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Sunniva

January 01, 1970

Saint Sunniva (10th century; Old Norse Sunnifa, from Old English Sunngifu) is the patron saint of the Norwegian Church of Norway Diocese of Bjørgvin, as well as all of Western Norway.

Saint Sunniva
Late Gothic sculpture of Saint Sunniva from the Austevoll altarpiece (c. 1520, now in Bergen Museum).
BornIreland
Died10th century
Selja island, Norway
Venerated inRoman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church True Orthodox Church
Major shrineSelje Abbey
FeastJuly 8
PatronageDiocese of Bjørgvin; Vestlandet

Sunniva was venerated alongside her brother Alban, who in Norwegian tradition was identified with Saint Alban, the Roman-era British saint.

Legend edit

Acta sanctorum in Selio is a Latin hagiography of saints Alban and Sunniva and their companions. It is believed to have been composed shortly after 1170. Oddr Snorrason made use of it in his Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar, in a section known as Albani þáttr ok Sunnifu ("tale of Alban and Sunniva") and also as Seljumanna þáttr.[1][2] Oddr's original work was composed in Latin but only survives in an Old Icelandic translation. The legend was also included in the later compilation Óláfs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta. The tale is directly based on that in Acta sanctorum in Selio, and thus slightly younger, although likely still belonging to the 12th century.[3]

According to the legend, Sunniva was the heir of an Irish kingdom, but had to flee when an invading heathen king wanted to marry her. She and her brother Alban (post-Reformation accounts add two sisters, called Borni and Marita) and their followers settle the previously uninhabited islands of Selja and Kinn in Norway during the rule of the pagan Jarl Hákon Sigurðarson (r. 962–995). Their Norwegian neighbors on the mainland suspect the Christians of stealing sheep and complain to Jarl Hákon. Hákon arrives on Selja with a group of armed men, intending to kill the inhabitants. When the Christians realize what is happening they hide in caves on the island and pray to God to collapse the caves to spare them from being ravaged by Hákon and his men. The caves collapse and kill all the Irishmen.

The legend has two farmers, Tord Eigileivsson and Tord Jorunsson who anchored at Selja to spend the night on a journey to Trondheim, witnessing a supernatural light over the island and discovering a bleached skull with a sweet smell. Arriving in Trondheim, the two men tell their experience to Olaf Tryggvason and bishop Sigurd. After another account of similar events by a different witness, the king and bishop travelled to Selja and found many sweet-smelling bones. They excavated the cave and recovered the body of Saint Sunniva incorrupt and looking as if the saint were asleep. The bones were collected and placed in a casket, and the body of Sunniva was placed in timber shrine.

Relics and veneration edit

 
Medieval statue (dated c. 1200) of a seated woman wearing a crown, from Urnes Stave Church (now kept by Bergen Museum). It is interpreted as either a Madonna or as a depiction of St. Sunniva.
 
Ruins of Selje Abbey

The Benedictine Selje Abbey was built at the site around 1100 and dedicated to Saint Alban (the third-century British saint, who in medieval Scandinavian tradition became conflated with the 10th-century Irish saint at Selje); the local veneration of Sunniva can be traced to about that time, possibly influenced by that of Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgins,[4] but was at first subordinate to that of her brother. However, the original dedication to Alban at Selje may not have been to the British saint, but a German saint of the same name.[5] Rekdal (2004) draws further connections of the legend to early medieval Norse-Gaelic contact, especially to St. Donnan, whose legend gives an account of the saint and his brothers being killed by pagans on the island of Eigg in 617.

Sunniva's relics (allegedly again found incorrupt) were moved to the new cathedral in Bergen in 1170, and as a result, her veneration spread throughout Norway. During the fires in Bergen of 1170/71 and of 1198 the relics of Sunniva were taken from the cathedral and set down at Sandbru. This reportedly halted the advance of the fire and was hailed as a miracle. The shrine with her relics remained in Bergen's Christ Church until 1531, when the church was demolished in the turmoils of the Reformation, and the shrine was transferred to Munkeliv monastery. The shrine was lost when that monastery was destroyed in its turn in 1536.

The feast day of Alban and Sunniva and their companions, known as Seljumannamesse, is 8 July. Sunniva also has a separate feast day commemorating her translation to Bergen in 1170, on either 31 August or 7 September.[6]

Norwegian author Sigrid Undset, who had converted to Roman Catholicism at age 42 in 1924, visited the remains of Selja monastery in 1926 and was inspired to write a novella based on the legend, completed by 1928, for which she commissioned fifteen watercolour illustrations by her friend Gøsta af Geijerstam. The book was first published in German in 1932. An edition with Undset's original Norwegian text appeared only in 2000.

Numerous institutions in Norway are named for Sunniva, including the Catholic church in Molde, various schools—including St Sunniva School in Oslo—several Norwegian ships, the St. Sunniva dormitory in Bergen, and the Sunniva Centre for Palliative Care (Sunniva senter for lindrende behandling) in Bergen. Selje introduced a municipal coat of arms depicting Sunniva in 1991.

For an exhibition dedicated to Sunniva in Bergen Museum, under the title of "St. Sunniva and the holy shrine" (Sankta Sunniva og det heilage skrinet), on 7 September 2011, a reconstruction of the shrine was made and transferred to the museum in a procession involving a reconstructed longboat, commemorating the historical translation of the saint's relics.[7]

 
Statue of Saint Sunniva at the harbour of Selje

Given name edit

Sunniva is in use as a feminine given name in Norway.

Sunniva is the Latinized form from Acta sanctorum in Selio. The Old Icelandic form is Sunnifa (manuscript spelling Sunniuæ). All are renditions of the Old English name Sunngifu, Sunnigifu, from sunne, 'sun', and gifu, 'gift'. The Old English name is on record in the Yorkshire Domesday Book, as Sonneuæ.[8]

Modern forms of the name include Synnøve, Synøve, Sønneva, Sønneve, Sunneva, Synneva, Synneve, all given in Norway, but Synnøve being the most widespread (also adopted as Synnöve in Sweden), with 5021 Norwegian women called Synnøve recorded in 2015. The popularity of the name surged in the early 20th century, with a peak of close to 0.7% of given girls' names during the 1920s. Since the 1920s, its popularity has declined steadily, falling below 0.1% by the 2000s. The original name Sunniva and the short form Synne, however, has instead become the most popularly given forms of this name. Sunniva has been in use since medieval times, but was unusual in the period 1900-1970, while Synne originated in the 1960s. Both started to become more popular in the 1970s and peaked around year 2000; in that year, Sunniva was the 33rd and Synne the 36th most popular names for newborn girls (each at ca. 0.6% of girl's names). They have since then has declined to around 0.2%.[9]

References edit

  1. ^ Wolf, Kirsten (2013). The legends of the saints in Old Norse-Icelandic prose. Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press. p. 342. ISBN 9781442646216.
  2. ^ Hoops 2003, p. 66.
  3. ^ O'Hara (2009:106). Oddr's þáttr is classified in the subgenre of "pagan-contact þættir" alongside Sörla þáttr, Tóka þáttr Tókasonar, Norna-gests þáttr and Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts; see also Rowe, Elizabeth Ashman (1998). (PDF). Alvíssmál. 8: 11. Archived from the original (PDF) on 10 June 2015.; this subgenre (without the inclusion of Þorsteins þáttr uxafóts) was first identified in Harris, Joseph (1980). (PDF). Folklore Forum. 13. Archived from the original (PDF) on 6 March 2015.
  4. ^ Gro Steinsland Draumkvedet, og tekster fra norrøn middelalder, 2004
  5. ^ Frankis, John (1998–2001). (PDF). Saga-Book. XXV: 132–133. Archived from the original (PDF) on 11 June 2015.
  6. ^ both 31 August and 7 September are reported by Schäfer (2003).
  7. ^ http://www.efremforlag.no/efremforlag/vedlegg/Sunnivaskrinet_VL07092011.pdf Sunnivaskrinet], Vårt Land, 8 September 2011.
  8. ^ Olof von Feilitzen, The Pre-Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book, Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis: Nomina Germanica, Almqvist & Wiksell, 1937, p. 378.
  9. ^ Statistisk Sentralbyrå, National statistics office of Norway, http://www.ssb.no

Other sources edit

  • Yngvar Nielsen, De Gamle helligdomme paa Selja, in: Historiske Afhandlinger tilegnet RJE Prof. Sars. 1905, pp 164–181.
  • (in German) Sigrid Undset, Martha Näf (trans.), Gösta af Geijerstam (illustrations), Sunniva, J. Müller (1932); (in Norwegian) Den hellige Sunniva Selje: Scriptoriet (2000).
  • Cato Passenger, Helligdommen på Selja, in: Norske fortidsminnesmerkers forening. Årbok 1949.
  • Ekkart Sauser, "Sunniva", Biographic-bibliographic church encyclopedia (BBKL). Volume 18, Bautz, Herzberg 2001, ISBN 3-88309-086-7, Sp. 1356–1357.
  • Hoops, Johannes, Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde: Band 22. Walter de Gruyter (2003), ISBN 3-11-017351-4
  • Joachim Schäfer, "Sunniva von Selje und Gefährten", Ökumenisches Heiligenlexikon (2003, 2014) (heiligenlexikon.de)
  • Oddr Snorrason, Theodore M. Andersson (trans.) The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason. Cornell University Press (2003), ISBN 0-8014-4149-8
  • Jan Erik Rekdal, "Sunnivalegenden - irsk rekved mellom norrøne fjæresteiner?" in: Jon Vidar Sigurdsson; Marit Myking & Magnus Rindal (eds.), Religionsskiftet i Norden. Brytinger mellom nordisk og europeisk kultur 800-1200. Unipub forlag (2004), 159–196.
  • Lisbeth Mikaelsson, "Locality and Myth: The Resacralization of Selja and the Cult of St. Sunniva". In: NUMEN, Vol. 52 (2005).
  • Torunn Selberg, "The actualization of the sacred place of Selja and the legend of Saint Sunniva", Arv. Nordic yearbook of Folklore (2005).
  • O'Hara, Alexander (2009). "Constructing a saint: The legend of St Sunniva in twelfth-century Norway". Viking and Medieval Scandinavia. 5: 105–121. doi:10.1484/J.VMS.1.100675.
  • Espen Svendsen (ed.), "St. Sunniva and the Holy Shrine", English-language exhibition catalogue, Bryggens Museum (2011).

External links edit

 
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saint Sunniva.
  • (in Norwegian) Bergen history web site

January 01, 1970
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Saint Sunniva 10th century Old Norse Sunnifa from Old English Sunngifu is the patron saint of the Norwegian Church of Norway Diocese of Bjorgvin as well as all of Western Norway Saint SunnivaLate Gothic sculpture of Saint Sunniva from the Austevoll altarpiece c 1520 now in Bergen Museum BornIrelandDied10th centurySelja island NorwayVenerated inRoman Catholic Church Eastern Orthodox Church True Orthodox ChurchMajor shrineSelje AbbeyFeastJuly 8PatronageDiocese of Bjorgvin Vestlandet Sunniva was venerated alongside her brother Alban who in Norwegian tradition was identified with Saint Alban the Roman era British saint Contents 1 Legend 2 Relics and veneration 3 Given name 4 References 5 Other sources 6 External linksLegend editActa sanctorum in Selio is a Latin hagiography of saints Alban and Sunniva and their companions It is believed to have been composed shortly after 1170 Oddr Snorrason made use of it in his olafs saga Tryggvasonar in a section known as Albani thattr ok Sunnifu tale of Alban and Sunniva and also as Seljumanna thattr 1 2 Oddr s original work was composed in Latin but only survives in an Old Icelandic translation The legend was also included in the later compilation olafs saga Tryggvasonar en mesta The tale is directly based on that in Acta sanctorum in Selio and thus slightly younger although likely still belonging to the 12th century 3 According to the legend Sunniva was the heir of an Irish kingdom but had to flee when an invading heathen king wanted to marry her She and her brother Alban post Reformation accounts add two sisters called Borni and Marita and their followers settle the previously uninhabited islands of Selja and Kinn in Norway during the rule of the pagan Jarl Hakon Sigurdarson r 962 995 Their Norwegian neighbors on the mainland suspect the Christians of stealing sheep and complain to Jarl Hakon Hakon arrives on Selja with a group of armed men intending to kill the inhabitants When the Christians realize what is happening they hide in caves on the island and pray to God to collapse the caves to spare them from being ravaged by Hakon and his men The caves collapse and kill all the Irishmen The legend has two farmers Tord Eigileivsson and Tord Jorunsson who anchored at Selja to spend the night on a journey to Trondheim witnessing a supernatural light over the island and discovering a bleached skull with a sweet smell Arriving in Trondheim the two men tell their experience to Olaf Tryggvason and bishop Sigurd After another account of similar events by a different witness the king and bishop travelled to Selja and found many sweet smelling bones They excavated the cave and recovered the body of Saint Sunniva incorrupt and looking as if the saint were asleep The bones were collected and placed in a casket and the body of Sunniva was placed in timber shrine Relics and veneration edit nbsp Medieval statue dated c 1200 of a seated woman wearing a crown from Urnes Stave Church now kept by Bergen Museum It is interpreted as either a Madonna or as a depiction of St Sunniva nbsp Ruins of Selje Abbey The Benedictine Selje Abbey was built at the site around 1100 and dedicated to Saint Alban the third century British saint who in medieval Scandinavian tradition became conflated with the 10th century Irish saint at Selje the local veneration of Sunniva can be traced to about that time possibly influenced by that of Saint Ursula and the 11 000 virgins 4 but was at first subordinate to that of her brother However the original dedication to Alban at Selje may not have been to the British saint but a German saint of the same name 5 Rekdal 2004 draws further connections of the legend to early medieval Norse Gaelic contact especially to St Donnan whose legend gives an account of the saint and his brothers being killed by pagans on the island of Eigg in 617 Sunniva s relics allegedly again found incorrupt were moved to the new cathedral in Bergen in 1170 and as a result her veneration spread throughout Norway During the fires in Bergen of 1170 71 and of 1198 the relics of Sunniva were taken from the cathedral and set down at Sandbru This reportedly halted the advance of the fire and was hailed as a miracle The shrine with her relics remained in Bergen s Christ Church until 1531 when the church was demolished in the turmoils of the Reformation and the shrine was transferred to Munkeliv monastery The shrine was lost when that monastery was destroyed in its turn in 1536 The feast day of Alban and Sunniva and their companions known as Seljumannamesse is 8 July Sunniva also has a separate feast day commemorating her translation to Bergen in 1170 on either 31 August or 7 September 6 Norwegian author Sigrid Undset who had converted to Roman Catholicism at age 42 in 1924 visited the remains of Selja monastery in 1926 and was inspired to write a novella based on the legend completed by 1928 for which she commissioned fifteen watercolour illustrations by her friend Gosta af Geijerstam The book was first published in German in 1932 An edition with Undset s original Norwegian text appeared only in 2000 Numerous institutions in Norway are named for Sunniva including the Catholic church in Molde various schools including St Sunniva School in Oslo several Norwegian ships the St Sunniva dormitory in Bergen and the Sunniva Centre for Palliative Care Sunniva senter for lindrende behandling in Bergen Selje introduced a municipal coat of arms depicting Sunniva in 1991 For an exhibition dedicated to Sunniva in Bergen Museum under the title of St Sunniva and the holy shrine Sankta Sunniva og det heilage skrinet on 7 September 2011 a reconstruction of the shrine was made and transferred to the museum in a procession involving a reconstructed longboat commemorating the historical translation of the saint s relics 7 nbsp Statue of Saint Sunniva at the harbour of SeljeGiven name editSunniva is in use as a feminine given name in Norway Sunniva is the Latinized form from Acta sanctorum in Selio The Old Icelandic form is Sunnifa manuscript spelling Sunniuae All are renditions of the Old English name Sunngifu Sunnigifu from sunne sun and gifu gift The Old English name is on record in the Yorkshire Domesday Book as Sonneuae 8 Modern forms of the name include Synnove Synove Sonneva Sonneve Sunneva Synneva Synneve all given in Norway but Synnove being the most widespread also adopted as Synnove in Sweden with 5021 Norwegian women called Synnove recorded in 2015 The popularity of the name surged in the early 20th century with a peak of close to 0 7 of given girls names during the 1920s Since the 1920s its popularity has declined steadily falling below 0 1 by the 2000s The original name Sunniva and the short form Synne however has instead become the most popularly given forms of this name Sunniva has been in use since medieval times but was unusual in the period 1900 1970 while Synne originated in the 1960s Both started to become more popular in the 1970s and peaked around year 2000 in that year Sunniva was the 33rd and Synne the 36th most popular names for newborn girls each at ca 0 6 of girl s names They have since then has declined to around 0 2 9 References edit Wolf Kirsten 2013 The legends of the saints in Old Norse Icelandic prose Toronto Buffalo London University of Toronto Press p 342 ISBN 9781442646216 Hoops 2003 p 66 O Hara 2009 106 Oddr s thattr is classified in the subgenre of pagan contact thaettir alongside Sorla thattr Toka thattr Tokasonar Norna gests thattr and THorsteins thattr uxafots see also Rowe Elizabeth Ashman 1998 Cultural paternity in the Flateyjarbok olafs saga Tryggvasonar PDF Alvissmal 8 11 Archived from the original PDF on 10 June 2015 this subgenre without the inclusion of THorsteins thattr uxafots was first identified in Harris Joseph 1980 Folktale and thattr The case of Rognvald and Raud PDF Folklore Forum 13 Archived from the original PDF on 6 March 2015 Gro Steinsland Draumkvedet og tekster fra norron middelalder 2004 Frankis John 1998 2001 From saint s life to saga The fatal walk of Alfred AEtheling Saint Amphibalus and the Viking brodir PDF Saga Book XXV 132 133 Archived from the original PDF on 11 June 2015 both 31 August and 7 September are reported by Schafer 2003 http www efremforlag no efremforlag vedlegg Sunnivaskrinet VL07092011 pdf Sunnivaskrinet Vart Land 8 September 2011 Olof von Feilitzen The Pre Conquest Personal Names of Domesday Book Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis Nomina Germanica Almqvist amp Wiksell 1937 p 378 Statistisk Sentralbyra National statistics office of Norway http www ssb noOther sources editYngvar Nielsen De Gamle helligdomme paa Selja in Historiske Afhandlinger tilegnet RJE Prof Sars 1905 pp 164 181 in German Sigrid Undset Martha Naf trans Gosta af Geijerstam illustrations Sunniva J Muller 1932 in Norwegian Den hellige Sunniva Selje Scriptoriet 2000 Cato Passenger Helligdommen pa Selja in Norske fortidsminnesmerkers forening Arbok 1949 Ekkart Sauser Sunniva Biographic bibliographic church encyclopedia BBKL Volume 18 Bautz Herzberg 2001 ISBN 3 88309 086 7 Sp 1356 1357 Hoops Johannes Reallexikon der germanischen Altertumskunde Band 22 Walter de Gruyter 2003 ISBN 3 11 017351 4 Joachim Schafer Sunniva von Selje und Gefahrten Okumenisches Heiligenlexikon 2003 2014 heiligenlexikon de Oddr Snorrason Theodore M Andersson trans The Saga of Olaf Tryggvason Cornell University Press 2003 ISBN 0 8014 4149 8 Jan Erik Rekdal Sunnivalegenden irsk rekved mellom norrone fjaeresteiner in Jon Vidar Sigurdsson Marit Myking amp Magnus Rindal eds Religionsskiftet i Norden Brytinger mellom nordisk og europeisk kultur 800 1200 Unipub forlag 2004 159 196 Lisbeth Mikaelsson Locality and Myth The Resacralization of Selja and the Cult of St Sunniva In NUMEN Vol 52 2005 Torunn Selberg The actualization of the sacred place of Selja and the legend of Saint Sunniva Arv Nordic yearbook of Folklore 2005 O Hara Alexander 2009 Constructing a saint The legend of St Sunniva in twelfth century Norway Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 5 105 121 doi 10 1484 J VMS 1 100675 Espen Svendsen ed St Sunniva and the Holy Shrine English language exhibition catalogue Bryggens Museum 2011 External links edit nbsp Wikimedia Commons has media related to Saint Sunniva in Norwegian Bergen history web site Retrieved from https en wikipedia org w index php title Sunniva amp oldid 1217797741 Legend, wikipedia, wiki, book, books, library,

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