Mistery of hovedøya island in Oslo

Last week I went to a little island named hovedøya which can be reached 5 minutes by boat from oslo mainland, this island is situated in very good atmosphere for those who like sunbathing, near to the beach I could find the historical ruins of past monarchy from medieval century, and tells interesting story, hovedøya monastery, in 1147 a prior and twelve indealistic monks disembarked on the island of hovedøya. They had made the north sea crossing from their parent monastery at Krikstead in Lincolnshire, England, to make their home in this northen outpost of the Christian faith. there was already a small wooden chruch on the verdant little island, so some benedictine monks may have preceded them.

Under the rules of their order Cistercian monks were not permitted to live on the fruits of other people’s labour. They had themselves to grow what they needed and were barred from accepting revenue from land leased to tenant farmers; they were also enjoined to live apart from the world, and not to become members of the property-owning class. Those were the ideals, and for the first few years the monks of Hovedøya strove to live up to them. They cultivated the land themselves and divided the day into three parts – work, prayer and rest. But before long they were compelled to compromise on some of their ideals and employ lay brothers to work for them. In the 1160s, when they accepted two tenant farms as a gift from the bishop, the monks renounced their principles entirely. In the generations that followed the property owned by the monastery increased by leaps and bounds, and from about 1400 onwards the monks were able to live exclusively on their frankalmoign revenues. By then the monastery owned land all over eastern Norway and ruled over a range of stoutly constructed buildings on the island.
Monastic life on hovedøya came to dramatic close in the winter of 1531-32. The chief administrative officer of the Akerhus region, mogens gyldenstierne, had Lutheran learnings and nurtured little respect fir monastic orders, in November he despatched his men to the monastery with instruction to seize all the food they could find. Later king Chirstian II’s servant arrived and demanded the handling over all the monastery’s valuables. January of the following year witnessed the last act : the abbot was dragged naked from his bed in the middle of the night and incarcerated in akerhus castle, while Gyldsenstierne’s men stripped both church and monastery of everything of value. By April all the monks had fled and the monastery was transformed into a defensive bastion for King christian’s men. To deny it to the enemy, Frederick I’s warriors set fire to the monastery, and it was never rebuilt, its stones being employed to enlarge akerhus castle