Thorfinn of Hamar

Thorfinn of Hamar was a medieval Norwegian churchman associated with the bishopric of Hamar. Thorfinn of Hamar served as diocesan bishop. Thorfinn of Hamar is generally dated to died 1285.

He belongs to the ecclesiastical world in which bishops acted as landholders, royal advisers and defenders of church privilege. Thorfinn of Hamar was born in Trondheim and died in Bruges.

In Sigrid Undset’s The Axe, Bishop Thorfinn of Hamar becomes an important ecclesiastical authority in the dispute surrounding Olav Audunsson and Ingunn Steinfinnsdatter. His willingness to treat the young couple with justice and compassion contrasts with the family interests and feuding that complicate their betrothal, while his presence anchors their private crisis in the legal and religious institutions of thirteenth-century Norway.