Sverre of Norway’s stone was erected by in 1929 in memory of the historic event when Sverre Sigurdsson was elected King of Norway in 1177. Many historians today consider Sverre as Norway’s greatest king of all time. 

Sverre’s saga, told in the Icelandic manuscript Flateyjarbók, describes how 300 men chose an unknown young man from the Faroe Islands to be King of Norway, where, at the time, the Birkebeiners were in rebellion against King Magnus Erlingsson. One interesting thing about Birkebeiners is they lived such a hard life in the woods they had to make shoes from birch bark. Legend has it that a Birkebeiner, a person who has “birch legs,”  is a strong man who does not give up easily.