Selja, Selje


Selja is a small island in Stad Municipality in Vestland county, Norway. It was the original Catholic bishopric in Norway which later became the pre-Reformation Ancient Diocese of Bergen. It has been formerly known as Sellø or Selø.
The island is located in the Sildagapet bay, just west of the harbor in the village of Selje. The sparsely populated island has about 5 permanent residents who commute by boat to the mainland since the island is not accessible by road.
The painter Bernt Tunold grew up on the island, where his parents had established a farm on the church grounds.

Ecclesiastical history

The island is mainly known for its connection to Saint Sunniva, who, according to legend, landed and died there in the late 10th century and remains patron saint of the Diocese of Bergen. The discovery at Selo in 996 of the supposed remains of Sunniva and her companions led Norwegian King Olaf Tryggvason to build a church there. Today, the ruins of a monastery named "Sankta Sunniva kloster" is the only notable feature on the island. The cave of Saint Sunniva and the ruins of an early cathedral are also located on the island. The cathedral was the episcopal see of a Catholic Bishopric, the Diocese of Selja, the predecessor of the Ancient Diocese of Bergen, a suffragan of the German Archbishopric of Bremen, established with the monastery circa 1060 by King Olaf Kyrre. Its physical see was soon moved to Bjørgvin, but it would take a few more bishops until that name supplanted Selja's.

Residential Suffragan bishops of Selja

The diocese, whose successor Bergen was suppressed in 1537 due to Denmark-Norway's Lutheran Reformation, was nominally restored in 1033 as Latin Catholic Titular bishopric of Selja and renamed Selia in Latin in 1971.
It has had the following incumbents, so far all of the fitting episcopal rank :