I am currently reading David Howarth’s “1066 The Year of the Conquest” and during a chapter on Harald Hardrada I came across a peculiar paragraph regarding Saint Olaf.
“[Hardrada] went to Trondheim, where he unlocked the shrine of King Olav and cut his hair and nails, which were still growing, owing to his sanctity, thirty-five years after his death. He threw the key of the shrine into the neighboring River Nid; and early in August, he sailed to join his ships.”
Specifically my question is whether or not that is possible, and in a general sense I am asking what becomes of the bodies of long dead Saints. Are they tended to in such a way as to “clean them up” so to speak? Was long-lasting preservation of a Saint’s body of high importance?
Howarth had been referencing an Icelandic history by Snorri throughout the chapter so could it be that it was a fabrication on Snorri’s part?
If you are asking if it is possible that a human’s nails and hair grows after their death, then no it is not. However, some sources claim that Olav II was embalmed after his death. This sometimes includes a drying process in which the body would then shrink. This would then lead to the illusion that his nails and hair had grown, when instead the rest of his body had shrunken. This is a possible answer to why his hair and nails are reported as growing.
It is also important to note that the fact that it is seemingly impossible for someone’s hair and nails to grow after their death is the whole point of the many of the sagas and the whole reason why Olav II became saint in the first place. After Olav’s death, a multitude of legends regarding wonders happening with his corpse, and this one about his still growing nails and hair is one of them. As a result, he was canonized and he quickly became one of the most depicted saints in Norway, next to the virgin Mary.
Now while you are probably right in your suspicion that these legends and sagas about Olav II probably is not true. That being said I would not necessarily blame Snorre for all of them. At least not for inventing them. Many people had much to gain by making him a unifying and holy figure, among them the church. As a result, Snorre’s records of Olav II differs quite a bit from our earlier sources on his life and death.