Today Is...Saint Olaf's Day

There is no denying that Olaf was a Viking and their culture was based on seafaring warfare, piracy and sporting natty horned helmets as they pillaged, raped and burned down monastery's and the odd whole village or two so there are not many other Saints whose average day was all about getting as drunk as possible, sailing into a foreign land and then setting fire to it's buildings and as the King of Norway he had to set an example so got drunker than most.  
He was nicknamed Olaf the Thick, not because he lacked the brain-cells although the Mead surely destroyed quite a lot of them, but because he apparently had arms and legs like tree trunks, and a belly like one too and when he wasn't pillaging or toasting his hands on a burning Monastery, he was dispensing Christian values.
It was on the way back from ransacking London that he stopped off at Normandy and met Duke Richard II who told him all about Christianity and how it would help to unite Norway and he would love to have Norway on the side of God so he was baptized then and there and set about spreading the word of the Christian God by following the Golden Rule of 'Love Thy Neighbour' although the Viking version meant something a bit different to what it does today and he loved them to death by annihilating the other kings of Norway, raiding Denmark, Iceland and Sweden and burning down any other temple to the ground and building a Christian Church in its place.
He was the ultimate badass, a God-fearing Viking King until a bigger and badasser God fearing King called Cnut the Great promptly handed him his own arse at the Battle of the Helgea but he wasn't completely beaten and came back two years later with an army to show Cnut and his gang exactly who the real King was.
Turned out it wasn't Olaf and he killed him with an enormous axe.
Numerous churches in Norway, Sweden, and Iceland are dedicated to Olaf and the Church had no qualms with him bringing Christianity to Scandinavia by violent and murderous brute force because they made him a Saint for it and in his coat of arms he is shown to be holding a Cross in one hand and a Battleaxe in the other showing the oh so Viking way converting people to Christianity...or else.