Osmund (missionary bishop)

Osmund or Asmund (Latin: Osmundus, Aesmundus; Old Swedish: Asmuðær) was a missionary bishop in Sweden in the mid-11th century.

Born at an unknown date c. 1000, probably in England; educated at the schools of Bremen (shortly?) after 1014 (when his sponsor first became a 'bishop of the Norwegians'); served as court-bishop to King Emund the Old of Sweden (who reigned as sole king c. 1050 – c. 1060); was expelled from Sweden and travelled to England via Bremen probably in 1057; died as a monk of Ely in the abbacy of Thurstan (1066 - c.1072).^[1]

Osmund, missionary bishop in Sweden and monk of Ely, is not to be confused with Saint Osmund, Bishop of Salisbury (d. 1099). He is also to be distinguished from Amund (d. 1082), the successor of Saint David as Bishop of Västerås^[2] and from the Bishop Osmund who, as a monk of Fécamp, signed a privilege in 1017.^[3] It is not entirely out of the question that the rune-carver Asmund Karesson, who produced Christian memorials in central Sweden in the 1020s and '30s, might have been the future Bishop Osmund, but this hypothesis has not won much favour in recent years.