''Ólafs ríma Haraldssonar'' is a 14th-century '' ríma'' by the

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

ic poet and official

Einarr Gilsson Einarr Gilsson was an Icelandic poet and official. He was the lögmaður of northern and western Iceland from 1367 to 1369. He is mentioned already in letters dating from 1339 and 1340 but his years of birth and death are unknown. He appears to h ...

on the career of Saint Óláfr Haraldsson (King Olaf II) of Norway. The work is preserved in Iceland's ''

Flateyjarbók ''Flateyjarbók'' (; "Book of Flatey, Breiðafjörður, Flatey") is an important medieval Iceland, Icelandic manuscript. It is also known as GkS 1005 fol. and by the Latin name ''Codex Flateyensis''. It was commissioned by Jón Hákonarson and p ...

'', from around 1390, and was probably composed a couple of decades earlier. The narrative follows the account of Óláfr's life in ''

Heimskringla () is the best known of the Old Norse kings' sagas. It was written in Old Norse in Iceland. While authorship of ''Heimskringla'' is nowhere attributed, some scholars assume it is written by the Icelandic poet and historian Snorri Sturluson (117 ...

'', focusing on the

Battle of Stiklestad The Battle of Stiklestad (; ) in 1030 is one of the most famous battles in the history of Norway. In this battle, King Olaf II of Norway () was killed. During the pontificate of Pope Alexander III, the Roman Catholic Church declared Olaf a saint ...

and Óláfr's miracles after his death. The work is literary though the diction is simple. The ''ríma'' consists of 65 ''

ferskeytt ''Ferskeytt'' (literally 'four-cornered') is an Icelandic stanzaic poetic form. It is a kind of quatrain, and probably first attested in fourteenth-century ''rímur'' such as ''Ólafs ríma Haraldssonar''. It remains one of the dominant metrical f ...

'' verses. There is no ''

mansöngr A ''mansǫngr'' (literally 'maiden-song'; plural ''mansǫngvar''; modern Icelandic ''mansöngur'', plural ''mansöngvar'') is a form of Norse poetry. In scholarly usage the term has often been applied to medieval skaldic love-poetry; and it is used ...

''. ''Ólafs ríma'' is often considered the earliest ''ríma''.

References

*Poole, Russell G. (1991).
Viking Poems on War and Peace
'.

University of Toronto Press The University of Toronto Press is a Canadian university press. Although it was founded in 1901, the press did not actually publish any books until 1911. The press originally printed only examination books and the university calendar. Its first s ...

. {{DEFAULTSORT:Olafs Rima Haraldssonar Old Norse poetry Rímur Flateyjarbók