Louis Sicking, Saint Olav’s Axe: Norwegian Church Treasures, Diplomacy and Exile during the Early Reformation. The Northern World, 99. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2025, xvi, 232 pp., 20 black-and-white and color figures.

This book is an updated English translation of the Dutch book De bijl van Sint-Olav: Op zoek naar Noorse Schatten in de Nederlanden (Zutphen: Walpurgers, 2021). Inspired by a chance archival find in Brussels, the book presents a microhistory of Catholic Norway’s fate in the early years of the Reformation in the North, concentrating on the destinies of the objects brought with Archbishop Olav Engelbrektsson on his flight from Trondheim to the Habsburg Low Countries. With an introduction, six body chapters, and relatively copious documentation in the back matter, Saint Olav’s Axe is a slim volume at 169 pages of main text but nevertheless manages to illuminate some dark corners on the topic and on some points correct commonly held assumptions among researchers.