king's stomach before Kálfr Árnason struck the king in the throat with his sword. Torstein Knarresmed was subsequently killed by a blow in the back but was revenged later that same day by one of Thorir's men. The king's body was carried away and buried secretly in the sandy banks of the Nidelva River south of the city of Trondheim. Aftermath The year after the battle, his grave and coffin were opened and according to Snorri the body was incorrupt and the hair and nails had grown since he was buried. The coffin was then moved to St. Clement's Church in Trondheim. Among the bishops that Olaf had brought with him from England, was Grimketel and it was he that initiated the beatification of Olaf on 3 August. Stiklestad Church () was erected on top of the stone against which St Olaf died. The stone is supposedly still inside the altar of the church. One hundred years later, Nidaros Cathedral was built in Trondheim on the site of his original burial place. Olaf's body was moved to this church and enshrined in a silver reliquary behind the high altar. This reliquary took the form of a miniature church, common to medieval reliquaries containing the entire body of a saint, but was unique in that it is said to have had dragon heads at the apex of the gables similar to those still seen on Norwegian stave churches. In the 16th century, during the Protestant Reformation period, Olaf's body was removed from this reliquary, which was melted down for coinage by order of the Dano-Norwegian king. His remains were reburied somewhere in Nidaros Cathedralexactly where is still today an unsolved mystery. Queen Josephine of Leuchtenberg of Norway and Sweden, the consort of Oscar I, asked for the one known remaining relic of St. Olaf, an ulna or radius in a medieval reliquary in the Danish National Museum, from King Frederick VII of Denmark, which he gave to her and which she in turn gave to St. Olaf's Cathedral in Oslo in August 1862. Evaluation While Snorri's description of the battles in the makes for epic reading, its grandeur most likely must be put down to the writer's taste for the grand. In Gardarike, Olaf was only surrounded by his most loyal followers. Neither can one expect that recruitment was especially ample in Sweden or through the sparsely-populated valleys through which Olaf