OBSCURE SAINTS - St Eskil

How did an 'Anglo-Saxon' monk become a venerated figure is a province in Sweden?  The answer is the story of St Eskil.   (I have placed an explanation for my use of the term Anglo-Saxon at the end of this post.  It is used here due to the fact that St Eskil was recorded in Swedist hagiography of the time as being Anglo-Saxon and his origin played a significant part in the narrative which arose around him)  

Painting in Överselö Church in Sweden, depicting the saint Eskil, with his attributes, Source

Born in England, St Eskil is one of a number of missionary saints of Anglo-Saxon origin sent into Scandinavia – and one of a number associated with St Sigfrid (Sigfrid of Sweden).  Like many saints associated with evangelical missions into Scandinavia the exact dates of St Eskil’s life – we can gain approximations from some events detailed in later hagiography, but beyond that certainty is illusive.  We know that St Sigfrid was probably born in the 10^th century and died in the 11^th, and we know that most of what we know of St Eskil places him in the 11^th Century.  His activities probably took place during the rule of King Inge the Elder towards the end of the 11^tbotvidh Century.

St Eskil was sent with St Botvid (who was Swedish) and St David by St Sigfrid  as missionaries into the area around Mälaren.  He centred the diocese he established on the village of the Tuna which is know today as Eskilstuna.  According to late medieval tradition St Eskil was stoned to death in 1080 for disrupting a ‘pagan ritual’ at Strängnäs.  It is believed that Strängnäs Cathedral is built on the site of his death.  When the area around Strängnäs converted the diocese St Eskil had created was either moved or recreated centred on Strängnäs.

Lake Mälaren source

The closest we have to a contemporary source is from the Life and Passion of St Canute (Canute IV of Denmark) which dates from sometime between 1109 and 1124 which details an ‘Eskillinus’ who is described as being killed by ‘Suethi et Gothi’ – Swedes and Geats.  This is basically the majority of the close contemporary evidence.  The Life and Passion of St Canute was authored by another Anglo-Saxon monk Aelnoth of Canterbury.  We know that Aelnoth moved to Scandinavia – first to Denmark – after the death of Canute IV in 1086, but beyond this there are fair amount of uncertainty.  It is possible that the house he may have been prior of in Odense was a daughter house of the Benedictine Abbey of Evesham – an abbey which has a particular link with hagiography in the British Isles.  However event he dates of Aelnoth’s time in Denmark and the rest of Scandinavia is somewhat uncertain.  Other legends give St Eskil’s death as being much earlier – around 1016.  Since the legend and narrative are unmentioned and probably unknown to Adam of Bremen it is possible that St Eskil in fact flourished in the late 11^th Century – in line with the references by Aelnoth. 

In a later form the legend of St Eskil becomes entangled with that of Sweyn – also called Blot-Sweyn or Sweyn the Sacrificer.  In this legend King Inge is forced into exile and Sweyn is made king.  He gets his name from eating meat that had been sacrificed to the gods and from drinking, and making his follower drink, blood from the same.  In this legend Sweyn holds a vast feast, and orders a large sacrifice of bulls and sheep.  St Eskil then appears and begins preaching, and prays – and God responds with a violent storm with rain, hail, thunder, and lightning which destroys the altar – a narrative which runs closely with 1 Kings 18 where Elijah challenges the prophets of Baal on Mount Carmel.   St Eskil is then attacked, and after being accused of having use magic, is stoned to death.  The legend is also clearly influenced by the legend of St Olaf of Norway. 

Interior of Strängnäs cathedral Source

St Eskil’s veneration spread through Scandinavia.  St Eskil’s feast day, based on the believed date of his death on 11^th June – however outside of the diocese of  Strängnäs is it moved to 12th June so as not to coincide with the Feast of St Barnabas.  Relics of St Eskil are spread between a number of churches in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark.

St Eskil is therefore somewhat mysterious historical figure – part of a loosely connected group of missionary saints who came from the British Isles to Scandinavia.  The surviving narratives from Scandinavia make a particular point of recording the Anglo-Saxon origins of these missionary saints – though in some sources the term English is used, particularly in later sources. 

St Eskil is commemorated in Scandinavia, but remains virtually unknown in the British Isles where he is believed to have come from – as are many of those believed to have travelled to Sweden to spread Christianity. 

// The term Anglo-Saxon has become increasingly controversial in recent years, due to its popularity with the extreme right, fascists, and racists.  I use the term Anglo-Saxon here because at the time when (judging the chronology from known events and the lives of those individuals referred to who have a clear chronology location) these saints were active there is a distinction drawn between the Anglo-Saxon tribes and the Brythonic tribes (who have often been referred to either British or English) in the British Isles and the Normans in the surviving angiography – in this case St Eskil’s Anglo-Saxon origins these were identified as such and significant in the later Medieval hagiography in Scandinavia, and therefore this must be considered in the context of his life overall.  This is also relevant since the majority of the evidence dates St Eskil after the Norman Conquest. These boundaries do shift over time - it is worth noting for example, that under the laws introduced by the Normans, with the founding of the coroner system one of the coroner’s tasks was determining whether the dead individual was of Norman or ‘English’ birth to judge whether the community should be fined – the term cit overing any number of groups who would not have considered themselves such or as being alike with others whom the Normans also labelled as English.  This was in part an attempt at repressing retribution against the Normans  for their rule over local communities.  While the term in broad use is, and will remain, controversial, in these limited senses – when dealing with distinctions between identities within the period – groups which identified themselves as such – it retains some value as a descriptor for a limited set of cultures which existed within the British Isles.