sigfrid was transported from England to Norway, along with other bishops, by the future King and Saint, Olaf Haraldsson. This probably happened in the autumn of 1014. He visited Bremen on at least two occasions; one dates back to perhaps c. 1015, and the other, more certainly, to c. 1030. On the former occasion he entrusted a protégé called Osmund to the schools of Bremen for his education; on the latter, he brought good news to the Archbishop of Hamburg-Bremen about the success of his most recent missions in Sweden. Two Swedish dioceses, Växjö and Skara, claim St Sigfrid as their founding bishop.
The problematic character of the evidence for Saint Sigfrid's career
Statements about the life of Saint Sigfrid that can be regarded as unimpeachable are hard to discover, either in medieval primary sources or in modern reference books; scholars agree in declaring that very little can safely be said about him. The main difficulty for historians is that none of this pioneering missionary's correspondence has survived and, to our knowledge, none of his colleagues in the Scandinavian mission-field wrote a memoir relating his achievements. While it is well-nigh inconceivable that any important pre-Reformation mission-leader originating from England would have set about his work without papal accreditation, in the case of St. Sigfrid, there are no known records of his dealings with Rome, or with the kings, or archbishops of England. The destruction by fire in 1069 of York Minster's archives has left it impossible to reconstruct in any detail the history of the Scandinavian missions dispatched from England before that date.Hagiographical narratives of Sigfrid's work in Sweden
The sources which attest to the activity of Saint Sigfrid—late-medieval Vitae, king-lists of Sweden, and bishop-lists of Swedish dioceses— are generally dismissed today by academic historians both in Sweden and the English-speaking world as of dubious reliability. The two main Latin Vitae open with an episode in which envoys are sent by a king of the Svear called Olavus to a King of England named 'Mildred', entreating him to send Christian missionaries to his country—a request to which Sigfrid, 'Archbishop of York', responds positively. Rather less challenging to modern sceptical attitudes are traditions that, soon after his first arrival in Sweden, Saint Sigfrid was granted land for the church by the newly baptized King Olavus at Husaby, and also two more estates, called Hoff and Tiurby, in the vicinity of the future city of Växjö, this time in judicial compensation for the murder of three of his nephews, who had been assisting him in his mission. These are named in the Vitae as Unaman, Sunaman and Vinaman. It is reported that their severed heads, deliberately plunged into a lake by the murderers, were miraculously discovered, minus their bodies, by their uncle. Already, before the triple murder, Sigfrid had been instructed by an angel, in a dream, to build a church at the place called Östrabo, later to known as Växjö.Whereas Sigfrid's earliest days in Sweden are reported by the late-medieval hagiographers in some detail, with extreme specificity as regards names and locations, most of his subsequent long missionary career in the Swedish Kingdom is sketched in the extant Vitae with infuriating vagueness, and with no mention of any journeys and sojourns that he may have made anywhere outside that country after his initial journey there from England via Denmark. Vita I concludes with a report that, much later in his life, he elected to travel to Värend, 'the southernmost district in Götaland', for his retirement, where, as a very old man, he died at Växjö. This tradition is also touched upon in the late-medieval bishop-lists of Skara, and in an Icelandic tale, also late-medieval, about a composite saga-character called Bishop 'Sigurð'. 'Sigurð' appears to be an amalgam between Sigewéard, also known as Johannes, the first of three bishops from England reported by Adam of Bremen to have been based in Trondheim, and the third such bishop, identifiable as our Saint Sigfrid. The Icelandic text adds details about Bishop 'Sigurd's demise in Värend, which might suggest access by its author to richer authentic information about Saint Sigfrid than we possess, but unfortunately, not only is 'Värend' mistaken here for the name of a town, but other narratives by the same author about Bishop 'Sigurd' - his expedition to Jerusalem, and his courageous confrontation with the pagans of Sigtuna - are too novelistic in approach to inspire the trust of cautious scholars.
Vita II asserts that Sigfrid established separate bishoprics for the western and eastern parts of Götaland and also, further north, in Svealand, for Uppsala and Strängnäs. While there is no inherent improbability in the supposition that Saint Sigfrid 'from England' might have followed the example of Saints Augustine, Willibrord and Boniface in ordaining bishops for rural regions and population centres within his northern European mission-field, these reports of bishopric-foundation are not usually taken seriously. This is not only because the hagiographical context in which they are presented is easy to dismiss as a tissue of lying tales: the reports themselves appear to conflict with the account of Swedish church-history supplied by Adam of Bremen, a much earlier and seemingly more reliable authority. However, these considerations do not necessarily amount to conclusive disproof.
Disambiguation
For chronological reasons, Saint Sigfrid of Sweden cannot possibly be identifiable with Sigefrid, a monk of Glastonbury whose work as a missionary-bishop to Norway belonged to the days of England's King Edgar. Despite much confusion generated by Icelandic sources, this Saint Sigfrid also needs to be firmly distinguished from Sigewéard, the leading bishop in Olaf Tryggvason's Norway at the end of the tenth century, who seems very probably identifiable with a missionary bishop called 'Siwardus' who retired to the monastery of Ramsey in the abbacy of Eadnoth.On the other hand, it seems safe to identify the Sigfrid of Swedish hagiography and bishop-list traditions with Adam of Bremen's 'Sigafridus', missionary to Sweden as well as Norway. However, it is also possible to identify the apostle to Sweden and 'bishop of the Norwegians', with Sigeferð, bishop of Lindsey, a signatory of certain charters of Æthelred II around the time of the millennium.
In his hagiography, Saint Sigfrid of Sweden is problematically described as having held the office of Archbishop of York. It is possible basis that Sigeferð of Lindsey could have been elected to that office in the late Spring of 1002, following the death of Archbishop Ealdwulf, but because of a call to evangelize Sweden, resigned before enthronement, whereupon Wulfstan, Bishop of London, took his place at York. One seeks in vain for an Archbishop of York signing English royal charters in the summer of 1002. But the possibility that one had been appointed, only to disappear abroad, is certainly not capable of proof. Alternative hypotheses regarding the alleged archiepiscopal rank of Saint Sigfrid can reasonably be mooted, as they have been in the past.