St. Olaf II condemns college’s peaceful sissies

I'm here with a couple of demands, you liberal arts weaklings. Thanks to this college and its continued besmirching of my royal name, ordinary children across the world will continue to associate St. Olaf with farm-loving, peaceful children of the world who have problems with passive-aggression. Has this college no sense of history? It's the peacefulness part that really slays me…

The St. Olaf website regularly trumpets the achievements of congenial students. They're even sending students to Norway on a peace scholarship. Back in my day Norway was home to bloodshed and religious conversion!

That's right. You, ordinary St. Olaf student, probably don't know about your school's namesake, because the communications department refuses to implement my "Who was St. Olaf?" widget on the front page. I thought a dancing king with axe icon would look rather nice next to my daily advice for St. Olaf students. Yet, like many of my suggestions, the idea was rejected.

Apparently the school wishes to hide my impressive military achievements. I named myself king of Norway in 1015, killed a few fellas, married the illegitimate daughter of King Olof of Sweden – babe – aggravated some influential Norwegian nobles and attempted to convert all of Norway to Christianity. My farming was of souls and via the sword – nothing so petty as a few red peppers like those StoGrow vassals.

While it is tempting to cast me as a great unifier, I was rather controversial during my life, unlike the habitually spineless St. Olaf student. I didn't have much choice in the posthumous sainthood business, but it's really smoothed some of my rougher edges for historians.

That is some dung of bull. I am hardcore and I would never allow Eric Hutchinson to play at my college. I digress. Back to my demands.

As many Danes, Swedes and Norwegians know all too well, I don't really mess around. I am making two demands of you, St. Olaf College. You can keep my name only if you associate it with a little more violence. I need more than a couple axes in the logo. Fewer drum circles and green bikes. More Interim trips on "Crusades in Action." Less rock climbing and more rock throwing.

These are my demands. Obey them, or else I will take back my name and give it to an institution much more deserving. The continued association of my name with peace, thanks to the pesky business of posthumous sainthood, is a blasphemous contradiction. It's as if West Point were on the East Coast, or if a school with a dry campus policy were named Jim Beam College. Peace out.
   
St. Olaf II (Olaf "Ol' Deer Cheeks" Haraldsson) held a CIS crusading, warfare and kingship major, with concentrations in medieval studies and neuroscience. He is enshrined in Trondheim, Norway.

"Editor's note: this article appeared in the April 30, 2010 satire issue of the Messenger."